Proverbial Complexity and Political Captivity
What the Sages Say and Why We Struggle to Know What to Do With It
Every teacher keeps a few tricks up their sleeve, a couple surefire techniques for getting students to sit up and ask better questions. Here’s a classic from Proverbs
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. (Proverbs 26:4-5)
I love putting this contradictory Proverb pair to students because even the most literal-minded interpreter can’t apply both verses at the same time. That impossibility invites us to wrestle with what proverbial wisdom offers us: not iron-clad laws to be implemented in every time and place, but situational guidance to be lived in certain times and places. Wisdom requires drawing on the right scriptural teaching at the appropriate time. When we get it right, it’s beautiful; a “word spoken at the right time” is like a golden apple set in silver (Proverbs 25:11). Unfortunately, however, a proverb foolishly applied is as dangerous as a “thornbush brandished by the hand of a drunkard” (Proverbs 26:9; think about that image for a moment… who said Scripture isn’t funny?)
Intriguingly, political discernment in Proverbs is just as complicated as trying to decide whether or not to answer a fool according to their folly. For instance, a number of Proverbs describe the political ideal:
Inspired decisions are on the lips of a king.
His mouth does not sin in delivering just judgment.
. . .
Doing evil is an abomination to kings,
because the throne is established in righteousness.
Righteous lips are the delight of kings,
he loves words of integrity. (16:10-13)
Such sayings emphasize how political power ought to work. But the sages knew even better than we do that this isn’t always how things go, so another set of proverbs raises the challenge that sometimes political authorities are awful.
Like a roaring lion or a charging bear
is a wicked ruler over a poor people.
A ruler who lacks understanding is a cruel oppressor;
but one who hates unjust gain will enjoy a long life. (28:15-16)
Matters, however, are even more complicated.
Because our political world is complex, deciding what to do politically is complicated as well. Sometimes the sages call us to confront political evil boldly and directly. King Lemuel’s mamma shouts at him about doing justice for the poor in 31:1-9. A few weeks back we heard Proverbs shouting to us about “rescuing” those being “taken away to death” (Proverbs 24:11-12)
Other times, though, the sages advise a different approach:
By patience a ruler will be enticed
and a tender tongue will break a bone. (25:151)
That could sound like a call for quiet obedience. But the sages’ goal here is to entice a ruler, even to (metaphorically) smash their bones! However, they suggest sometimes we have to go about this bone-smashing quietly, cleverly, even politely. Apparently loud confrontation isn’t the only way to launch an assault on problematic politics.
Proverbs, in other words, doesn’t give us a political law or blueprint. It gives us a series of “snapshots” that capture what faithful political discipleship looks like in specific times and places. When we try to discern what’s going on in our specific time and place and what God might be calling us to do about it, we have to decide which of the snapshots speak most appropriately to our particular moment. Are we in more of a “inspired decisions are on the lips” of our leaders moment? Or more of a “growling bear, roaring lion” moment? And, if confrontation is required, should we prophetically shout like Lemuel’s mother? Or shatter problematic politics by working the system and confronting the problems politely?
I’ve spent the last two years working on a book about politics in the Bible with Baker, due out next year. I look forward to sharing more about that project in future posts. But for now, let me just say this: the rest of Scripture reflects the kind of political complexity we find in Proverbs. If we’re looking for blueprints or out-of-context scriptural one-liners to make our political discipleship simple, we’re barking up the wrong tree.
But this is a feature of the Bible’s political discipleship, not a bug. A politically complex Bible can help us make sense of a complex political world. Unfortunately, Christians often seem to resist or ignore the diversity and complexity of what Scripture says about faithful political discipleship. One important step, then, and the step that my book focuses on, is for Christians to encounter Scripture’s dizzying, diverse, complicated, and creative depiction of political discipleship afresh. After all, this dizzying, diverse, complicated, creative text is one of the gifts the Spirit has given to help us follow Jesus in our public and political lives. It’s time to stop ignoring most of what it says.
It’s going to be an uphill battle, though. Even once we study what Scripture says about political discipleship more fully, we still have to practice political wisdom in discerning how to respond to God’s Word in our own context. Unfortunately, American Christians like me are caught up in some specific, deforming forces that make political discernment particularly difficult.
