I’m Scared

I could sugarcoat this, but I won’t. I’m scared a lot.

I could use buffer words like concerned, apprehensive, or anxious, but I’m all

about owning it. Someone told me I’m a 6 on the Enneagram, so I looked it up on the

Internet, and see I’m basically screwed. Fear is apparently my thing, my addiction, my

preferred strategy for making it through life.1 Not unrelated, I’ve also got the “son of

German immigrants” thing happening—the world is a hostile place so control as much

of your environment as you can to establish order amid the chaos of the universe and

thus give some relief to the ceaseless torrent of fear that shrouds my soul in dark

despair. So, especially when I’m stressed, you might find me spontaneously getting up

from the coach or my desk to straighten the kitchen counter, fold laundry, or vacuum up

acres of dog and cat hair. Glimpses of order to get me through the day.

No doubt some of you are thinking that I am a dream husband, knocking off to-do

lists without being told. But no. Trust me. All this may make me highly efficient but also

insufferably controlling, though my team of therapists told me I don’t need to dwell on

that anymore.

When I stop to think about it, I can see that deep down I like my religion the way I

like my kitchen counter and hair free family room rug—in order, everything in it’s place,

everything the way it should be, everything making sense. Disorder means ambiguity,

which is like a petrie dish for fear. Order brings predictability and peace. This is why I

over-analyze my faith, turn it over and over again in my brain until it all fits. Maybe

1According to The Enneagram Institute (https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-6/), we sixes crave

structure to alleviate fear. We also tend to be sarcastic. Some famous sixes include Richard Nixon, Mike
Tyson, Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, and Frodo Baggins. So I have that going for me.

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you’re like that, too. I really would like God to just lay it all out there so I know what to do

and think. Is that too much to ask? Can I at least get a shove in the general direction?

And the Bible. I often wonder what led me into my line of work, studying an

teaching the Bible, and the older I get the clearer it becomes. In my early twenties I

landed on the idea that getting the Bible under control (that word again) would put me

on pretty sure ground for figuring out life. I mean, isn’t that the whole point of the Bible?

To tell us what to believe and how to live? Isn’t that the payoff from all those (endless)

pages of kings, genealogies, and sacrifices we have to wade through, to get some

clarity about what to do, some certainty amid the ambiguity of life, some order amid

chaos?

I know I’m not alone. Years of experience in churches and teaching Bible in

seminaries and universities has shown me that, deep down, many Christians hold to the

belief that the Bible is something like an owner’s manual for a life, a set of instructions, a

field guide to navigate life’s hills and valleys and come home safe and sound—if you are

careful to follow it step by step. And again, if I had he ability to shape ultimate reality, I’d

probably set it up something like that. Here are the rules. If you follow them, things will

turn out peachy. Guaranteed.

But that’s not how the Bible works. There are parts in the Bible that seem to work

that way, which we’ll get to, but on the whole, the Bible doesn’t. As I study the Bible I

can’t help but come to the uncomfortable conclusion that God is not in the answer

business to provide clarity and rid our lives of ambiguity and chaos. Rather, God is in

the Wisdom business to equip us to work things out.

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 The passage that really drove this home to me with (appreciate the irony) crystal

clarity is Proverbs 26:4-5:

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.

The purpose of the book of Proverbs is to train its readers to gain Wisdom, a

point announced in the very opening verses of the book (chapter 1, verses 2-6). And

yet, in a book supposedly designed to yield Wisdom, we see two passages side-by-side

that so blatantly contradict each other it’s impossible to miss, and—like your date’s zit—

impossible to ignore once we notice it.

How can two contradictory statements be “wise?” They provide no useful

information, offer no clarity about what to do, in the event that an actual fool crosses our

path. Should I correct him or keep my mouth shut? “Definitely do NOT answer this

fool . . . Oh wait . . . . Yes . . . Go ahead . . . Definitely do” is not answer.

What ups the ante is that a fool in the book of Proverbs isn’t a silly, comical

person, but a catch-all term for those who, among other things, hate knowledge, lead

others down the path to destruction, lack discernment, are complacent, stubborn,

ignorant, prideful, greedy, and slanderers. Today we call these people jerks. Perhaps

you can think of a more colorful term. But biblically speaking, a fool is roughly

synonymous with “ungodly" or “unrighteous”—someone out of harmony with God and

others, out of sync with God’s ways. But as someone trying to live a life that pleases

God, I’d really like to know what to do with fool the next time one crosses my path.

