There’s a verse that came to mind because a phrase came to mind. The phrase was “throwing pearls before swine”. The verse was,
(Mat 7:6 KJV) Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.I was thinking about this because I was reflecting on being gaslighted so often in my life. One of the things that makes some of us susceptible to gaslighting is that we have a low opinion of our opinions. I took very seriously the idea of turning the other cheek and the mental attitude behind that. I took it so seriously that I applied it to much of my thinking and my opinions. So I’ve always doubted the conclusions that I come to.
As I grow older, and I hope finally grow up, I’m beginning to realize that God has been able to speak to me over the years and show me things. I would listen, but then I would get gaslighted and things would slip away.
What has caused me to think is a small bit of reading I did recently out of the Works of Wesley. He was writing to an unidentified correspondent about love, and throwing it around in the way that Wesley likes to do. It seemed kind of strange to me because it didn’t get down to the actual meaning of love. He quoted things in a way that seem to be out of context, and not quite accurate. And thinking about that I realize that he was trying to convey to people who did not acknowledge the Bible as the word of God or God as the creator of the universe truths that are sublime. They were wallowing in the mud and he was offering them pearls.
Tie that together with a YouTube site that I came to from listening to Andrew Klavan. It’s called the Young Heretics. As I was sampling, one of the videos to see what it was like the host, Spencer Klavan, was going on about how hard it is to understand words from another language. I got as far as to understand that he felt it was impossible. What he was trying to get out is that there are nuances in words in Greek and Hebrew but we just can’t get in the English and you can’t get in one spot of translation.
Good example of that would be this word “love” that Wesley was referring to. In the New Testament, the word is usually agape in the Greek. It is a complex and deep word. It is a word that we need to get in context so that we can actually understand what he’s talking about. That’s when people like Wesley quote the verse, “Perfect love, casts out, fear” (I John 4:18), and then try to make it refer every experience you have the rest of your life. They are really losing their reliability.
Which brings us back to throwing pearls before swine. I need to look up the context and see if it agrees with what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that throwing pearls before swine doesn’t help the swine at all and could damage the pearls. That throwing out deep theological truths in front of unbelievers is really a waste of time. It doesn’t help them. It waters down the truth. I guess if the swine eat too many pearls it might even upset their digestion.
Save the deep truths for the open hearts. Stick with the simple stuff for people who are not listening. Better yet, live in such a way that they ask questions.
homo unius libri
Amen! Thank you!
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