Each and every day you and I interact with people who exude wisdom and foolishness, which includes you and me. With that dissonance (not living out what we confess to believe) we are reminded of our daily need of Jesus’ rescuing and empowering grace seen in the Spirit to help us not gratify the works of the flesh (see Galatians 5:16-18). An interesting set of verses in Proverbs caught my attention this morning. They are Proverbs 26:4 which reads, “Answer not a fool according to their folly lest you become like him yourself” and Proverbs 26:5 which reads, “Answer a fool according to their folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.”

Question: Which one is it? Do you answer OR not answer?

Answer: The proverb is true. There are times you respond to foolish people and other times you do not. Part of answering this question is understanding the nature of a proverb, to which I’ll do another time. For now, the answer depends on the nature of the fool that you’re interacting with. Tremper Longman in his Baker Commentary on Proverbs writes, “In other words, the wise person must assess whether this is a fool who will simply drain one’s energy with no positive results or whether an answer will prove fruitful to the fool or perhaps to those who overhear. The wise not only know the proverb but also can read the circumstances and the people with whom they dialogue” (464). These verses speak to the way of wisdom: there are instances when wisdom will lead us to disengage with people as there does not seem to be a receptivity to common sense or wisdom and there are other instances when wisdom will lead us to engage.

For your day-to-day interactions with people, this proverb implicitly teaches us that we need to cry out to the Spirit to lead us to be wise individuals so we’ll know when to answer and when not to.