Proverbs 26:4-5
4Do not answer a fool according to his folly,
or you will be like him yourself.5Answer a fool according to his folly,
or he will be wise in his own eyes.
We love isolated quotes. Bite sized snippets of wisdom. ‘Fun’ sized portions of knowledge. Appetizers are delicious, but they are only the starter for the main course.
Sound bites are good. But complete stories are even better.
Look at the ancient hebrew and christian book of Proverbs. Ancient, timeless wisdom if ever there were any.
Proverbs 26 verse 4 gives us a snippet of this ancient insight.
Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself.
Most of us easily recognize the truth in this. Personally, I know I’ve made a fool of myself in the past arguing in pointless debates over things that don’t even matter. Experience teaches me that this is true.
Then take a look at verse 5, the very next verse.
Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.
Somehow, this too seems true.
On their own, both verses challenge us to evaluate our responses to ‘folly’.
And each verse, taken on it’s own, gives us alot to think about…
The appetizer tastes good.
But verse 4 and 5 together give us so much more to think about.
This, to me, is the perfect example of why single sentences pulled out of a larger body of text can be misleading, and why the entire story narrative is so valuable.
It’s not that either verse on it’s own is inherently untrue. In fact - it is just because they are both true that together they profoundly become even truer. They encompass the tension of life’s contradictions, the inherent need for wisdom in the application of knowledge, and the mystery of how opposites interact and play in our lives.
Do not answer the fool according to his folly…but then again, sometimes… do.
