Christ Church Troy Exhortation

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

“Debate thy cause with thy neighbour himself; And discover not a secret to another: Lest he that heareth it put thee to shame, and thine infamy turn not away”

Proverbs 25:9-10

“Debate your case with your neighbor, and do not disclose the secret to another; Lest he who hears it expose your shame, and your reputation be ruined”

Proverbs 25:9-10

This is a proverb that warns us about that dangers of talking out of school. If you have a dispute someone, your neighbor, say, this text says that you should go to him directly. Deal with him, the one with whom you differ.

While you are doing this, Scripture says, deal with him alone. Do not play to the nickel seats. Do not canvas the surrounding population to see what they think. In short, do not be political.

The assumption made here by the Word of God is that if word of your behavior gets out, it will be seen for what it is—disgraceful. When a problem arises, one of the ways you can identify the responsible people in the situation is by looking closely at how they handle the situation with others. Apart from the merits of the dispute, are they handling the manner of the dispute responsibly? 

It is important not to let the dispute spread any more broadly than it needs to. There are many who like to style themselves as peacemakers when they are actually agitators. Say that someone comes to the pastor with “a concern.” You know, one of those. They talk about it for a while, and when the pastor fails to give satisfaction, what should we conclude when the person then says something like, “You know, there are many others who feel the same way that I do . . .”

To which the pastor should say, “Ah, I see. You’ve been talking to a lot of people about this then?”

That’s not peacemaking, and it truly is disgraceful.   

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At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

“Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather than a fool in his folly”

Proverbs 17:12

There are times of the day when a fool is in a quiescent state. They are not “on” all the time. But this proverb tells us that when a fool is “in his folly,” that is an extremely dangerous time to meet him. How dangerous is it? It would be better to be hiking in western Montana, and glance over to the right side of the path and see a mama grizzly, and then to look over to the left side of the path and see three small grizzly cubs.

In other words, to meet a fool when he has gotten up a head of steam is a very dangerous thing indeed. 

One of the reasons why it is more dangerous is that when you meet the bears, it is possible that you might have some idea of which direction to run. There might be a path of escaper that makes some sort of sense. But when you are entangled with a fool, there really is no defense because it is impossible to defend against irrational behavior. 

In his most insightful book, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, Carlo Cipolla makes this point. It is possible to defend yourself against a thief because, although the thief is malevolent, he is nevertheless engaging in rule-guided behavior. It is possible to anticipate what his next move might be, and if you can anticipate that move, you can guard yourself against it. But Cipolla defines a stupid person as one who harms others without receiving any real benefit from those actions himself.

If you don’t want to meet a grizzly robbed of her cubs, then it is best just to stay out of bear country. But living in the world as we do, it is not really possible to stay out of fool country. The best defense a person can have is, after one encounter with a person who has been a fool in this way, to steer clear.

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