Should You Stay Or Should You Go?
“Leave your simple ways and live…” -Proverbs 9:6
Do you think it is harder to leave a known group or to join a new group?
Both are pretty difficult, aren’t they? It’s always difficult to leave familiarity. Studies have shown that people will go to great lengths to justify staying in a group—even if you know it is toxic. There is a thing called identity fusion, where we develop a sense of oneness with a group. To leave that group, then, would mean a loss to ourselves.
It’s why a football fan might say, “I can’t believe we missed that field goal”, even though he was watching it on his couch 300 miles away from the actual game. And it’s why you might take it personal if somebody starts to dog on your team. We develop kinship and deep commitment, defending and protecting our group at all costs.
With identity fusion there is also a resistance to separation. It’s why even though I absolutely loathe the ownership of the Cleveland Browns, and I am 100% against the signing of DeShaun Watson, and they are a constant trainwreck of dysfunctional leadership and only break your heart on the football field, I find myself having difficulty saying “I’m no longer a Browns fan”.
Some of the studies on this began by observing soldiers who often exhibit fused identities with their units. That’s understandable, right? They’ve went through so much together. And part of the military training is to fuse people into one unified unit. Certainly, this happens in families and within churches as well. And I’d even argue that it happens in bars and drug culture. And it also happens in the group of gentlemen who meet at the coffee house every Thursday morning to talk about all that is wrong with the world.
Imagine, then, that you’re at the coffee shop with all your buds, or the breakroom at work sharing stories of gossip, or getting worked up watching cable news, or painting your chest and taking off your shirt in freezing cold weather to cheer on your football team. Now hear the voice of Lady Wisdom when she says, “Leave your simple ways and live…”
Some translations have it not as leaving your simple ways but rather leaving the company of fools that you frequent. Her point is that if you aren’t willing to leave this company you aren’t going to embrace wisdom. You can’t have your identity fused with a bunch of people who do not fear God, who sit around the campfire and gossip, who lash out in angry tirades, and just do all kinds of things that is not the path of wisdom. You can’t walk the path of wisdom there.
That’s a tough sell if you’re happy with your group of goobers. Contrast that with the call of the Woman Folly. She doesn’t talk about leaving anything. She just says, “come on in!” It’s basically her telling you that she’ll accept you just as you are. No need to change. We’ll have camaraderie around all the things you want. Come, simple ones, and enjoy!
Lady Wisdom is saying, “Leave and live” and the Woman Folly is saying “Come and die”. Of course, she doesn’t present it that way. But that is where it ends. Easy community is typically the deadliest. Community that requires nothing of me, is probably built on a delusion. It’s the community that engages in the labor of building a house and slaughtering beasts that is able to have a feast. But it’s not nearly as appealing as the invitation of death.
The path of wisdom might require painful leaving. And it will require shirking the flashy invitation of folly. It’s smooth but biting. The path of Christ is one marked with suffering. It’s king wears a crown of thorns. But it is this path where life is truly found. Are you willing to leave a community of death in order to find life?