How the Bible Actually Works

by Peter Enns

  Again, more fear that parents might not do enough “training.” And what does that “training” look like, exactly, and what is “the right way”? Like, that’s my whole question. Should they sit up straight? Wash their hands before dinner? Not listen to rock music? Not have sex before marriage? Play travel soccer? And what does it mean, practically speaking, to “stray”? Where is the line between healthy youthful boundary exploration and actual straying?

  What do I do?! That’s all I want to know.

  Reading the book of Proverbs on child rearing is like paying good money for financial advice and being told after ten sessions, “Here’s what I’ve come up with. Invest your money wisely, and you will be set for retirement.” I was hoping for stock tips.

  Here’s a passage from the New Testament addressed to children: Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is your acceptable duty in the Lord (Col. 3:20).

  “Put your toys away. If you don’t, you’ll make baby Jesus cry. You don’t want to see baby Jesus cry, do you?” Some parents love this one.

  Another New Testament letter, the book of Ephesians, adds that honoring your father and mother is the first of the Ten Commandments that comes with a promise: so that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth (6:3). So, the Bible contains death threats?

  As a general guideline I believe that children should obey their parents, but as an absolute rule to live by it sounds like a license for child abuse. Are we really meant to conclude that children should always obey their parents no matter what—like, every single time, without fail? What if the parents are neo-Nazis—or Calvinists? What if they are drunk or abusive? Should those kinds of parents be obeyed in everything as an acceptable duty in the Lord?

  Is there no room here for pushback or just common sense? Maybe so, but it would certainly help avoid misunderstandings if all these passages began, “Generally speaking . . .” What we read, however, sounds uncomfortably like an unalterable command written by an inspired biblical author taking dictation from God. After all, this is the Bible and when God’s word says “obey your parents in everything,” who are we to pick and choose?

  Or perhaps we readers are meant to insert “generally speaking” and then figure things out on our own as situations come up—in other words, to be wise. That’s what I think.

  The Bible also includes child-rearing instructions that I have no intention of doing ever. Back to Proverbs: Do not withhold discipline from your children; if you beat them with a rod, they will not die (23:13).

  I am relieved that beating my child with a rod (aka discipline) will only result in deep bruising and some broken ribs, but not death.* Still, this passage sounds more like a sure ticket to a visit from Child Services than day-to-day godly parenting advice. A disturbing echo can be found in the book of Exodus concerning the treatment of slaves: a slaveholder who strikes a slave with a rod is only punishable if the slave dies right away (21:20). Maybe children, like slaves, are property? That would at least explain this:

  If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son, . . . his father and his mother . . . shall say to the elders of his town, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. (Deut. 21:18–21)

  Okay, I’m not doing that. Not that I haven’t been tempted, but no.

  Getting the townsfolk together to stone your son to death for stubbornness seems like the kind of thing civilized societies were created to prevent. And it probably doesn’t send a message of unconditional love to the remaining siblings. Probably doesn’t make a good evangelistic conversation starter either.

  Am I wrong, or is inflicting physical pain as child rearing a recurring theme?

  I suppose it would have been nice if God had handed us a Bible with a chapter in it called “FAQs on Godly Rules for Parenting” that didn’t include capital punishment and told us what the “right way” and “discipline” are, so we didn’t crank out little hellions. But that’s not what we have.

  If the Bible’s purpose was to provide for us clear and unchanging direction about basic pressing matters like, “How do I raise my kids well?”—it wouldn’t generate so many obvious questions.

  I’m not writing a child-rearing book, at least not until my adult children let me know whether they intend to sign the Do Not Resuscitate form, should it ever come to that. I’m just saying that what the Bible says about raising children is ambiguous once we pay attention to the details. It’s even morally suspect in places, in need of being questioned—even interrogated.

  And here is the bigger point of all this: How the Bible addresses this one topic of child rearing is a window onto how inadequate (and truly unbiblical) a rulebook view of the Bible as a whole is.

  It unravels once you start pulling the thread. The Bible seems intent on pointing us in another direction entirely.

  Fools and Finances

  Before we move on to the Bible as a whole, let’s stay with Proverbs a bit longer—yes, the book we just looked at with all that unhelpful parenting advice. But give it a chance. Proverbs actually makes it loud and clear that seeking wisdom rather than grabbing for answers is what this life of faith is about. Proverbs is a book of wisdom, after all.

  Tucked away toward the end of the book of Proverbs, minding their own business, not trying to grab our attention but just waiting to be found, are back-to-back bits of wisdom that completely contradict each other:

  Do not answer fools according to their folly,

  or you will be a fool yourself.

  Answer fools according to their folly,

  or they will be wise in their own eyes. (26:4–5)

  Let me say right here and now that the lesson we learn from these two little verses sums up not only how Proverbs works, but how the Bible as a whole works as a book of wisdom. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

  Anyone who hangs out on social media at all knows how effortlessly it can bring out the worst in us. Not me, of course, but everyone else. I’m an angel.

