Dear friend,
Don’t answer a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like him. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.
I keep turning over how learning to set boundaries asks you to hold two instincts at once, and I want to look at that directly rather than smooth it over. There is a strange pair of verses in Proverbs, back to back, where the writer first says not to answer a fool according to his folly, and then in the very next line says to answer a fool according to his folly. Both are given as wisdom. I used to think this was a scribe's mistake until I understood it differently: some situations call for silence, and some call for a plain, matching answer, and no rule tells you in advance which one you are in. You have to look at the particular person and the particular moment and decide. That is unglamorous work. It means you cannot adopt a permanent policy of always explaining yourself or always staying quiet and call either one holiness. I have watched myself get this wrong in both directions, over-explaining when silence would have served me, staying silent when something needed to be said plainly. What would it mean to trust your own reading of a moment instead of reaching for a rule that works everywhere?
A prayer
God, give her the discernment these verses ask for, since no formula will do the deciding for her. Steady her judgment in the moment itself, and let her trust what she sees clearly enough to act on it. Amen.