When I grumble that some people aspire to be “more pious than God” my beef isn’t that these folks are adamant in their pursuit of godliness. My beef is that their standards are more narrow than the liberty God has given us. It is one thing to heed God’s command to be modest. It is another thing to suggest that anything more revealing than a burka is an abomination. It is one thing to rightly note that God hates divorce. It is another thing to therefore forbid divorce where God leaves room for it.
Yet another place this propensity pops up is in our insistence that we never give up in seeking to persuade others of biblical truths. Which, of course, misses this biblical truth, that we are commanded by the living God to shake the dust off our feet (Matthew 10:14), to not answer a fool (Proverbs 26:4) and to not cast our pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6). We are not out pious-ing God when we leave the dust on our feet, answer the fool and cast pearls before swine. We are demonstrating our own foolishness.
Of course one may make the mistake of shaking off the dust too early, of prematurely judging someone as a fool or as swine. We can also, however, stubbornly refuse to see the brick wall right in front of our nose. We may as well talk to our own hand, because the wall isn’t hearing us. The democratization of discourse that social media has wrought not only requires of us that we all have a take on everything, but encourages us to defend our take against all challengers and to challenge all takes we disagree with.
There are blessings that come with this wide open agora. One is that someone may just help me. I’ve had takes that were challenged, and challenged well. I’ve actually changed my mind about something because someone, a stranger I didn’t even know, had an argument superior to my own that they made across the interwebs. One sure way to recognize a fool is that the fool despises wise counsel. The counsel you may be seeking to give at any given moment may not be so good. But if the person you are giving it to has never, ever, not even once so much as conceded that he might need to rethink something, chances are, even if your counsel were good, it would still be wasted. Shouting louder won’t help those with their own fingers in their ears hear you. It will just make you look like a shouting fool.
Walking away doesn’t make you intimidated, impious or incapable. It may demonstrate your own wisdom. It may also be the best thing you can do for those whose dust you leave behind. As long as they are arguing, trolling, or have their fingers in their ears, that is, as long as you continue to engage, they won’t have the blessed opportunity to be alone with their thoughts and face the emptiness of their arguments.
It isn’t piety, persistence or passion that keep us talking to brick walls, but a desire to win, a desire to be thought pious, persistent and passionate. It is us with our fingers in our ears as the God of heaven and earth speaks to us.
To be pious is a good thing, Piotism is one of the worse enemies embedded in the church.