Discerning Truth: How to Answer a Fool

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An exposition of Proverbs 26, verses 4-5

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Hi folks, welcome to Discerning Truth, the podcast of the
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Biblical Science Institute. I'm Jason Lyle, and in this particular session we want to address the issue of how to answer a fool.
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And this is something that the Bible addresses, it gives us some divinely inspired advice on how to answer someone who is being foolish, someone for example who has rejected the
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Christian worldview. And the particular verses that we're going to look at are found in Proverbs 26, verses 4 and 5, and these verses tell us how to answer a fool, and how not to answer a fool.
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These two little verses, when applied correctly, have the potential to really boost your defense of the
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Christian faith. I try to live by these two verses, not just in terms of my defense of the faith, but certainly that's one of their primary applications.
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Somebody comes to you, they challenge the Christian worldview, how do you answer them? Now all Christians are supposed to be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks a reason of the hope that's in us, and to do so with gentleness and respect.
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Now when somebody comes up, not all people who ask you about Christianity are fools, but the ones who challenge
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Christianity, Biblically speaking, are. And when the Bible uses the term fool, it's not just engaging in name -calling, it's not just a pejorative, it's using that term to describe someone who is dense, someone who may have a very good brain, but who is not using it properly, and therefore his position is absurd.
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And so that's the way I'm using that term as well. A fool might be very intelligent, a fool might have a lot of education, and in a particular area he might be using his brain very well, but when it comes to issues of, for example, the
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Christian worldview, he's not using his brain properly, and the Bible uses the term fool to describe that.
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Now Proverbs chapter 26, verse 4 says, Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like him.
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So it's telling us we're not to answer a fool in a particular way. And then verse 5 says, Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.
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And so that's telling us how we should answer the fool. And it's interesting because verse 4 says,
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Don't answer a fool according to his folly, and then verse 5 says, Answer a fool according to his folly. And if you're wondering, is that phrase, according to his folly, is that the same phrasing in the
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Hebrew it is? And so it almost sounds like a contradiction at first, and that's one of the things that we're going to look at.
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It is always helpful when interpreting the scriptures to consider the context of the particular verses that you're going to exposit.
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First of all, the immediate context, then of course the larger context, and finally it's context in all of scripture.
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Now Proverbs chapter 26, that's in a collection of little bits of advice that God is giving us.
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That's what the book of Proverbs is. It's divinely inspired advice. Things that generally work most of the time.
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Here's how you want to live your life, if you want to live it in a way that's pleasing to God, but also in a way that's practical.
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This is very practical advice. Proverbs is written in a poetic style.
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It's easy to recognize Hebrew poetry because Hebrew poetry is always characterized by parallelism.
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And there are different types of parallelism. One of the most common is synonymous parallelism, where you say something and then you say kind of the same thing using different words.
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And I always like to use Psalm 19 verse 1, the heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
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And those are kind of saying the same thing, heavens and skies, those are synonyms, right? And so that's an example of synonymous parallelism.
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You also have antithetical parallelism, where you state something and then you give its flip side, its antithesis.
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And so, for example, at Proverbs 1 .7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
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And the Proverbs are full of synonymous and antithetical parallelism.
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And it's easy to recognize those two. A lot of times in English translations of the
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Bible, you'll have synonymous parallelism connected by and, this statement and that statement.
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And then antithetical parallelism will be connected with a but, this but, and then the flip side.
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And, by the way, those are the same word, and and but are the same word in Hebrew, interestingly. The Hebrews were very intelligent, they could figure it out from context, because they're a lot more intelligent than people today.
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I'm just saying, they knew what gender they were, right? So anyway, it doesn't have to be connected by a conjunction like that, but it often is.
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Now in Proverbs 26, verses 4 and 5, this would be an example, I believe, of antithetical parallelism, because you have, on the one hand, answer the fool, and on the other hand, don't answer the fool.
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And so, the key in interpreting any poetic passage in scripture is to interpret the two parts, sometimes it's more than two parts, it can be three or more, but to interpret them as a unit, okay?
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So they go together in some sense, and that's the way we need to interpret Proverbs 26.
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The don't answer a fool, and then the answer a fool go together. Now before I deal with what
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I believe is the correct interpretation of this passage, I do have to deal with a common misinterpretation.
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It is very common for Christians to interpret these two verses as a dilemma.
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And now this is, I believe, wrong, and I'm going to illustrate that, but I wanted to talk about this misinterpretation, because it comes up very often.
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You'll hear people say, well, no Lyle's interpretation of this is all wrong, these two verses are merely describing a conundrum, a dilemma.
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A dilemma is where you have a choice between two equally undesirable alternatives.
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So it's a di -lemma. A lemma would be, like, in a logical proof, one of the steps in the proof, dilemma, two lemmas, so you have two choices, and they're both bad.
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Now there's a common example of this, there's a lot of cliches that express dilemmas. One of the most common actually has a little bit of profanity in it, but I'm going to Christianize it and you'll get the idea.
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There's an expression that's similar to, you're darned if you do and you're darned if you don't. And what that expression means is that if you take an action, the result's going to be bad, and if you fail to take the action, the result's going to be bad.
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Now the nice thing about a dilemma is, it's not a contradiction. I mean, nobody would claim that, you know, you're darned if you do, you're darned if you don't, is a contradiction.
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It's just, either way, the outcome is bad. One cliche that some men use is, women, can't live with them, can't live without them.
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Now that's not a contradiction. The meaning behind that is, if you get married, you're going to have problems.
