Here are a couple of Proverbs that have more impact (to me anyway) when placed together:
- “Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent” (Proverbs 17:28 ESV).
- “Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him” (Proverbs 29:20 ESV).
So does anyone really think Solomon wanted to teach a fool how to disguise his folly? Or did he want to comfort a fool to think there was someone worse than him–an “ultra-fool” who talked too much?
I don’t think that is reasonable. These passages don’t teach a fool how to hide his foolishness or to take comfort in his relatively mild level of folly.
They teach him how to become wise by pretending to be wise. By imitating wisdom. By asking WWAWPD: “What Would A Wise Person Do?”
It think these Proverbs are evidence that C. S. Lewis was right when he wrote in Mere Christianity.
When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are.
Such pretending, if carried out consistently, will have consequences:
And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already. That is why children’s games are so important. They are always pretending to be grownups—playing soldiers, playing shop. But all the time, they are hardening their muscles and sharpening their wits so that the pretence of being grownup helps them to grow up in earnest.
Now, the moment you realise “Here I am, dressing up as Christ,” it is extremely likely that you will see at once some way in which at that very moment the pretence could be made less of a pretence and more of a reality. You will find several things going on in your mind which would not be going there if you were really a son of God. Well, stop them. Or you may realize that, instead of saying your prayers, you ought to be downstairs writing a letter, or helping your wife to wash-up. Well, go and do it.
If that seems to be too humiliating to you–to pretend you are wise when you are not wise–then you have a head start. The Bible repeatedly warns people to not be wise in their own eyes! You’re improving more than you know.