Wise as a Serpent...

By Sue Chess

      Executive Director

Have you ever wondered what made the serpent “the most cunning animal that the LORD God had made”?  (Gen. 3:1)  The word “cunning” has some very descriptive meanings; crafty, knowing, manipulative, shrewd, astute, clever, canny, sharp, resourceful.  So, when Jesus tells His disciples in Matthew 10:16 to “Listen carefully: I am sending you out like sheep among wolves; so be wise as serpents, and innocent as doves [have no self-serving agenda, AMP]—what is He REALLY saying to us?

 

The wisdom buried in that scripture was driven home to me recently in considering the power of questions.  This an incredible tool in any counseling situation or even home and business relationships. 

Some of us find questions very easy.  We may have a natural “need to know”, an emotional intelligence or intuitiveness that puts just the right question on the tip of our tongue.  But this is not true of everyone.  Sometimes even when we think of a question to ask it is closed-ended allowing “yes” or “no” answers that get us about a half inch beyond where we started.

My husband and I enjoy our eight grandchildren immensely.  Some tell us more than we really want to know, the veritable chatterboxes, but one in particular, stuffs his emotions tighter than a ripe tomato.  The concrete thinking of a child means he may have everything jumbled in his thinking.  How to get him talking and bring in solid reasoning?  Yesterday a question and answer session about his “editing skills” on YouTube opened the lines of communication.  Something I have no interest in but he loves.  To become “cunning” or “knowing” about him it was important for me to ask questions that he enjoyed answering.  I was genuinely impressed and let him know that, which opened the door to more conversations.

For this precious grandson as well as our clients at Care Net, questions can help them arrive at a conclusion of wisdom. It is a skill worth developing and the pathway to do so begins with being wise as a serpent but as innocent i.e. not self-serving, as a dove.   Most of us don’t ask enough questions, nor do we word them in the best possible way.  It is honestly a skill that is fading away in today’s online abbreviated communication.

In his 1963 classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie advised wisely that we “ask questions the other person will enjoy answering.”  When Matthew 10:16 tells us to listen carefully it means to gather “knowing” or become cunning about the person you are listening to.   All with the gentle intent of a dove.  The number one statement our clients tell us here at Care Net is that “we cared about them.”  That statement tells us that they are being listened to carefully.

Just this month, to name a few, we listened to the wife share that she’s afraid to tell her husband about the abortion in her background.  We listened and confronted the young man using Plan B as birth control for his younger girlfriend.  We listened and comforted the mother whose young daughter is pregnant.  We listened and instructed the “too-young-to-be-a-mom” girl who is raising her daughter earlier than she should have.  We listened and encouraged a mother dealing with mental illness that she can do the next right thing—even when it is hard.

What an incredible honor it is to be “wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove” in this crooked and perverse generation!