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If you remain single, you're going to have problems. Might be a different set of problems, but either way, it has its challenges.
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Now that's not a contradiction. That's life. Sometimes, no matter what you choose, there's going to be problems associated with it, and blessings as well, for that matter.
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So you can see why that is an attractive interpretation for many
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Christians, and I've seen articles, even articles on the all -infallible internet, defending that particular view.
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And you can see that, you know, that makes a certain amount of sense, because if you answer a fool according to his folly, then you become like him.
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That's not good. And on the other hand, if you fail to answer a fool according to his folly, then he walks away being wise in his own eyes.
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There's something to that, right? Somebody comes up to you and goes, nanny, nanny, nanny. Now if you answer him according to his folly, and you say, well, nanny, nanny, nanny, to you too, then you've become like him.
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You've become a fool. On the other hand, if he comes up and says, nanny, nanny, nanny, and you don't do anything, you don't answer him, then he walks away thinking, hey,
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I totally won that debate. They couldn't answer my powerful argument. And so he ends up being wise in his own eyes.
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There's something to that. There is a certain logic to that interpretation. Now under that interpretation, under the dilemma interpretation, what people would claim the
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Bible's saying here is that there's no good outcome when you come across a fool, okay? So you can't reason with him.
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Because if you answer him according to his folly, you become like him. If you don't answer him according to his folly, he walks away being wise in his own eyes.
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So why even attempt to reason with a fool? And that is kind of, it's really an anti -apologetic approach.
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Some people don't want to defend the Christian faith. And if they don't want to, they could use this verse, incorrectly
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I would argue, to say, hey, there's no good outcome when you deal with somebody who's challenging the Christian worldview, somebody who's a fool.
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And they use these verses to justify their inaction when it comes to defending the faith. But no, the
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Bible tells us we're to be ready to give an answer. Now I think there are situations where it's best not to do apologetics.
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There are certain situations where it would be casting pearls before swine. That's a biblical principle. But that's not what these verses are saying.
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There are three problems with this dilemma view. First of all, in order for it to make sense, the don't answer and answer would be reversed.
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If you think about it, right? Because Proverbs 26 verse 4 says, do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him.
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It doesn't say if you answer a fool according to his folly. If you answer, then you'll be like him.
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And then verse 5 doesn't say, if you, on the other hand, if you don't answer, then he'll be wise in his own eyes.
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It's flipped. The don't answer is in verse 4. The answer is in verse 5. That doesn't make sense in terms of expressing a dilemma.
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Furthermore, the structure really, and this is the second reason why, the second problem with the dilemma view, the structure would be if then rather than lest, right?
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So Proverbs 26 verse 4 doesn't say, if you answer a fool according to his folly, then you'll be like him.
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That's not even implied. It's do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like him.
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And we don't tend to use the word lest very often these days. It's a perfectly good word. It kind of means otherwise or else, right?
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So verse 4 is not expressing an if then. If this happens, then that happens.
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It's not just indicative. It's saying don't do this, and if you do, here's the consequence.
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That's what lest means, right? Whatever follows from lest is the consequence if you fail to heed the advice that came before the lest, okay?
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So if you fail to heed God's advice to not answer a fool according to his folly, then you'll be like him.
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On the other hand, if you fail to heed God's advice to answer a fool according to his folly, then he'll be wise in his own eyes.
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So it's not if then. It's do this, otherwise, here's what will happen.
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And finally, the Hebrew text here indicates that these are two commands.
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You see, those who take the dilemma view would say, no, the Bible's just saying here's the situation. If you do this, bad outcome.
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If you do that, bad outcome. But that's not what the Hebrew text indicates. The Hebrew text is saying don't do this, and if you fail to heed that command, here's the consequences.
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On the other hand, do this, and if you fail to heed that, here's the consequences. And we can go back and look at the
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Hebrew text. Let's start with verse five, actually. It's a little easier to interpret. Verse five, answer.
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Okay, and so you have in the Hebrew, anay kaseel ka 'ibol toh, anay kaseel ka 'ibol toh.
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So answer the fool according to his folly. And if you look at that word answer, anay, and we look it up in any kind of good
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Bible software, if you have something like Lagos or Accordance, I use Accordance, you will see that that verb is conjugated, what's called the kol imperative.
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Now kol is, that's just kind of the generic, that's the most used verb stem in Hebrew.
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So there's different forms. There's the kol, there's the nifal, and so on. So that's just, that's ordinary.
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Imperative would be the next descriptor on the list there. Now what's an imperative? An imperative is a command.
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So there's no doubt, God is telling you, you do this, you answer that fool according to his folly.
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It is a command, imperative. So there's no doubt about that. Verse five is not saying, you know, here's just, here's just the situation and no, it's you do this.
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Now, if we go to verse four, the interpretation is a little trickier because in verse four, we have al ta 'an kasil ka 'ivoto.
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And so al ta 'an, the al there is, that's the negation, don't, okay.
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And then ta 'an is, that's the answer. And if you look that up in Accordance or Logos or any kind of Bible software, it'll say kol, okay, that's the ordinary form, but then it'll say imperfect.
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And this one also has jussive, it'll say either imperfect or jussive or both. The imperfect form would often be used to indicate something that is happening or something that will happen.
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If I said, you're going to answer the phone tomorrow, in Hebrew, you would use the imperfect for that.
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Or if I was saying, you are answering the phone, that would be the imperfect tense.
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So it often indicates something that's happening, okay? And so you wouldn't think, well, that's not a command, right?
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On the other hand, jussive, jussive would be either a request or a mild command.
