Theology Time: “Don’t waste your breath.” I heard my Sainted Mother say that time and time again. She was more or less telling me to shut up. I think the Galilean told his listeners that during the Sermon on the Mount. Remember Chapter Seven, Verse Six? I’m sure you do. That’s when he told the crowd, “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.”

Ah well, that’s a little more than “save your breath,” now isn’t it? Oh, and we’ll stick with the King James Version again this week. We don’t want to stray away from the scriptures in the original English. As Granny would say, “Taint fittin.”

No, it’s always amazing how the Galilean could talk about so many possible things at once. Let’s look at some things one at a time. Swine—pigs if you will—caught hell in the Bible. The Jews wouldn’t touch them, despite the smell of bacon frying. Pigs even got loaded up with unclean spirits on one occasion and had to go drown themselves to cleanse things. Now here same swine are, trampling on our values, or at least our valuables. You might say that those Judeans looked on pigs the way some of their modern counterparts look on immigrant families fleeing death and destruction.

So, what is this most valuable thing that we ought not let those swine do the “Pig Polka” on while the world watches? The metaphor used here is pearls. One must assume that everyone in the crowd viewed pearls as something of value, perhaps a most valuable possession. Today, he might have said, oh, I don’t know … “cell phones?”

Anyway. It’s popular today to claim he was talking about wisdom, the wisdom of righteousness, holiness, or understanding of “The Law,” that Trumpian thing that one moment was to be fulfilled and the next abolished.

As one writer has said, “If we take our wisdom (like precious pearls) and throw it all around without knowing whether it might fall before dogs (an impure or self-righteous heart) or swine (someone who is considered unclean), Jesus warns us that they will likely tear us to pieces. This means they will twist and distort what is said and then come after us!”

Yeah. That seems to make sense. But wait just a moment, as “Rabbi Columbo” might say. Doesn’t wisdom and learning sort of catch hell in the Bible, along with our piglets? Paul was an educated man. In fact, he tells us so in Acts 22:3. He is not above chiding his followers in Corinth though, with," For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise. For ye suffer, if a man bring you into bondage, if a man devour you, if a man take of you, if a man exalt himself, if a man smite you on the face." (2 Corinthians 11:19 - 20, KJV).

Going back a bit further, perhaps the earliest stricture in Judeo-Christian theology warns us that we must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil … .”

What might be our “pearls” then? Maybe the Galilean just wanted to create a mind picture of our taking what is most valuable to us and wasting its importance by casting it meaninglessly into the mud at the feet of evil forces. Let us all think, then, of what is most valuable to us. What would we fight for? What would we die for, it need be? What is that for which we would face the forces of mighty nations?

I think I might stick with wisdom, the right to study and learn. Didn’t someone say, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth?” 2 Timothy 2:15 (KJV)

Yours may be different. For some, it might be the right to vote in a free election. Would we ever wish to cast that precious pearl before swine?

Some have paid the
price for their pearls.