As he said the phrase, it brought back a flood of memories – and reminded me of an approach to navigating life that is as timely as ever.
I was attending a lecture by N.T. Wright with Michael, my son-in-law. Wright, who goes by Tom, is a senior research fellow at Oxford, a theologian, an Anglican bishop, and a prolific writer with more than 70 book titles to his name. He was speaking here in Oregon on the subject, “Jesus & the Powers & the Church”.
Wright was talking about how we live in the in-between, between what is and what is to become; how God will hold all to account; and how we as Jesus followers are called to a corresponding vocation. Wright was referring to what he calls a Vocation of Stewardship – we neither dominate our world nor tear it down.
Our goal is neither theocracy nor holy anarchy. We believers are to walk in a very delicate balance when it comes to earthly powers.
Wright was processing all this out loud, flooding our brains like a fire hydrant. Midstream, he inserted that phrase, “wise as serpents, harmless as doves.”
I’d been taking notes like I was back in college listening to Dr. Crowley spew European history from memory for an hour and a half, my pen blazing like fire. But with Wright’s mention of that phrase, I flew out of that church auditorium in Portland and found myself back in a country on the other side of the world.
I’m sorry, but I almost laugh when people here in the US talk about going through religious persecution. As if what they’re suffering is akin to losing their lives, being imprisoned, being beaten. They have no idea. Sure, we who are of faith often get ridiculed (sometimes it fits) and people around us don’t grasp our allegiance to a higher power.
But Jesus promised us no less, didn’t he? That we would face troubles and trials – and persecutions. Still, what we face in this nation is nothing compared with what brothers and sisters elsewhere have long suffered.
My young coworker (I was young-er back then, too) and I were working on all kinds of strategies with local officials. Our collective goal with these officials was to increase the number of foreign experts working in the region and to bless people who were being bypassed by the advantages of living in the 20th century. Like running water and irrigation for crops and a proper education.
This local coworker, I’ll call him “Co”, had come to faith and was learning to navigate tricky legal territory as a person of faith. Together, we were discovering what it means to live out our faith in hostile territory.
I won’t bore you with the details of why our work was tricky. Suffice it to say the navigation of such trickiness required wisdom beyond our years. Actually, we needed wisdom from beyond this earth. And so I taught him this verse.
Jesus is sending out his followers to do as he has done – declare and demonstrate God’s Good News. He tells them things are bound to get complicated. And when they do, remember this:
“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16 NIV)
Snakes and doves. Such instruction wouldn’t necessarily protect you from getting into trouble with the powers that be. That wasn’t the point. But it would ensure that you and your message held true. That was the point.
In the work I did with Co, I personally was never in any danger, except maybe losing out on the privilege of doing what I was doing. But a lot was at stake, especially for Co, and a lot of good getting done was at risk.
And so to survive, thrive really, we learned to adhere to what we called the snakes-and-doves approach. It became a catchphrase for us. When we got into sticky situations, Co would turn to me and say, “This is a snakes and doves situation, isn’t it?” Sometimes, all we’d have to say to each other was “snakes and doves” and we became mindful of how we needed to approach the situation.
Snakes don’t have the best of reputations. Accurately or not, they are often associated with being wily or crafty. Maybe it goes back to the serpent in the Garden of Eden story, which isn’t the most positive of references when it comes to snakes. Which is why Jesus doesn’t say, “Be as innocent as snakes.” No, he is saying be like snakes when it comes to being on your guard, being aware of your surroundings, being “shrewd” as the NIV translates it.
Doves, on the other hand, aren’t known for being intelligent. Unlike ravens, for example, they aren’t very cunning. Which is why Jesus doesn’t say, “Be cunning as a dove.” We modern urbanites are more familiar with their next-of-kin, the pigeon, known for augmenting statues with their artwork. But that is about as harmful as doves get. Doves, often used as symbols of peace, really are harmless or innocent. In anthropomorphic imagery, they contain no deceit or duplicity.
Jesus says he’s sending his followers out like sheep among wolves. Wolves eat sheep. Jesus doesn’t tell his followers to transform into wolves to counter the wolves – nor even to avoid wolves. No, their mission is to be wise and innocent in the midst of the wolfpack. Sheep aren’t known for being wise, however, which is why Jesus introduces the snakes-doves analogy.
I’m sending you out into a cruel world, he is saying, but you aren’t going to win by being cruel in kind. You are going to win through your innocent craftiness – your character and your wisdom, both of which come from God above.