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You might think of putting a command, but putting please before it. Please don't answer, okay, in this case.
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Now, jussive and imperfect, the reason they're both listed there is because they have the same conjugation. In Hebrew, for most verbs, for most of the forms of the verb, not all, they're the same.
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So you can't tell just by looking at the verb. To on could be imperfect or jussive. So how do we deal with this?
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Why isn't it an imperative? I mean, if this is a command and God's saying, don't answer, why isn't it in the imperative?
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And the answer is, in Hebrew, you don't use the imperative for negative commands.
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You use the imperative to tell people to do something. You don't use it to tell people not to do something.
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So how do you tell people not to do something in Hebrew? Well, you do it like this.
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You have an al followed by the imperfect or jussive form of the verb.
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And that indicates that's a negative command in Hebrew.
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So there's no doubt that this is a command. That's how you do it in Hebrew. There's a couple different ways to do it, actually. You could do it with an al and then an imperfect or jussive.
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Or you could do it with a lo and then an imperfect. And that would be a more emphatic way of saying, you know, don't do this emphatically.
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In fact, if you take a look at the Ten Commandments, you will find that nine of them, when they're fleshed out in their fullness or of the form don't, don't murder, don't commit adultery and so on.
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And when you look at the Hebrew verb form, you'll find it's in the imperfect for nine out of the Ten Commandments.
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The only one that's in the imperative is the one that's positive, honor your father and mother. That one's positive.
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The rest are negative and therefore they use, in this case, a lo followed by the imperfect. So that's the more emphatic form.
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Now we can do that in English. We can use the equivalent of an imperfect tense to issue a command.
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We might say, no, no, you're not going to do that. You're not going to do that. Parents may be, their child says, oh, but I wanted to go to the party tonight.
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And the parents say, hey, you're grounded. You are not going to that party tonight. Now that's a statement about what is going to happen.
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So that would be, in Hebrew, that would be the imperfect. But it has the force of the command, doesn't it?
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It's effectively saying, you know, I'm commanding you not to go to that party tonight. So that's how that works.
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So there's no doubt from the Hebrew text that Proverbs 26, 4 and 5 is saying, on the one hand,
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God's commanding us, don't do this. On the other hand, do that.
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So these are two commands. And that brings us back to the issue of, is this a contradiction?
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You know, how can we answer the fool and yet not answer the fool?
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Is this like Schrodinger's cat or what? What's going on here? Well, no, if we look at the context, this is not a contradiction.
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A contradiction is a and not a at the same time and in the same sense.
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The sense in which we are to answer a fool is not the same sense in which we are to not answer the fool.
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God's not contradicting himself. And if you look at the last part of that verse, the last, the consequences that follow inform us as to what
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God is, as to the sense in which we're to answer or not answer respectively a fool according to his folly.
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So verse four, do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like him.
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So we're not to answer the fool in such a way as to become like him.
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How would we become like him? Well, I gave one example earlier. Somebody comes up and says, nanny, nanny, nanny, and you say, well, nanny, nanny, nanny, nanny on you, you would be like him.
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You would answer him according to his folly. You've embraced his childish name calling and you've become like him.
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So you see, verse four is telling us we're not to embrace the standard of the fool. Somebody comes up and challenges you that they challenges the
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Christian worldview and says, no, here's the basis for truth. It's not the Bible. It's X, Y, or Z, it's science or logic.
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And I think those things have value, but they're not in the position to judge the Bible because the
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Bible is what makes those things meaningful anyway. It's what makes science and logic intelligible.
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So verse four is telling us we should never accept the fallacious standard, the fallacious presuppositions of the unbeliever, no matter what they are.
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And so how do we illustrate this? My friend Dan Leitha came up with a cartoon to illustrate this years ago.
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I think it's pretty brilliant. How do we represent the fool? Well, he's dressed silly. Now the person in that costume might have a very good brain, might have very good education, but he's acting silly at the moment.
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He's not using his brain properly. And so we're going to represent that with the jester outfit.
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And so as an example of this, somebody comes along and says, let's talk about morality. I want to talk about right and wrong, but leave the
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Bible out of the discussion because I don't believe the Bible. It's just a book of fiction. Now that would be an example of being very foolish.
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And we're considering what to do, and we're thinking, well, yeah, I'd like to convince this guy that abortion is wrong and so on, but he doesn't believe the
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Bible, so I guess I can't use the Bible as my standard. If you do that, then you've become like him.
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You've embraced a non -biblical standard for morality, and there is no non -biblical standard for morality that's self -consistent and makes sense of absolute moral code.
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The Bible is the basis for morality because morality is rooted in the nature of God, and the way we know anything about God is because he's revealed himself to us in the pages of Scripture.
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So don't do this. Don't buy into the ridiculous presuppositions of the unbeliever.
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If he says, well, I don't believe the Bible, well, that's his problem. Don't make it yours. That's a ridiculous standard, the idea that the
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Bible is fiction. How many times has the Bible vindicated itself from archaeology and other historical documents that vindicate the
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Bible and indicate that it really is a history book and it's accurate? Now Proverbs 26 .5
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then says, answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. So what's this talking about?
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It's not saying we should embrace his standard because that would contradict verse 4. Verse 4 indicates we shouldn't accept the standard of the unbeliever.
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But verse 5 indicates that we should answer him in such a way that he can't walk away thinking that his standard is superior.
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He can't walk away thinking, oh, I won that debate. And so how do we do that?
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By exposing the absurdity of his standard, by reflecting it back to him.
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That's what, I believe, answer him according to his folly means in this verse.
