“The Art of Steering”

(Proverbs 4:10-27 and Proverbs 26:4-5)

The book of Proverbs is, among other things, a book about choices.  Wise teachers offer their students advice on literally hundreds of different topics, but most of them are ultimately about choosing righteousness over wickedness, choosing shrewdness over stupidity, choosing wisdom over folly.

And often these choices are presented as different ways or paths. Was it Yogi Berra who said, “when you come to a fork in the road, take it”?  In Proverbs, the road of life is full of forks, and wisdom is about knowing which fork to take in each situation.  So we find in the vocabulary of Proverbs words having to do with guidance, navigation, steering as well as words for paths and roads and so on.  Listen again for those kinds of words in today’s Scripture lesson, this time from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of Proverbs 4:

Dear friend, take my advice; it will add years to your life.

I’m writing out clear directions to Wisdom Way, I’m drawing a map to Righteous Road.  I don’t want you ending up in blind alleys, or wasting time making wrong turns. . . Don’t take Wicked Bypass;  don’t so much as set foot on that road.  Stay clear of it; give it a wide berth.  Make a detour and be on your way. . .

The ways of right-living people glow with light; the longer they live, the brighter they shine.  But the road of wrongdoing gets darker and darker—travelers can’t see a thing; they fall flat on their faces…

Keep your eyes straight ahead; ignore all sideshow distractions.  Watch your step, and the road will stretch out smooth before you.  Look neither right nor left; leave evil in the dust. (Prov 4:10ff)

Throughout the book, wise teachers, or sages, describe for their students what the different paths look like and where they’re headed, drawing on their own life experiences to point out where the booby traps and promises are. Which paths lead to success, and which to failure.  Which paths lead to happiness, and which to misery.  In each case, both ways are presented as real options, but there’s clearly a smart and a not-so-smart way to go.  Be smart, urges Proverbs.  Think through the consequences of your decision before you take any old fork in the road that comes along.

So much is felt to be at stake that the sages employ every teaching method at their disposal to drive their point home.  So to the fork-in-the-road metaphor is added the choice between bright light and deep darkness (4:18-19), the choice between laying hold of a great treasure and coming up empty –handed (3:14-15), the choice between a fountain of life and the snares of death (14:27) and so on.

And in case this whole host of analogies still doesn’t pack enough punch, stories are told in Proverbs too, more detailed illustrations of the consequences of following particular paths.  One that crops up a number of times is the story of the young man who wanders off to his ruin after an evil seductresses.  Not on the whole my favorite metaphor in the book, but the teaching strategy reminds me of the difference between quoting the law “thou shalt not commit adultery” and showing the movie “Fatal Attraction.”  Or between the counsel to “just say no” and the famous egg-in-the-frying pan commercial from years back: “this is your brain on drugs.”  Powerful visual imagery, consequences clearly illustrated.  Again, Proverbs urges us to choose the way of wisdom not simply because we’re told to do so, but because it’s the smarter way to go.  It’s worth considering how we might employ similar strategies in teaching kids we know how to avoid the pitfalls and dangers of life.  Forks appear earlier and earlier along the road these days.

          Granted, Proverbial wisdom implies that good choices are always rewarded and bad consequences always follow bad decisions.  It simply ain’t so, of course.  And in my more cynical moments, I’ve been rather fond of that line about no good deed ever going unpunished.  If you’ve ever entertained similar thoughts, you’ll definitely want to stay tuned when we turn to the books of Job and Ecclesiastes later this summer.  You may find a soul mate or two.

But for all my inclination to temper the simplicity of its system, I still find much more in Proverbs than a sort of quaint old-fashioned book about life being perfect for those who walk the straight and narrow.  There’s a realism here too.  No, good choices aren’t always rewarded in the ways we expect.  But there clearly are good and bad choices in life, and I expect we’ve all made some of each.  Life is all about making choices.  Some of them trivial – what to have for dinner, what color to paint the living room.  Others with more lasting consequences—like which career to pursue, or who or when or whether to marry. We make choices every day of our lives – what we purchase, where we live, how we vote.  And in some cases, we sense we are making a really significant choice. So we ask ourselves, our friends, wise mentors, if we have them: which path is likely to end in success, and which in failure?  Which road could lead to happiness, and which to misery?   Which path will be life-giving, and which one life-draining?  Which choice is the smart choice?  Which way is the way of wisdom?

          With this question in mind, let’s turn to our second Scripture lesson for the day, Proverbs 26:4-5.  This will be familiar to some of you, as we read this passage together here years ago.  But I’ll need you to turn in your pew Bibles to p. 608 in the Old Testament so you can help me out here:

[One side of the sanctuary read aloud verse 4: “Do not answer fools according to their folly, or you will be a fool yourself.” 

Other side read the very next verse, verse 5: “Answer fools according to their folly, or they will be wise in their own eyes.”]