So, I repeat, how can these two incompatible statements make anybody “wise?”

Glad you asked. 


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God Isn’t a Helicopter Parent

Helicopter parents annoy me. They really do—running interference with coaches

and teachers so Cody and Ashton can make varsity and get into Harvard, or at least

Yale. So annoying. Let the kids figure out life, mom and dad! You’re not really helping. I

could never be a helicopter parent. Mainly because I can’t afford it—that and my kids

threatened, at the first sign of my aging, to put me in an “elderly care facility” in the

North Pyongan Province. But I digress.

In my experience, “your average Christian” (hereafter YAC) sees God as a

helicopter parent with the Bible as the clear revelation of God’s will for us, here and

now. After all, the Bible is God’s word, and, if anything, we have every right to expect

the Bible to be clear, because the absolute last thing God would ever do is to confuse

us with Zen paradoxes when what God wants is our total and unquestioned obedience

to the script.

A common point of view—and one that my Enneagram Six-ness would find a lot

less stressful. But then you come across Proverbs 26:4-5 and you can’t help but think

that maybe things are not as tidy and ordered as we might like. God is not about

handing us answers. God doesn’t hover over us like an anxious first-time parent ready

to “fix” our lives (as I like to do with my family, but that’s a topic for another book, or at

least rather long family systems therapy session).

So here’s my point. These two verses in Proverbs aren’t an isolated paradox in

the Bible, a momentary oddity, a single dark mole on the otherwise porcelain skin of an

owner’s manual Bible. These two proverbs are a handy, and somewhat in-your-face,

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summary of how the Bible as a whole works when it comes to decision-making about

“what to do.”

The Bible is about Wisdom. That is its the true subject matter.

Being wise isn’t something that happens when we read Bible verses and do what

they say, no matter how clear they seem to be or how soothing some of us would find

that way of living. The Bible simply doesn’t meet this self-centered expectation. Instead

the Bible models something far more valuable, useful, and (as we’ll see below) godly:

the importance of learning to read not just a book but a situation and making informed

decisions about what to do or not do with no guarantee things will turn out perfectly.

That is what Wisdom is about.

So in the case of Proverbs 26:4-5, even though a fool is a fool is a fool, what you

do with a fool depends on the situation. Neither proverbs is intended to provide a clear

direction forward. Both are valid options. Both are wise. Sometimes you speak up,

sometimes you don’t. Which option this situation calls for is a Wisdom decision,

something that must be discerned from taking in a digesting on the fly a myriad of

factors, none of which can be scripted for us. No rule, even one in the Bible, can cover

ever scenario of life.2 Life’s challenges are unique to us all, come non-stop, often in

waves, without warning, and without a troubleshooting guide.

The Bible isn’t God’s troubleshooting guide for life. Rather, as we read so

succinctly in Proverbs 26:4-5, the Bible challenges us to seek Wisdom with all we can

2I once read something by a well-intended but ultimately totally misguided Christian leader who offered
several Bible verses to show (I’m not kidding) that it is wrong for Christians to go to the circus. (Are
circuses even a thing anymore?) The idea of expecting the Bible to cover circuses many sound a bit loony
(because it is), but regarding the Bible as a verse quarry is an expectation that runs wild and free in YAC
culture

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so that we learn to read the moment for ourselves and make wise choices, not relegate

that responsibility to “Bible verses.” Don’t misunderstand, I love the Bible. But Wisdom

is not gained by using Bible verses as ready answers locked and loaded in our holster.

Rather, Wisdom comes by raw human experience and by being mentored by those who

have gained Wisdom though their own experience, like (ideally) parents 3 and

community elders. (A fool—to return to the passage that got us started—is someone

who does not learn fro the community and stubbornly makes the same mistakes again

and again, with contempt for any correction.) We draw on our experience and those of

wise people in order to live “well,” which biblically speaking amounts to living in justice,

peace, and harmony with God and each other.

But what to do in a given situation is rarely made clear. The life of faith, to borrow

familiar metaphor, really is more like jazz than sticking to notes on the page. Most of life

is winging it, and Wisdom, the kind the Bible talks about, is about learning how to wing it

well.

3A refrain in the book of Proverbs is “listen my son” or “child.” The parent/child idea is probably to be
understood both literally and metaphorically (any elder).

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