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We're to reflect back his silly standard so that he can see how silly it is and therefore he can't walk away thinking, well,
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I've got a great standard. He's walking away thinking, oh, my standard doesn't work. My standard's ridiculous.
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So verse 5 is, so when a fool comes to me, verse 5 is saying that I should not embrace his ridiculous standard.
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I don't accept your standard, Mr. Unbeliever, but on the other hand, if it were true, it would lead to nonsense. Here's what would happen if you followed your standard through consistently.
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We show him how silly his presuppositions are by showing they don't comport with each other or with other things that he takes for granted.
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So somebody comes to you and they have a silly standard. They say there are no absolutes. We can talk about the
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Bible, we can talk about origins, morality, whatever you like, but you can't use any absolute statements because there are no absolutes.
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Now that's a silly standard. That's ridiculous. And the way we expose that is by reflecting it back to him.
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You say, well, actually, if there were no absolutes, you couldn't say there are no absolutes. You see how silly you're being?
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When you said there are no absolutes, that's an absolute statement. If it's true, it's false, therefore it's false.
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So I'm reflecting back to him his absurd standard so that he can't be wise in his own eyes.
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Now what's he going to say at that point? Because he recognizes, perhaps for the first time, that he's contradicted himself, that his standard doesn't make any sense.
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So that's what it means to answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.
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We are to push the fool to be consistent with his professed standard, and that always ends up in absurdity.
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Now in logic, we refer to this procedure as a reductio ad absurdum. A reductio ad absurdum, where we're pushing the person to be consistent with his standard to show that it leads to an absurd result.
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As a result of my vocation, I travel quite a bit. I normally travel out of the
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Colorado Springs Airport. It's a relatively small airport, which I like. The disadvantage is there are very few direct flights.
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Normally I have to fly to, say, Denver, and then switch planes to go to the destination that I want to end up in.
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Now, if I were not to do that, if I were to stay on that plane, the one from Colorado Springs to Denver, and I say, no,
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I'm not switching planes, I'm staying with this one, it would go somewhere else, right, because they've got other things to do on that day.
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Maybe it'll end up going to Los Angeles, for example. And so if I don't switch planes, I end up in LA, which is not where I really wanted to go.
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Now when it comes to traveling, you're free to switch planes. When it comes to logic, you're not. In logic, if you say here's the standard for truth, here's the standard for morality, whatever, you have to stick with it.
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You have to stay on that plane. You can't just switch when it becomes inconvenient for you, because that's illogical.
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In logic, you have to be self -consistent. And so you see the unbeliever, he's on a plane that's going to end up in LA, but he doesn't want to end up in LA.
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He wants to end up somewhere else. And so you'll find that at some point as he's talking, he'll switch planes. He'll switch standards.
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And what you want to do is answer him according to his folly, in the sense that he won't be wise in his own eyes, by forcing him to stay on that plane.
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You see, the unbeliever is intellectually headed toward hell.
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He's on a path to hell. But he doesn't want to end up in hell. He wants to switch planes. And so in our analogy, the plane is actually going to go, if he stays on it, he's going to go to LA.
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That's an analogy for hell, and if you've ever been to LA, it's a pretty good analogy. But in any case, he wants to end up somewhere else, but his thinking won't lead there.
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Unbelievers don't like to think that they'll end up in hell. But that is the result of their unbelief, if they were to follow it through consistently.
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And so what you want to do with the unbelievers, you want to say, oh no, no, no, you wanted to switch planes here. You can't do that. You said this is your plane.
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This is your standard. This plane is going to LA. Let's go to LA. So you want to force the unbeliever to be consistent with what he says he believes.
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So as an example of this, suppose you're chatting with someone who believes in Darwinian evolution,
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Neo -Darwinian evolution, that we're all just rearranged pond scum or just chemicals, but that person doesn't want to be consistent because that person wants to go home and love his wife and play with his kids and so on.
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So I'm going to ask that person, do you love your wife? Well, of course I do. I said, well, you can't according to your standard because you're just a bag of chemicals and so is your wife.
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I want you to be consistent. I want you to go home and tell your wife that you don't really love her because she's just a bag of chemicals and frankly, so are you.
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Chemicals can't love. They're just chemicals. So that person isn't going to be able to be consistent with that standard, obviously, and that's the key.
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You want to show the unbeliever the absurdity of his standard by reflecting it back to him and asking him to be consistent.
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So let me give a hypothetical example and then some more realistic ones. Suppose somebody comes and says to you,
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I don't believe in words. Prove to me that creation is true, but you can't use words because I don't believe that words exist.
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Now, obviously, that's a very silly standard, isn't it? So how do I expose the silliness of that standard?
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Well, first of all, I don't embrace it. That's the don't answer part, right? So I might say to the person,
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I don't accept your belief that words don't exist. That would be the don't answer part of the don't answer answer strategy.
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But then I do want to reflect that standard back to him to show the absurdity of it. And so I say, but hypothetically, if your standard were true, if words didn't exist, you couldn't argue about anything.
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The fact that you're able to make your case demonstrates that it is wrong. You just used words to tell me you don't believe in words.
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How is that remotely logical? Now, this is a powerful strategy because what's he going to say now?
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If he says nothing, then my point stands unrefuted. If he says anything, he proves my point that words exist.
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So I'm winning that debate. There's no doubt about that. This is a twofold strategy.
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The don't answer part means we don't embrace the absurd standard of the fool. If we fail to heed that, then we'll become like him.