Facing Up to a Contemporary Challenge
Earlier this year, I worked through several important books on Christian political discipleship, including
’s The Spirit of Our Politics, ’s Faithful Politics: Ten Approaches to Christian Citizenship and Why It Matters, and Nancy French and Curtis Chang’s The After Party: Toward Better Christian Politics.
All drew on political science research to make terrifyingly clear what we already dimly suspect: we are becoming increasingly, and problematically, hyper-partisan. Here are some stats and takeaways:
“Millions of Americans are now less likely to live near people they disagree with than at any other time in recent memory or since researchers have been tracking this statistic.”2
More than 20 million Americans across both parties “believe America would be better off if large numbers of their opposition died,” while “42% of Americans view people in the opposing political party as ‘downright evil.’”3
Research suggests hatred for our political enemies has recently become more powerful than affection for our political friends4
One study suggested only 3.5% of Americans from either party “would cast ballots against their preferred candidates in response to [their] undemocratic behavior.”5
Living in our hyper-partisan culture warps the way we see the world. For instance:
When shown an identical video clip of protestors clashing with police, “liberals rated the protestors as more violent when they believed it was an anti-abortion protest” than they did when they believed it was a “gay-rights protest.” “Conservatives exhibited the opposite pattern.”6
Research suggests we often “uncritically align with our party on issues that are not our top priorities.” Having picked a party based on an issue we care deeply about, our affiliation with that party then “shapes our policy positions” in relation to all sorts of other issues.7
Another study explored the way people evaluated specific policy proposals. When participants were given a proposal without information about which party supported that policy, they evaluated the policy based on the information provided and their stated political philosophy.
But when told which party supported the proposal, researchers found that party affiliation trumped everything. They could get Republicans to support larger safety nets and Democrats to support smaller ones simply by identifying the proposal with their party. People thought they were wisely engaging a political proposal; in fact they were simply aligning themselves with their partisan identity, even though they always provided allegedly non-partisan reasons for their position.8
One more terrifying bit of evidence. That last study also asked participants to explain what motivated their reasoning. While they were quite adept at identifying the forces of partisan bias in others, they were remarkably unable to identify it in themselves.
In other words, everybody knows political bias is a problem… most of us just think it’s someone else’s problem.
I feel seen by that last point, and in all the worst ways. I believe MAGA folks’ political alignment warps what they see in the world. I came of political age during the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, so I’ve watched prominent Christian conservatives argue character was just about all that mattered when Clinton was sexually immoral, only to argue that Trump’s sexually immoral character was irrelevant. When I see Christians suddenly decide USAID is a “criminal organization” based on Trump’s billionaire bestie Elon Musk, and I know that USAID has been a major funder behind many Christian charitable organizations providing life-saving care to some of the world’s poorest, I can’t help but sense partisan bias in a big way. When people who claim to “back the blue” are suddenly supportive of Trump pardoning January 6 folks who violently attacked police offers, I feel that Trumpist allegiance is in play.
But it is both harder and more painful to acknowledge that I am also caught up in these deforming partisan forces.
Making It Personal
I’ve been thinking a lot about how our hyper-partisan culture has affected me, despite the fact that I consider myself an independent, and have voted Republican, Democrat, and third-party over the years. I’m sure there are many ways this is happening that I cannot see, but here’re two examples that I’m growing more aware of.
First, despite efforts to read widely, I still get caught in echo chambers and algorithms that make it easier to see some political realities and harder to see others.
Last year, Uri Berliner reflected on his 25 years at NPR. He argued that, over time, what started as “tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.” Berliner argued that this problematically put NPR on a path towards becoming “an openly polemical news outlet serving” a partisan niche.
He argues that this “openly polemical” posture led NPR to mis-report several major stories. Berliner suggests NPR overplayed allegations that Trump colluded with Russia during the election, downplayed or ignored evidence that Hunter Biden was caught up in “influence peddling,” and treated the question of whether COVID-19 might have come from a lab leak as a conspiracy. Moreover, in each case, when evidence suggested NPR had been wrong, or at least over confident, they failed to own up to their mistakes. On one occasion, Berliner says he listened to a journalist he deeply admired say it was good they were not following up on one story because doing so “could help Trump.”
Berliner’s not necessarily arguing for a particular conclusion to any of these three debates. What he’s arguing is that there were real important questions in relation to each one, and that NPR’s handling of them suggested that there was nothing to debate.