  Sometimes the comments are rude, condescending, insulting, passive-aggressive, or baiting. I mean, people really get upset over almost everything! And each time that happens, I have to ask myself, “Should I ignore him or let him have it?” (Yes, “him.” Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s some dude who really needs to find another way to prove his manhood.)

  I’d really like some clear divine direction here on how to handle these trolls, but the book of Proverbs, which is supposed to tell us what wisdom looks like, has these two passages side by side that give us two conflicting instructions: “Definitely do not answer this fool. Oh, wait. No. Definitely do answer him.”

  Is this multiple choice? Do I just pick one? I just want a snappy phrase that tells me what to do when this happens—like “Stranger, danger,” “Stop, drop, and roll,” or “In the event of a loss of cabin pressure, place the oxygen mask firmly over your nose and mouth, secure the elastic band behind your head, and breathe normally.” Am I asking too much? Apparently.

  What makes the ambiguity all the more striking is the topic—fools. This isn’t some minor issue, like whether it’s finally time to get double-pane windows (you probably should; they will save you hundreds in heating costs and over time will more than pay for themselves). “Fool” in Proverbs is the catchall term for someone you definitely do not want to be: a hater of knowledge, a slanderer, one who leads others down the path to destruction, someone who lacks discernment and is complacent, stubborn, ignorant, prideful, greedy, and a whole slew of other despicable character traits.

  Today we might call someone like this a total jerk (feel free to supply a more colorful term). Biblically speaking, though, a fool is roughly synonymous with someone who is “ungodly” or “unrighteous”—someone whose actions are out of sync with God’s ways and out of harmony with others’. Fools lead you away from God, and so we might expect here of all places, where the topic under consideration is “fo
ols,” to get some clear direction about what to do when we come face-to-face with such a disruptive, ungodly person.

  But no. Instead we are told (1) not to engage a fool because by doing so you will come down to his level and (2) to engage the fool to shut him up.

  And so here is my point. These two clearly contradictory proverbs aren’t a problem that needs fixing. The biblical writers weren’t idiots. Placing these two opposite sayings side by side gives us a snapshot of how wisdom works.

  It seems to me that whoever composed this book and placed these proverbs* next to each other was saying at least this: If we are looking to the Bible to be a rulebook, not only will we be frustrated, but we will miss the wisdom this pairing contains. Both of these sayings are wise, and the one we act upon here and now, at this unscripted moment, depends on which fits the current situation best.

  Reading the situation—not simply the Bible—is what wisdom is all about.

  It’s also, as we’ll see, what the life of faith is about.

  Sometimes it’s best to answer a fool, sometimes not. Which option is best at this unscripted moment depends on all sorts of factors that are impossible to anticipate, and so each time I read a nasty comment, I have to decide in the moment what the best way forward is in this situation. Maybe what I am seeing is less anger and more pain and fear, and this person needs a place to vent. Or maybe he’s been burned and needs a safe space to let it out. Or maybe the comment just needs to be deleted and the commenter blocked.

  The point is that Proverbs 26:4–5 doesn’t tell me what to do. It wasn’t designed to. It models something better: the permission to think it through, figure it out, and learn from experience for next time. In fact, more than just giving us permission, the contradiction sets up our expectation that we will have to think it through.

  And I’ll bet some of you might have thought “contradictions” in the Bible were “bad.” They’re not. They’re revealing.

  The Bible doesn’t normally lay things out so clearly with side-by-side contradictions. Usually they are spread out over the book. As in the case of wealth.

  Wealth—getting it, keeping it, and acquiring more of it—has been an issue for most of recorded civilization, including for the ancient Israelites, judging by how often Proverbs brings it up. Marriages and families are destroyed by it, nations go to war over it, people are exploited so the powerful can hoard it.

  I basically suck at wealth. My long-term planning has been a failure. Apparently plugging your ears and singing, “La-la-la-la, I cannot hear you” for three decades and wishing for the best is not a solid financial strategy. And those commercials just make it worse by producing shame—you know, the ones where the annoyingly intimate financial adviser and his client seem to have oodles of time to just hang out over coffee and review his “portfolio”—which, I gather, is how people who have a lot of money refer to “money.”

  Thanks for hanging out with me for seven straight hours, Tom. I’m just stressed about not being able to turn my 1.8 million into 2.2 million by the time I’m thirty-seven. After all, as we’ve discussed, I want to send my kids to Harvard, buy a small country, and cheat death. The market fluctuation is scary. Hold me.

  I understand, Steve, but it’ll be okay. Stay latched on to me like a baby monkey. I’ll see you through this every step along the way. Text me 24/7. I love you and care for you.

  Thank you, Tom. You complete me.

  Give me a break.

  My one and only recent financial conversation went more like this:

  Pete. PETE! Get up. Here’s a tissue. Look, it’s not all bad news. I project that if you get a second job, keep working until you’re ninety-seven, max out every year on every conceivable retirement plan known to humanity, and sell a kidney and one eye on the black market, you’ll be able to die in your basement—assuming Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and food stamps are still up and running. But just in case, swing by the office and let’s talk lottery strategies.