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On the other hand, the answer part indicates that we do expose the absurdity of the fool's standard so that he cannot be wise in his own eyes.
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This is not necessarily a two -step process. It's not like I have to do the don't answer part first because it comes first in scripture and then the answer part after that.
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No, these two concepts go together. In reality, I'm doing both simultaneously.
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I'm not accepting his standard, but I am pushing him to be consistent, to accept it consistently, to show that it leads to absurdity.
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So it's not this and then that. It's both. I'm doing both. Now, I can probably only talk about one at a time.
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So I might have to say to the unbeliever, no, no, I reject your standard. You claim the
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Bible is just a book of fiction. I reject that. The Bible is a history book. I know better than that. But hypothetically, and then you show if his standard were true, where it would go, and it always leads to absurdity if it's not the
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Christian system. Kind of like, I'm not going to live in your house. I'm just going to step inside for a few minutes, destroy all the furniture, and then leave.
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So I'm never actually embracing the standard of the fool, but I'm hypothetically asking him to consider where it would go if it were true, hypothetically.
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So there are many biblical examples of this. In Christ's earthly ministry, it turns out
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Jesus was rather good at this don't answer answer strategy. And so let's take a look at a couple of examples.
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One of my favorites, because it illustrates this so beautifully, you can see both parts of the don't answer answer illustrated here, is in Matthew chapter 12, beginning in verse 24.
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And in this text, what happened here is the Pharisees had seen or they'd heard about Jesus casting out a demon.
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Jesus has cast out a demon, the Pharisees heard about it. Verse 24, but when the
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Pharisees heard this, they said, this man casts out demons by Beelzebub, the ruler of demons.
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Now the Pharisees in this context were fools, because they're claiming that Jesus, the son of God, is able to cast out demons because he's actually doing it by the power of, well,
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Satan, effectively. Now, how does Jesus respond to this? Does he embrace their standard that only
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Satan can cast out Satan? No, he exposes the absurdity of that standard.
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So verse 25 through 26, and knowing their thoughts, Jesus said to them, any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and any city or house divided against itself will not stand.
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If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?
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So he's pointing out, no, that's a stupid standard, the idea that only Satan casts out Satan. That doesn't make any sense.
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He would be defeating himself. He'd be divided against himself. Then he goes to the answer part, but hypothetically, if I were casting out demons by Satan, okay, that's what verse 27 is all about.
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Jesus says, if I, by Beelzebub, cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? For this reason they will be your judges.
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You see, the Pharisees, there were some
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Pharisees who loved the Lord, and in some cases they were able to cast out demons, and so you could imagine the pride that a father might have in his son, oh, my son
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Jacob, he's going to be a fine Pharisee someday. Yesterday he encountered a demon, and he cast out that demon in the name of Yahweh.
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But Jesus is pointing out, but you just said that only Satan can cast out
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Satan, so you shouldn't be proud of your son. You should curse him if that's the real, I mean, if he's using
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Satan to cast out Satan. He's pointing out the inconsistency of their standard. In Matthew chapter 15, this is another one that I think is very helpful, very useful to see the don't answer answer strategy.
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So then some Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?
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For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread. Really sounds rather childish, and it is.
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Jesus, your disciples, they didn't wash their hands. That's not hygienic, and they're not wearing masks.
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Now, what is the standard by which the Pharisees and scribes are judging
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Jesus's disciples and effectively Jesus? It's not by the word of God.
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It's by the tradition of the elders, and the problem is that is not the standard for morality.
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God's word is the standard of morality. So Jesus doesn't embrace their ridiculous standard that the tradition of the elders as if we're to be judged by that.
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But he does point out the absurdity of it, that if they were to use that as the standard, then they would be sinning because the tradition, their traditions contradict the scriptures.
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So let's see how Jesus responds, and he answered and said to them, why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?
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For God said, honor your father and mother, and he who speaks evil of father and mother is to be put to death.
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But you say, whoever says to his father or mother, whatever I have that would help you has been given to God, he is not to honor his father or his mother, and by this you invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition.
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You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me.
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But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men. So you see the
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Pharisees had a tradition where instead of taking care of their elderly parents, which is what they're supposed to do according to scripture, because that would be honoring their father and mother, they had this tradition where they say instead of doing that, providing for them financially, you could instead give that money to the temple, and you see you're blessing
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God that way, and that's superior to blessing your parents. And Jesus is pointing out, no, that's a ridiculous standard.
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Your tradition is contrary to the word of God, and therefore your tradition is wrong.
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You need to repent of that. Acts 17, Paul masterfully uses the don't answer answer strategy when he appears before the
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Areopagus. The Areopagus, that means Mars Hill, because the council used to meet there at one point, but it also refers to the council itself.
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These council of scholars, the elite, the PhDs of the ancient world, secular as could be, and Paul is standing before them.
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He notices this altar to an unknown God, which is ridiculous. You see the
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Greeks had so many gods. They were polytheistic. They had lots of different gods. Each one controlled a different aspect of nature, allegedly, and they were so concerned that they were providing for all these gods, they had an altar to an unknown
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God just in case they missed one. They didn't want to offend that God, and Paul's pointing out, you have missed one, the only one you should be worshiping, the biblical
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God. So he's pointing out, he points out the absurdity of their standard. He doesn't accept their standard.
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He doesn't embrace their polytheistic system. He rejects it. That's the don't answer part. And then he exposes the absurdity of it by pushing them to be consistent.
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If these idols were gods, then how would that make sense? So in Acts 17, verse 24,
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Paul says, the God who made the world and all things in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.
