Be wise as serpents and as harmless as doves
With the recent media hubbub surrounding Christian beliefs, I thought it would be a good idea to reflect on the words of Matthew 10:16:
I am sending you out as sheep among wolves; be wise as serpents and as harmless as doves. But beware of men…
The three most recent stories are:
Prayer doesn’t help (see my previous post: The Statistical Validity of Prayer)
Look, Jesus walked on ice, not water (see: Scientists offer cold-snap theory for walking on water)
The —Gospel of Judas— (see: Acadia prof in on open secret. Gospel of Judas has axe to grind and it grinds it, says Evans)
As people of faith we will be constantly challenged by naysayers and unbelievers. So we must be wise.
Wisdom does not come from offering ‘scientific’ or even factual refutation of the claims made by unbelievers. They won’t believe us anyway. We must have the wisdom that is the gift of God, wisdom to see with the eyes of faith. We must also have the weakness to acknowledge that:
If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
If unbelievers wish, they could just call us stupid (see George Carlin’s jokes about God). But calling us stupid would make them seem rude. They need to point the finger and ‘prove’ that faith is silly.
By doing so they prove to themselves that their unbelief is well founded, they turn those whose roots are planted in rocky soil to their unbelief, and they damage the young who are being introduced to the faith thus supporting their unbelief.
We live among the wolves of the world as sheep. We are commanded to be harmless because the world can only scoff at the harmless. At the same time we must be wise and abide in the Lord’s presence as His witnesses. We must be wise enough to teach the neo-catechumens that what the world offers is not the truth; that the truth lives in the Church. That Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.