“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”
Matthew 10:16 New King James Version
Christ never lies to us, not even to make hard truths more palatable. He tells us the world is a hard place, especially for people like us. We are like sheep going out among wolves, that’s the way it has always been and the way it always will be. If we are to survive at all let alone carry Christ’s message to the world, we must be as wise as serpents and yet also as harmless as doves.
Like so many biblical verses, we tend to gloss over it. We like the idea of being harmless as doves; that fits with our concept of “gentle Jesus meek and mild”, but is he really telling us to be like serpents? That doesn’t sound like Jesus.
As always, it is the verses we find most difficult that are the most important, and if we think of Jesus only as gentle meek and mild then we don’t understand Him at all. It wasn’t for nothing that C S Lewis imagined Jesus as a lion: capable of tenderness and superhuman compassion, but also powerful, majestic and awesome in the original meaning of the word. Christ is a warrior, and it’s not for nothing that his church on earth is called The Church Militant.
So what does Christ mean when he calls us to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves?
I think Raymond Chandler said it best in his novel The Big Sleep. “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything.” The warrior of Christ must be like this.
First, he must be wise as a serpent.
Many Christians reject the Harry Potter series for its supposed glorification of magic and the dark arts but remember that C S Lewis also wrote fantasy. All good fiction has a strong foundation of truth. In her Harry Potter series, JK Rowling’s School of Wizardry has a Slytherin House who’s symbol is the serpent. Why does Hogwarts maintain a house that has produced so many dark wizards? I can’t get inside the mind of J K Rowling (much as I’d like to), but I suspect it was because only those who truly understand evil can fight evil. If Hogwarts were a real place, I suspect Slytherin house would have a long and proud tradition of producing the best ‘aurors’ or dark wizard catchers. There is an old saying “set a thief to catch a thief” while it’s not exactly true, it is true that the best policemen and policewomen are those who can put themselves into the mind of the criminals they want to catch.
Of course, not all of us are, or should be, police officers, but we will never survive as sheep among wolves if we can’t understand the wolves.
In her excellent book Toxic Empathy, Allie Beth Stucky talks about the many ways unscrupulous people try to turn Christians’ feelings of compassion against them. “Can’t you just be kind?” they say, “Didn’t Christ tell you never to judge others?” “Where’s your compassion?” “Why are you involving yourself in politics? Didn’t Christ say, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God?” Each of these deserves a section to itself, but the point is the same. People will constantly try to manipulate you or take advantage of you, and if they can use the gospels as a stick to beat you with, they will. Be therefore wise as a serpent, understand evil so that you will know it when you see it.
As always, however, sin crouches at your door. The fictitious Slytherin house was infamous for producing dark wizards, the idea that it produced aurors is conjecture on my part (otherwise, why wouldn’t it have been disbanded). Many police have become corrupt or overzealous in their duties. Many crusader knights committed terrible atrocities while supposedly marching under the banner of the cross. The inquisition still stains the memory of the church. I believe many, if not most inquisitor priests truly believed that in torturing and burning their victims, they were acting like spiritual surgeons destroying the body to save the patient’s soul.
And when in time they stood before Christ, I believe he said, “I never knew you.”
In knowing evil, nothing is more important than understanding the evil within. I think this is one meaning of Jesus’ exhortation in Matthew 7:3-5 concerning the beam in our own eye and the mote in our brother’s eye. Only by understanding the evil, or potentiality to evil within ourselves can we understand and combat evil in others.
Trying to fight evil in others while denying our own capacity to evil is not just useless but dangerous. Nietzsche is perhaps the world’s most famous atheist. If you want to read Nietzsche, you’d better have your wits about you, but it’s worth it because there is gold among the dross. "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." (Beyond Good and Evil). Paul couldn’t have said it better.
Yes, we must be wise as serpents, but not become serpents. We must also be harmless as doves.
Like Raymond Chandler’s hero, we must walk the mean streets but not become mean. We must understand the temptation to evil and reject it. We must recognise attempts by others to manipulate us and deflect them. In Romans 12:21, Paul says:
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
We must meet evil with love, but the fierce, uncompromising love that wants what is best for the other, not what they want. If you were an alcoholic slowly drinking yourself to death, who would be your friend? Someone who took you to a bar or someone who took you to a rehabilitation centre? When someone asks you “Why can’t you be kind to me?” you can reply “I am being kind, that’s why I won’t let you destroy yourself.” “When they say, don’t judge me, this is just the way I am.” Say “Is it? Is this really who you are? I think you are better than that.”
Do not ignore evil, you must recognise and reject evil wherever you find it. As I said last time, “Let those who love the Lord hate evil” (Psalm 97:10). The evil within most of all.
That is how to be wise as a serpent yet harmless as a dove.
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