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He's pointing out, wait a minute, your gods, they just sit there in a temple. How is that a
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God? They can't even get off the shelf. The biblical God's not like that. The God who made the universe, he's not like that.
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The God you should be worshiping, who has all power, he doesn't live in a temple. That makes no sense.
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He's exposing the absurdity of their system. Verse 25, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.
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I mean, the Greeks, they would take in food and place it before their idols, offering food to them as if they needed to be served.
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And Paul says the biblical God is not like that. The biblical God doesn't need you because he's God. If he gives you life, how is it that he would need you to serve him?
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That doesn't make any sense. He's rejecting their standard and he's exposing the absurdity of it.
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Don't answer, answer. Verse 28, for in him we live and move and exist as even some of your own poets have said, for we also are his children.
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Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.
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That's pretty good, isn't it? He's pointing out that, you know, that they knew in their heart of hearts the biblical
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God. They don't have a saving faith in God, but they do know God. God's revealed himself to everyone. And so they knew that we're
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God's creation, we're his children in the sense of his creation. But how would it make sense then to be the creation of these statues that are made of silver or stone or gold and sit there in a temple?
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We're not made in there. If we were made in their image, then we would be silver or stone or gold, and Paul's pointing out the absurdity of that.
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How does it make sense for us to be children of something that we made? That makes no sense.
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You see, he's asking them to be consistent with their standard, and they can't be because their standard is absurd.
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And Paul masterfully points that out using the don't answer answer strategy. I'm not going to go through all the verses. You can read these on your own, but it's a great example of that.
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What are some modern examples of using this don't answer answer strategy?
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All I had to do to find some was to look through some of the responses that I've given to critics of the
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Bible who, by biblical standard, are fools because they're not using their brain properly in that situation.
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Doesn't mean I think they're stupid, because some of them are very bright, but they're not using their brain properly. One example that came up, and this came up actually on our forum on the
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Biblical Science Institute website. We have a forum for those who are contributing partners that contribute financially, where they can interact and ask questions and so on.
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And one of them came up, it's kind of third hand, a young believer, somebody who was young in Christ, somebody who was a new
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Christian, probably less than a year, was sharing his faith. That's great. And he's sharing it with an atheist, and the atheist challenges him and says, the biblical stories are either embellished or fiction.
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And this young believer was concerned. How do I deal with that? And that's often the case.
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You're a young Christian, you haven't had a lot of exposure to defending the faith. And so this came up on the forum, and how would
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I answer that? How would you answer that? So one of the things that I would point out, because I want to use the don't answer answer strategy.
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So first of all, I reject his standard. What is his standard, first of all? That's a good question to ask.
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What is the standard by which he judges the biblical stories to be embellished or fiction? And you might have to ask him.
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You might have to ask the critic, why do you think that? My professor told me.
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Well, yeah, but you believe everything your professor tells you? I mean, are you just following their philosophy without investigating whether or not that philosophy is true or sensible?
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What are some answers? Now one person that I dealt with claimed that the biblical stories are wrong because they contradict, he said,
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Josephus. Josephus, of course, was a Roman historian, actually Jewish by birth, but a historian that recorded a lot of the events that happened in the first century.
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Josephus actually confirms a lot of the events of the Bible. It's not something that's contrary to it. But this person had,
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I think he'd read a particular passage wrong, and he thought that Josephus contradicted something in the Gospels.
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He says, therefore, the Gospels are wrong. But what is the underlying assumption that that person has made?
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Josephus disagrees with the Gospels, therefore the Gospels are wrong. His assumption is that Josephus is a more reliable historical document than the
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Gospels, right? Because if I found a genuine contradiction between Josephus and the
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Gospels, I would say Josephus is wrong because the Gospels are inspired by God. But in any case, his standard that Josephus is the more reliable historical document, that itself isn't based on anything, right?
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Because how do secularists evaluate the authenticity of an ancient historical document? They use a couple of criteria.
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One is they look at the number of ancient manuscripts that have been found, more being better, right?
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So if you find just one, it might have been written much later, and the person might not have actually been around then, and never really caught on.
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We have no way of knowing whether or not it's accurate. On the other hand, if you have many, many manuscripts that have been distributed, then if somebody had knowledge contrary to that, they would point it out, and there would be counter documents.
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So if you have a lot of documents, that's good. And the other criterion is the shortness of the time between when the document was written and the oldest copy that we find, smaller being better, right?
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So if the first copy of a document was written in the first century, and we have copies in the second century, that's pretty good, because there hasn't been much time whereby the information could be changed.
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Now, based on those two criteria, what is more reliable, the Gospels or Josephus?
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Based on those two criteria, the Gospels, by a long shot. We have a lot more copies of the
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Gospels than we do of Josephus, and the time span is shorter. In fact, based on those two criteria, the most accurate book, or more accurately, collection of books of the ancient world would be the
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Bible, by a long shot. The New Testament would be the most authenticated set of books in the ancient world, followed by the
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Old Testament, and like in a distant third is like the Iliad by Homer, or something like that, which isn't even, it's not even intended to be history anyway.
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So, I would reject that standard, and I would point out the absurdity of it, that even on secular terms, a person who sees a disagreement between Josephus and the
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Gospels ought to go with the Gospels, even by the secular standards. On the other hand, this particular person may not have answered that way.
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He might have said, when I ask him, what is the standard by which you think that the Bible is just a collection of stories, not real history, that are embellished or fiction?
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Now, he might say something like, well, come on, you mean a talking donkey, for heaven's sake?
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And, of course, we remember the biblical account of Balaam, and how God enabled the donkey to talk.