  Let’s not make this about me (though I think I just did). I’m only saying that, speaking from personal experience, a godly attitude toward wealth seems, again, like an absolutely ideal topic to get some clarity on, and you’d think a book like Proverbs that’s supposed to provide wisdom would hit this one out of the park.

  But no. Instead, we see that wealth is both a blessing and a curse, a security and a danger. It all depends. Compare two more verses from Proverbs:

  The wealth of the rich is their fortress;

  the poverty of the poor is their ruin. (10:15)

  The wealth of the rich is their strong city;

  in their imagination it is like a high wall. (18:11)

  Like Proverbs 26:4–5, these two proverbs force us to ponder what a proper attitude toward wealth looks like, especially since, like the “fools” proverbs above, they begin with exactly the same words,* but then go in opposite directions. That tension created by the book of Proverbs is never resolved.

  It’s not meant to be.

  The lesson here is that wealth can be positive or negative, depending on our attitude. A razor-thin line exists between genuine thankfulness to God for the protection wealth can provide and arrogance about one’s wealth. The book of Proverbs challenges us to get used to patrolling that line, so we can learn when we cross it.

  And neither of these proverbs should be elevated above the other as the Bible’s clear and final teaching on wealth. Neither the TV preacher who thinks God told him to definitely get a third Learjet nor extremists who think that having a savings account is sinful is exercising wisdom.

  We need to use our heads here, people—which is precisely what these contradictory passages in Proverbs are driving us toward. We are left to read the situation to see which bit of wisdom fits here and now.

  Proverbs doesn’t do the heavy lifting for us. It alerts us that we have to. We cannot escape that sacred responsibility—ever.

  My Big Point, and Then an Even Bigger Point

  Proverbs can be deceptive. All those little sayings, neatly lined up one after another. They just look like “rules to live by.” But knowing what to do is about much more than reading words on the page. It’s about learning to read the moment, those day-in-and-day-out gray situations that befall us without forewarning—like how to handle nasty comments or what to spend your money on. Contradictory proverbs about fools and finances neatly capture this truth.

  Doing the best as we can to figure out life, to discern how or if a certain proverb applies right here and now, is not an act of disloyalty toward God, rebellion against God’s clear rulebook for life. It is, rather, our sacred responsibility as people of faith. Proverbs drives us toward that insight by being steeped in those three characteristics we glimpsed earlier: antiquity, ambiguity, and diversity.

  Proverbs is diverse, as we just saw concerning fools and finances. It gives not a single point of view, but two extremes—and everything in between—suited for countless situations.

  Proverbs is also ambiguous, for it is short on details, like how to raise children. We are left to fill in the details. Further, a book of wisdom that advises beating your child with a rod (or stoning to death a rebellious teenager, as we saw in Deuteronomy*) raises another sort of ambiguity, namely, whether these sorts of proverbs have any abiding value for us.

  No question, Proverbs makes you think. And no matter how carefully we read almost any other proverb, we face similar ambiguities. Seriously. Open up Proverbs, randomly put your finger down on the page, and try to explain to the person next to you what that proverb means. Exactly.

  We read in Proverbs 25:11: A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. It looks like we’re talking about some sort of ornate platter (?), but why are golden apples in a setting of silver such a big deal in the first place, and what does that have to do with me right now? Nor is it spelled out what a word fitly spoken looks like or what that has to do with a platter.

  This example also shows how the ambiguities in Prover
bs are often tied to the book’s antiquity. When we read Proverbs, we are crossing a chasm of time and culture. The methods of disciplining children we’ve seen most certainly reflect the rather harsh climate of Iron Age tribal culture (1200–500 BCE), where physical violence among peoples and nations is a ho-hum matter-of-fact reality. Even God is depicted as a warrior who ruthlessly slays the enemy.*

  We don’t live then, but now. How bound are we, then, to the Bible’s child-rearing instructions?

  More to the point, Proverbs wasn’t written for twenty-first-century Western churchgoing suburbanites. Though the deep origins of the book remain a mystery, Proverbs was likely compiled for the purpose of training young upper-class Israelite men for a life of royal service. This is why the book is throughout addressed to sons (not daughters) and gives due weight to topics that would be most relevant for a ruling class—like wealth and justice (for example, Prov. 1:3; 2:8).

  This book was designed for an ancient ruling class, but here’s the twist. Centuries later, this book was eventually included in the Bible of Judaism (the Christian Old Testament).* Long before Christianity came to be, Proverbs was already “democratized,” that is, transformed from a book for some to a book for everyone.

  In other words, the simple fact that Proverbs later came to be included in the for-everyone book we call the Bible speaks volumes—it means that those ancient Jews who made that decision saw in it value beyond the reason for which it was originally written.

  So, here’s my point. We do not share the ancient setting of the original audience of Proverbs. When we read it, we have to transpose it into another key if we hope to connect with it. In fact, the book’s very inclusion in the collection of for-everyone books is already a significant transposition. Otherwise this ancient book would forever remain an artifact from the past, a decaying monument to a long-ago time and a faraway place.

  Because Proverbs was included in a collection of sacred books meant for all, it now flies off the pages of its ancient origins and invites us to bring it into our own time and place—ruler, peasant, and everyone in between.