DON’T BE AN ASS!

A message from the Book of Proverbs.

Bible Readings: James 3:1-18; Proverbs 18:4-13

Text: Proverbs 18:13 If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame. [ESV]

God has given us a book full of practical guides to successful living. That book is the book of Proverbs.

It is full of very simple principles yet isn’t it true that the simplest things in life are so often the things that we overlook. We think that if we want to get on in life, if we want to succeed in life then we have to find some complicated ‘key’ to success, some mysterious process. This is not true.

Today we come to another principle that teaches us how to get on in life and it is also very simple. I would say of this principle that if a person does not grasp it and take it to heart and live by it then they can never reach a position of leadership and effective influence amongst people. The person who never learns this principle may be a lovely Christian, he or she may be kind and loving but can never rise to any great level of leadership and influence.

This principle comes to us in Proverbs 18:13 which says: If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.

We don’t have to spend too much time on this matter because the proverb is quite straightforward.

The principle is that the person who believes he or she understands a problem or matter perfectly without examining it thoroughly will bring shame and folly upon himself or herself.  The person who starts to listen to someone and the person has no sooner uttered one or two sentences and he has heard enough. He knows it all and jumps in with his judgement and his solution – that person will find himself shamed and embarrassed.

In other words, this proverb is warning us urgently about the folly of assumption. I know it is true to say that this is a folly of which we are all guilty. Some of us to a very small degree and some of us make a constant habit of it. But we are all guilty to some degree and to that degree we damage our Christian profession and bring shame and embarrassment upon ourselves.

We hear just the smallest amount about the problem or the issue and we assume we know the whole problem; we know all the issue; we know everything that is at stake; we know everything about a person’s personality and you then can give a definitive response and solution. This is assumption and the proverb is saying it will cause folly and shame.

I saw a sticker not so long ago and it said this.

That might be putting it very simply, but it is true enough.

Assumption can occur in situations that are not hugely important.

For example, you come home and walk in to the house and notice a vase of flowers spilled over the table. Because you have had a hot, unpleasant day and you are not feeling too happy to start with, you demand of the children, ‘Which one of you kids knocked over the vase of flowers? If the guilty one doesn’t own up then the whole lot of you will be punished.’ Then a few moments later you realise there is a breeze blowing the curtain and every now and then it sweeps across the table and this without a doubt is what knocked the vase over. How do you feel now? All because you assumed you knew the whole story.

Such an incident may not be so very serious. But other situations may be much more serious.

I read the story not so long ago of a man who had boarded a train in one of the large cities of America fairly early in the morning. There were not too many people on the train. At one stop a man got on with four or five children. The children very quickly started running up and down the aisles and making a lot of noise. It was disturbing the other train travellers and several of them were scowling at the father of the children who was just sitting there silently doing nothing about the unruly children. The man who was telling the story reached the point where he could tolerate the noise and mayhem no longer and he leant over to the father and said to him ‘Sir, your children are disturbing everybody in the carriage. Don’t you think you should do something to control them?’ The father looked up as if he had not noticed anything wrong before and said: ‘Yes, I suppose I should. We have just come from the hospital. Their mother died just an hour ago and I suppose they just don’t know what to do.’ The man who tells the story says that in that instant he realised that all his assumptions about the man and the children were totally wrong. Now that he was no longer assuming his whole assessment of the situation altered. *

Indeed, it would. Can you imagine how awful he would have felt if he had soundly abused the father for allowing his children to run riot and only then found out the truth of the matter!

In this instance assumption may very well have led to action that would have brought folly and shame upon him and hurt and upset to the man and the children.

I think that the Lindy Chamberlain case is an example of assumption with tragic consequences. People assumed that a dingo would never touch a human baby. People assumed that forensic tests were infallible. People assumed that Seventh Day Adventists were rather weird and could be expected to do strange things. Time has shown that the assumptions were wrong with consequences that have scarred some people for life. **

Now, then, we have established the meaning of the proverb clearly enough.

Some might object and say What is the big deal? Everybody assumes some things about other people. If we had to stop and make sure of the facts before we came judgements about people then it would make everything tedious and anyway it would take the fun out of life. What is more fun than jumping to conclusions and tearing someone’s character apart. What sport!

It might indeed be sport to some people. But it can have tragic consequences and it ought not to be sport to the Christian. The big deal is that the God who created us is a God of truthful communication. God has always been in the business of communicating the truth with clarity. It has never been his way to be vague but to be clear and lucid. God in his very nature is truth. Jesus said I am the way the truth and the life. Since Jesus said I am the truth then his followers should be lovers of the truth. By this they show their love for him.

In the holy Ten Commandments we are also confronted with God’s love of truth and his hatred of anything that simply assumes to be the truth.

The commandment says You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. What does this mean? Yes, it means a number of things, but it certainly means that the name of God is never honoured by untruth and assumptions but by truth.

The commandment says You shall not bear false witness. In other words, truthfulness, not assumption, must be a constant issue with the believer.

Assumption undermines the truth. Whether it is formed from wilfulness or from carelessness doesn’t matter. Assumption undermines and devalues truth.

Truthfulness, asserting the truth and living by the truth is an essential mark of the Christian.

How do we need to live in order to live by the principle that this Proverb teaches?

I think there are three matters that we need to keep before us all the time.

I know perfectly well that sometimes it does take a lot of patience to do this. The person talking may not be able to express themselves quickly or to make themselves clear. The temptation is always there to jump in once you think you have heard enough and make your judgement. Be as patient as you can be and more because by jumping in you may make a radically wrong judgement and cause hurt to the person and bring folly and shame upon yourself.

Sometimes people won’t tell us everything about the issue. They need to know we care about the truth. They won’t tell us everything until we treat them with sufficient dignity to ask questions and show interest. Some people have been deeply hurt. Perhaps they have shared problems with people in the past and those people have heard only half the story and jumped in with their ill-formed judgments. We do people a great injustice and hurt if we make hasty judgments. It conveys to the person that we really don’t care enough about him or her to bother gathering the truth.

Especially, if you suspect that the person is hard of hearing then you must ask questions.

‘You must be sure that what you think the person said is what he meant to say and you must be sure that what the person think he heard you say is indeed what you said.’

If you understand all that then you’re pretty clever and you don’t need to listen to this message! What I mean is this. If a person you are talking to is hard of hearing, then he or she may speak very softly. Ask questions. Make sure you understood him or her correctly. And if you are explaining something to a person you suspect is hard of hearing then again ask questions. Make sure that the person did understand you properly.

So the second point we need to keep in mind is to ask questions.

If you believe that you should suspend judgement then you will run the risk that some people may think you are indecisive or weak. Well, that’s too bad. We must be true to our God and to the principles of his holy word. And that word teaches us to be lovers of the truth. And if we feel that we simply do not know enough of the truth then far better for us to suspend judgment until we know more.

So this Proverb is teaching us a most important principle – a principle that shows that we value the honour of God and we want to be known as followers of the Son of God who said ‘I am the truth’. This is the principle that this proverb teaches: If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.

 Lindsey Timms

NOTES:

*Told by Stephen Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

**Lindy Chamberlain was convicted of the murder of her baby in 1982 and pardoned in 1987.

Pictures from pixabay.com

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