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And, of course, I would point that out, I'd say, you do understand that God was the one that enabled the donkey to talk, temporarily, right?
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Let me ask you a question. Can an all -powerful God make a donkey talk?
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Now, if he says no, then I'm going to ask him, do you know what the term all -powerful means?
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Because if God's all -powerful, of course he can make a donkey talk. He can do what he wants. He's all -powerful.
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He can do anything that's logically consistent. So, if he says, well, yes, then I say, then what's the problem, right?
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Because what it really comes down to, then, is his arbitrary rejection that there is such a
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God, that there is an all -powerful God. And now, that's not going to be based on anything reasonable, because there is an all -powerful
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God. He's left us his word. We know that. So, you can see how you can apply this standard.
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Think about what is the standard of the unbeliever, and then reject that standard, and then point out the absurdity of it.
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Expose it for what it is. Ask the unbeliever to be consistent with what he claims he believes.
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Here's another example. Somebody says, such and such a behavior should be accepted, and it certainly should be legal, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody.
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And perhaps you've heard critics of Christianity make that claim, and ask questions like, why are you
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Christians so upset about homosexuality and transgenderism? I mean, they're not hurting anybody, right?
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Well, what is the underlying standard of that person's belief? That something is wrong only if it hurts others.
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Is that the standard of morality? No. God is the standard of morality, as revealed in his word.
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The Bible is our basis for morality. Not whether or not someone would be harmed, which is unworkable anyway, but I'll come back to that.
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Now, it happens that many of God's laws are in place to prevent excess harm to other people.
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I understand that. But the reason we obey them is because they're God's law. And so, something is wrong if it's something that God doesn't approve of, something that will incur his wrath.
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Something is right if it's something God blesses, something God commends, something that will incur his blessings.
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So the idea that, well, it doesn't hurt anybody, that is not the right standard. So if somebody said that,
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I would say, well, first of all, I reject your standard that something is right or should be legal as long as it doesn't hurt anybody.
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That's an absurd standard. And then I would point out the absurdity of that standard by pointing out that everything we do harms somebody.
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What we do or what we fail to do, right? It might bless some people and harm other people. If I choose to go to a movie today, that harms people.
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Why? Because I could have gone to the soup kitchen and helped work there and blessed people that way.
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By failing to do that, I've effectively harmed them by my inaction. So that's an unworkable system.
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And by the way, I would point out to the unbeliever, you do understand that God judges nations corporately.
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And so when enough people in a nation do these sinful acts that God calls an abomination,
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God will eventually pour out His wrath on that nation. So you say these people, you know, being homosexual and committing homosexual acts,
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I should say, or transgenderism, whatever, things that God calls an abomination, they are harming us because you risk bringing down the wrath of God in all of us.
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There's a reason why Sodom doesn't exist anymore. It was a very active city at one point.
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It's not now. Why? Because people engaged in the very kind of behavior you claim doesn't bring any harm.
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Perhaps you've heard somebody say, well, God doesn't exist because, you know, there's pain and suffering in the world. Now what is the underlying assumption there?
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Well, the unbeliever says, well, if I were God, I would eliminate all pain and suffering. Oh, so basically your reasoning is
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God doesn't exist because He doesn't do what you would do in that situation. Is that the standard?
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Because I have to tell you, friend, you don't do all the things that I would do in a particular situation. Therefore, you don't exist by your own reasoning, right?
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I mean, it doesn't make any sense. So and so doesn't do what I would do. Therefore, so and so doesn't exist. I don't understand why
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Joe eats Cheerios in the morning. I prefer bacon. Joe doesn't do what
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I would do. Therefore, Joe doesn't exist. Well, that's ridiculous. We're all different.
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God might have a reason for the pain that He allows in this world. And of course, we know scripturally He does.
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There's sin and things like that. But my point is the standard of the unbeliever is ridiculous. And I would expose that by pointing out that by his own standard, he doesn't exist because he doesn't do the things that I would do in that situation.
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Satire is a very powerful application of Proverbs 26, 4, and 5.
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Satire often, what it does is it exposes something, often humorously, by applying it to a situation that it wasn't originally designed for, but which logically it should be consistent with.
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And I want to read you an example of this. This is a brilliant satire. It's written by Betsy Childs Howard.
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The title is Why We Should Legalize Murder for Hire. Now, of course, she's not actually arguing for that, nor am
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I. But she's using this satire to expose the absurdity of a particular belief system.
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And let me just read this to you. And it's quite brilliant. She says,
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I'll be the first to admit it. Hit men are shady, but they are shady because they're doing work that no one else wants to do, work that is, in fact, illegal.
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By labeling contract killing a crime, we have obscured the fact that hit men provide a valuable service to society.
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Many women find themselves trapped in unwanted marriages. Matrimony severely curtails a woman's freedom, and husbands can be unreasonably demanding.
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A woman in such a situation is vulnerable. She sees only one way out, and so she makes the difficult decision to kill her husband.
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But the inconvenient truth is that a woman hiring a hit on her husband will likely have to pay tens of thousands of dollars, with no guarantee that the kill will actually take place.
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Legalizing the transaction would remove uncertainty. Hired guns could be vetted, trained, and held to professional standards of safety.
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No one wants a hit to go bad. Removing the threat of prosecution would drastically lower the cost of contract killings.
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Legalizing murder -for -hire would bring a sordid industry into the light. While divorce may be an attractive alternative to murder -for -hire in most cases, some women do not have the emotional and financial resources to go through a divorce.
