I was struck recently by the phrase ‘Wise as serpents, harmless as doves’. I must admit that I think the ‘wise as serpents’ bit comes a lot more easily to me (wily, crafty, political) than the ‘harmless as doves’ word.
It means that at a certain point, after you have done all your wise-as-serpent stuff, you are defenceless. You are approaching people with innocence. You are choosing to believe that somewhere inside them, nestled among the faults you see, is a shred of decency. Somewhere deep inside is a concern for the welfare of others. And we are to approach them, or when not actually approaching them but just thinking and talking about them, we are to treat them is if that shred of decency really was inside them, and can be awakened by someone who believes against the odds that it is there.
The Lord Jesus, I think, had the childlike innocence when threatened. Pilate: ‘Are you the King of the Jews’? Jesus: ‘Your words.’ Or after being hit in the face when being questioned by the High Priest: ‘If I spoke evil, show me. If I didn’t, why did you hit me?’ Both times, I think, he’s probing inside the other person to justify what they just said or did, not slandering or insulting them; his innocence is disarming and unnerving.
It feels weak. But in fact it is a deadly infusion of grace that they may not know how to handle. They are used to fighting, being opposed, lobbing ordinance from their trench. They are not used to being told, by someone who opposes them, that they have a difficult job and perhaps they could be doing it better.