Aesop Should Have Taken a Horse and Buggy Ride!
We took the lovely little kiddo on a horse-and-buggy ride. She was enchanted and her grand-mother and I were also charmed. Amber’s pleasure was foremost in mind but, finding myself challenged and feeling pedantic, I extracted a point of principle.
Our driver was a fine young man, just up from the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia where he worked with Clydesdale horses. He was personable, engaging and quite honest concerning what he did not yet know.
We were quite satisfied, though I struggled on one very important count: I knew a great deal more than did our affable host and very much wanted to share what I knew. To speak or not to speak became the pressing dilemma of my existential conundrum.
I love the period of history as represented by Old City Philadelphia and could easily wax fervently and fluently on the topic of colonial and revolutionary history. My concern was that I could easily make him uncomfortable in his lack of knowledge.
Gads! Why can’t I just take a horse-and-buggy ride like anyone else? Life would be so much simpler if I had simply shared what I knew, rather than (like the horse who knows a few things himself!) chomping on bit-and-bridle in order not to make one uncomfortable.
I looked to Scriptures and the Spirit who brought them forth for guidance. I have been in similar situations and have usually been led to find a middle way between sharing and holding back what I knew and what another did not.
First, humility and deference are both scripturally-mandated and relationally becoming.
I have always loved, if not always practiced, the Pauline principle of giving pride of place to the other person as found in Romans 12:9, 10. Here are complementary translations:
“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another as better than yourselves” (NIV);
“Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another” (KJV).
One really can’t go wrong with such biblical texts as that one, meaning that one is always right to practice them, however much one’s pride may buck against such exemplary behavior. To buck or not to buck, that was my question!
I had to ask myself at an instinctive level whether sharing what I knew was motivated by love of the subject and love of our guide, or by the mere pleasure in rattling away with what knowledge I had; in short - how best could I honor the young lad from Virginia?
This is practical theology at its most practical; it is also at its most [abstruse], as I needed to have a handle on my heart, one that is, according to the prophet Jeremiah, desperately wicked (or deceitful, depending upon one’s translation) beyond measure (17:9).
An interesting observation is found in the Book of Proverbs about our motivations: “All a man’s ways seem innocent to him, but motives are weighed by the Lord” (16:2, NIV). Our English predecessors put it beautifully when they translate with “All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth the spirits” (KJV).
We can never forget that we see life through the lens of our own corrupted flesh, so we don’t always know what is truly motivating us. Modern psychology has ascertained what the Scriptures understood and articulated long ago.
I had to weigh my motives. Did I have my best interests or his best interests at heart? I could be a blowhard or a pal; which identity to assume was my burden of decision. I had to make an instinctive and immediate decision.
I erred on the side of not sharing much that I knew and, therefore, of not showing off (or risking the prospect thereof), even if it meant denying my horse-and-buggy driver some invaluable knowledge. I figure that he’ll learn it all as he goes.
I swallowed hard and bridled my tongue. And that is the morale of this story. The fable-teller Aesop would be proud, but perhaps not as generous, as we gave our friend a generous tip, which he probably preferred to extra knowledge anyway!
He also got a copy of the Gospel of Luke, something to which the famous writer of fables could not arise. Jesus outclasses stories about tortoises and hares; you see, fables are good, but the Gospel is better still! Such is the further moral of the story.
Thank you, Mr. Aesop, and take that!
Bradley E. Lacey
January 6, 2012