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A contested divorce can take more than a year to resolve. After attorneys drain the couple's finances, the woman will be left with little money to get on with her life.
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Additionally, a discreet and well -timed hit protects a husband from the pain of discovering that he is no longer wanted.
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A truly skilled assassin can take his target painlessly, in an instant, without any suffering.
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The end of a marriage can potentially ruin a woman's life, but if her husband can be taken out quickly and cleanly, it can be a new beginning for her.
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Murder -for -hire is an uncomfortable subject, and I personally could never order a hit. The better course is to avoid unwanted marriage in the first place.
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Yet this is not a decision that anyone else can make for a woman. It is her marriage. Only she can decide when it must end.
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I realize readers may be hesitant to endorse this proposal, but stop to consider the profound way that the legalization of abortion has taken away the stigma against a woman who wants to kill her child.
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Abortion was once considered murder, and thus could only be obtained secretly and at great risk to women.
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Now our country celebrates women who exercise their choice to kill their family members. Why shouldn't we extend this right and give women the choice to kill their partners?
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Now, is she genuinely arguing that we should legalize murder -for -hire?
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Of course not. It is a satire. What is she really arguing against?
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Abortion. And what this article does is it uses the same arguments that abortionists use to argue that it ought to be legal to murder babies, and applies them to husbands, that women ought to be able to murder their husbands as well as their babies, using the same arguments.
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And when you see the arguments in that new context, you realize how stupid they are. It's ridiculous.
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You know, we ought to legalize murder -for -hire because it would reduce the cost, and it would be safer, and it protects the husband from the pain of discovering that he's unwanted.
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Those are the same kind of stupid arguments that abortionists make to argue that you should kill your child, so that it doesn't experience the pain of discovering it's not wanted.
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The idea that it's her marriage, only she can decide when it must end. It's her pregnancy, only she can decide when it must end.
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My marriage, my choice, my body, my choice. Same arguments. You might want to go back through that again and read it again and notice the parallels.
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And they're intentional, of course. She's very intentionally using the same arguments that abortionists use to try to argue for killing babies, and she's applying them to say, you know, that same argument should lead you to the conclusion that you should be legal to kill your husband, which is absurd.
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She's exposing the absurd standard of the fool by reflecting it back to him, and she does it masterfully.
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It's a wonderful article, I wish I had thought of it. I do have one satire on the
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Biblical Science Institute website called On the Origin of Articles. I think that's the only satire we have on our website, and it argues that articles have developed, they don't have authors, but they have evolved in the same way that organisms have allegedly.
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And so what the article does there is it uses the same arguments that evolutionists use to argue for evolution and says that by that same logic, you should believe that books don't have authors, but that they have evolved over billions of years of random typos that have accumulated and so on.
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And even the responses to that was very amusing as I interacted with people defending the evolutionary view for the sake of showing how absurd it is.
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So again, those are examples of the don't answer answer strategy. We're not actually embracing the standard of the fool, but we are showing him where it goes, where it would go if it were held to consistently.
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Very powerful stuff. So these two little verses, do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like him.
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Answer a fool according to his folly, lest you be wise in his own eyes. These two little verses, when applied properly, can be life -changing.
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They can powerfully expose the absurd standard of the fool.
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And again, I'm not suggesting that you get around calling people fools. That's not a good idea. But the Bible does use that term, and it has a specific meaning.
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Somebody who's not using their brain properly. Somebody who has a faulty standard, and we don't want to accept that standard, but we do want to expose it.
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So here's how I suggest you apply this. When you come across somebody who's making a ridiculous claim, think to yourself, what is the underlying assumption that person is making?
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What is the standard by which they're reaching that conclusion? And if it's not obvious, ask them.
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Say, excuse me, sir, you say the Bible's fiction. How did you come to that conclusion?
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What is the standard by which you're judging scripture? And of course, whatever that standard is, it will be stupid. Doesn't mean the person's stupid, but the standard they're using is.
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It's foolish. And so as soon as you identify that foolish standard, you need to be very clear,
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I don't accept that standard. Reject that standard. Don't answer the fool according to his folly by embracing the standard, otherwise you'll be like him.
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On the other hand, you should expose the absurdity of that standard by pushing the fool to be consistent with what he says he believes.
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It's very, very powerful. It's really about clear thinking. And one of the things that I really like about what's sometimes called the presuppositional apologetic is that it's really based not just on these two verses, it's based on scripture
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I would argue, but it applies these two verses consistently. The presuppositional method never embraces the foolish standard of the unbeliever, but it does expose the foolish standard of the unbeliever by pushing it to its absurd conclusion.
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And I would argue that no other apologetic method consistently follows these two verses. That's one of the things that makes presuppositional apologetics unique.
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We never embrace the standard of the unbeliever. We do show where it would go if it were true. And then when we've destroyed the unbeliever's worldview by pointing out how silly it is, we do want to throw him a life preserver and say, hey,
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I was in the same boat until God opened up my eyes. I was the fool once, too, and we're praying for repentance.
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We're praying that the unbeliever, the fool, will embrace the gospel and put away that foolishness and be saved.
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That's always the goal. It's up to God whether or not he's going to bring salvation. Our job is to make the argument, to expose the absurdity of the unbeliever.
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And I hope that this has been a helpful exposition for you. I hope that it's something that will bless you in your apologetic encounters as you defend the
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Christian faith. It's powerful. Study it. Think through the issues. Take a look at how others have used this method, both in Scripture and in modern times as well.
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And I think it'll really bless you. So thank you very much for joining us. We'll see you next time.