My mind was back with Wright. I hadn’t lost much of what he’d been saying – the “snakes and doves” recall was a nanosecond with a lot packed into it. My brain had instantaneously hyperlinked Wright’s comments about how Jesus and we Christians relate to earthly Powers with what I had experienced with Co. An unverbalized cross-reference placeholder to return to later.
Wright continued to talk about how, through the Church, God’s wisdom confronts the unseen principalities and powers of our age – of every age – and how we are to call the earthly Powers we can see back to their Godly vocations, back to account before God really. God is the judge of these Powers and we are merely God’s prophetic voice.
And yet, the revolution Jesus calls for is a revolution not of this world.
Which is what confused Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, who sentenced Jesus to death. Pilate thought he had the power to take Jesus’ life – or alternatively to grant him reprieve, as he did with Barabbas. Jesus said such power wasn’t Pilate’s to grant, that all authority on earth came from above, meaning heaven, the place where God reigns. (John 19:10-11)
Pilate, who thought his authority came from Rome, was befuddled. Not yet having heard the 20th-century gospel song about how Jesus could have called ten thousand angels to rescue him, Pilate had no idea who he was dealing with. Pilate wasn’t taking Jesus’ life. Jesus was laying it down willingly. (John 10:18)
Basically snakes-and-doves stuff.
It’s an old temptation we face here in the 21st century. We want to take by force what is rightfully God’s alone. We want to overthrow the kingdoms of this world, not understanding that God has been in control all the time.
What happens, though, when we as God’s sheep start acting like wolves – being harmful in kind – we actually morph into antichrists. We become what we are fighting against.
I don’t mean we aren’t to fight for good wherever God places us. But we do it as doves, meaning with the innocence – purity, really – that Christ demonstrates when he lays down his life for us. Like servants, knowing that the only master we have is God.
As Wright was ending his atmospheric river of a lecture, he was explaining how we win over the Powers that be. We do so by demonstrating what God’s kingdom is all about, by living the truth in the face of parody (I loved that phrase), and by modeling the meaning of image bearing. As in bearing the image of Christ. Christlikeness.
Contrast that with in-kind wolfery. Temptation in bold face. That is what I see threatening the contemporary church, particularly the church in the US. Not attacks from without, but corruption from within. We are tempted to get it all backwards. We take kingdoms by force without any more character than what we are replacing.
I, too, face that temptation. I face it every time I open my social media apps. I face it when I want to call down fire on my fellow believers for acting so, so… don’t say it, Howard. And I face it when I want to avoid such confrontations for lack of courage or lack of clarity. Say it better, Howard.
I’ve seen this wolfery in recent days as I’ve watched fellow believers turn on other fellow believers. Calling godly leaders and institutions all kinds of nasty. My heart grieves.
My mind returns to my time with Co, actually a time before Co was around. I remember fellow believers from the West, who didn’t get our snakes-and-doves approach, accusing us of abandoning the gospel.
As one of these accusers stood screaming at me on my front step in plain sight of all my neighbors, I somehow found the presence of mind to bite my tongue, metaphorically. To be fully transparent, my tongue-biting was less premeditated wisdom on my part than it was freezing in the face of a threat. But nevertheless, God’s wisdom and presence prevailed.
What is at stake here, friends, is that when we abandon the snakes-and-doves approach, we self-defeat. And we threaten to torch the whole camp as well. The gospel always loses when anti-gospel tactics are employed.
Where I see the greatest breakdown occurring for the Church in the US these days is in the political sphere. When we equate prophetic with partisan, we couldn’t be further off mark.
The reason the church is called to be prophetic and not partisan is not because of some government church-and-state edict. It is because partisanship at its very best falls far short of godliness. Not that there aren’t godly individuals in positions of political power. But the temptation to flip the snakes-and-doves approach is too strong. We don’t win by bullying the bullies. We don’t win by being partisan.
I love the imagery found in Revelation 12:11. A loud voice in heaven declares that believers overcome the Deceiver by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. The blood of the Lamb is all Jesus’ doing. The “word of their testimony” – there’s that snakes-and-doves trait coming through. A pure witness.
The voice, by the way, is talking about people who’d rather give up their lives than do it any other way. Either we do it Jesus’ way, friends, or we needn’t bother.
When I moved back to the US two decades ago, I was impressed how the methods Co, others, and I had been using to get good things done in the name of Christ in that situation also applied to what I saw believers facing in the US. So, I wrote about that approach in Night Shift: Crossing the Cultural Line for the Kingdom.
I still have copies, more affordable copies than you’ll find on Amazon or elsewhere. Unfortunately, they’re only available in hardcopy, not digital. If you’d like to know more about how I think the snakes-and-doves and other approaches can work in your life, you are welcome to order a copy from me directly on my website at Books.
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