What I can confirm confidently is that when I read Berliner’s article, I realized my political vision had been overly shaped by NPR’s perspective. I tended to be overconfident that Trump colluded with Russia, and wrote the Hunter Biden and lab leak discussions off as conspiracies. I don’t have strong, confident opinions on any of these three discussions today. What I’m confident about is that hyper partisan politics made my political discernment more difficult.
Second, and more personally, I’ve been thinking recently about my own political engagement around an issue I care about, namely the issue of abortion. I am, and have always been, pro-life. As somebody who tries to be holistically pro-life, I support far more than legislation that limits abortion, but I am in favor of such legislation.
When I look at how that commitment has impacted my actions over my adult life, though, I must confess I find myself relatively unimpressed. I have not “lived into” that commitment as much as I could have. Or to put it another way, I’m not proud of the way I have lived my Christian convictions about abortion.
Of course, I can offer what I believe to be a compelling argument against one-issue voting. I’ve occasionally posted on social media about pro-life causes, and even occasionally tried to support and celebrate adoptive and foster families that I think are a crucial part of the pro-life movement.
But I haven’t posted on social media about abortion nearly as much as I have about other issues, I haven’t talked publicly as much about this commitment, and I don’t recall reaching out to elected officials to protest their support of pro-abortion legislation. Maybe most damningly (because least partisan), I don’t recall ever giving to the many Christian organizations that, for instance, care for teen moms and others dealing with unexpected pregnancies.
I’m tempted to defend myself. Instead, I think it’s worth reflecting on the fact that, while I do not regret my votes, I do regret the way not wanting to be seen as a MAGA-aligned person has led me to do less than I might otherwise have done in relation to struggling mothers and the unborn, even in something as personal as charitable giving.
After all, right now, at this very moment, I’m tempted to delete everything I’ve said. I don’t want Trump-supporting readers to use this for their own pro-Trump purposes. On the other hand, I worry that raising these issues might make people less committed to challenging Trump’s problematic politics, something that I’m likewise deeply committed to.
But then again… that’s the problem, isn’t it? We let our partisan leanings lead in ways that corrupt our ability to see and act wisely in our politics. We subconsciously submit ourselves to political allegiance tests. Like the NPR correspondent Berliner mentioned, we internally process political action through the grid of “how might this affect my preferred political team?”
By this point, I’ve probably given every single reader reason to be upset. That’s fine. My point isn’t to convince anybody of the particulars. Nor is it to try to embrace a kind of naive, “both sides-ism.” False equivalencies are deeply problematic, and I’m on record that I think Trump poses an outsized, unique threat to democracy. I hope Christians will actively organize and oppose many aspects of his program. I’m furious at the way many among God’s people are currently talking about immigrants and refugees under the influence of Trump’s Pharaoh-esque Make America Afraid campaign.
But reflecting on Proverbs, hyper-partisanship, and my own life nevertheless leaves me feeling confronted with the log that is in my own eye. After all, if we don’t address what’s in our own eyes, we not only can’t see, we can’t help others, either. Cruz argues that all Christians are in danger of losing our saltiness by becoming “bland partisans.” All of us. And that includes you and me.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Scripture as a whole, and Proverbs specifically, offers us a variety of “snapshots” of political discipleship. Wisdom requires that we both study these snapshots, and then wisely discern how they should shape the way we see and act in the world. This process is made complicated by all sorts of factors, not least our hyper-partisan political culture.
However, I think Proverbs also offers resources for helping us think about how to become wise, to become the kind of disciples that can better discern true wisdom from deceptive folly, and not least in our political lives. But that’s the subject of next week’s post. Hope to see you then.
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Extras:
Last week, The Tennessean published an op-ed from me reflecting on the President’s claim “he who saves his country does not violate any law” in light of the Bible’s strong emphasis on leaders being under the law (an unprecedented claim in the ancient Near East). Check it out if you’re interested.
Raymond Chang’s piece in Christianity Today “We Should Not Be Silent This Time” reflects on the government’s current approach to immigrants in dialogue with America’s horrific treatment of 120,000 Japanese people living in America in the middle of WWII. It is very much worth your time.
This is Arthur Keefer’s translation.
The After Party, 11.
The After Party, 115.
Spirit of Our Politics, 7.
Spirit of Our Politics, 7.
Cruz, Faithful Politics, kindle ed. loc 1179.
Geoffrey L. Cohen, “Party Over Policy: The Dominating Impact of Group Political Beliefs,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85.5 (2003), 819.