OK, now which side of the sanctuary has it right?  (You can go back and peek if it flew by you a little too fast.) Are we supposed to answer fools according to their folly or not?  Do we or don’t we?  Yes.  Both.  Wisdom is about knowing when to apply which piece of advice.  The art of steering along life’s path involves not only choosing between right and wrong, but between right and right.  Because it depends, doesn’t it?  Depends on the person hearing the advice.  Depends on the fool.  Depends on the timing.  Depends on who else is standing around.  The wise person will steer her way down the right path at the right time. 

One of the more intriguing qualities of the book of Proverbs is the way it sets contradictory sayings side by side like this – to make that very point, that different pieces of advice apply at different times.  It reminds me of that Old Testament prophet who urgently advised his listeners not to “remember the former things or consider the things of old, [for God] is about to do a new thing.” (Isa 43:18-19)   Three chapters later we find the same prophet urging his listeners with equal passion to “remember the former things of old.” (Isa 46:8-9)  So which is it, Isaiah?  Remember or forget?  Yes.  Both.  It depends.

And biblical sayings aren’t unique in this, of course.  Cultures around the world have their equivalent bits of contradictory advice.  Try to remember some of the old sayings you grew up with – did any of them conflict?  “A stitch in time saves nine,” but “haste makes waste.” . . . “Look before you leap,” but “he who hesitates is lost.” . . . “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence,” and yet “east or west, home is best.” “So which is it?  Both.  It depends on the situation. 

Each piece of advice is helpful, each is worth adding to our pool of words to live by.  But none of them are universally useful or their opposites wouldn’t be just as popular.  Wisdom is about steering our way along life’s road, choosing not only between right and wrong but sometimes between right and right.  Sometimes the road forks, and the way of folly is dark and creepy and overgrown and the way of wisdom is clearly marked with brightly colored signs and a yellow brick road.  Those are the clearer choices between right and wrong, between wisdom and stupidity.  But sometimes the road forks and each path could be a way of wisdom – it all depends on who’s walking the path, and when, which way they should go. The right path for me to take might not be the right path for you to take.  The right path for me to take today might not be the right path for me to take a year from now, or next Tuesday.  Wisdom as the art of steering involves all kinds of choices.

          Bits of biblical truth are sometimes dispensed like fortune cookie sayings – just crack one open and it’ll automatically apply.  But life is much too varied, and the Scriptures are too varied too, for that approach to work very well. Certainly some things are true always and everywhere.  The wisdom tradition itself is quite clear, for instance, that wisdom is always better than folly, and righteousness is always better than wickedness, and we are always, always to remember our place before God. But some pieces of wisdom simply don’t apply in every situation.  So we need to apply discernment, insight, shrewdness to the task of determining which good word to apply when.

          It can be a little daunting to be faced with choices at every turn, not always knowing how things will turn out in the end. In the movies, people sometimes get a chance to sneak a peek at the road-not-taken.  In “Me, Myself, I” for instance, a single 30-something businesswoman runs into a parallel version of herself, the version that said yes to that marriage proposal 13 years ago, and gets a chance to see what her life would have been like if she had chosen to get married and start a family at that time.  At the same time, the married-with-three-kids version of herself also gets a chance to see what the single life would have been like.  The movie “Family Man,” starring Nicholas Cage, told essentially the same story from a male perspective.  In the real world, of course, we don’t get those opportunities.  We can only do our best to imagine where each road will take us, when we’re faced with a decision, then we have to dive right in and make our choice.

          And let’s face it, if wisdom is the art of steering, there are times we’d just as soon keep the car in park.   But what keeps us from becoming paralyzed by the complexity of it all is the assurance that we have more than a collection of useful words of wisdom, we have more than a guidebook full of directions – we have the promise of a Companion.  A Guide to help us along the way.  And if we should happen to make a few wrong turns somewhere down the road, our divine Guide can help us make the necessary mid-course corrections.  Ken tells the story of visiting a city in Morocco that was literally a maze of streets and allies, each one looking alike, as far as he could tell, without a street name or number in sight.  Had he tried to make his way through town on his own, he would have gotten completely lost within minutes.  But with a guide to help him, he was able to explore the city, and make it safely to his destination.

          So go for it!  “Sin boldly,” in that bit of Martin Luther’s advice that people love to quote. Go ahead and make those choices.  Don’t let fear of failure paralyze you.  But remember the other half of Luther’s advice too: “Sin boldly, but trust God more boldly still.”  The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.  As we read elsewhere in Proverbs, if we trust in the Lord with all our hearts, God will be there to direct our paths. (Prov 3:5-6).  Life is complex, and there are all kinds of choices to be made.  But we can step out in confidence and hope knowing that we never face life’s decisions alone.  Thanks be to God.