The title of this post is a little proverb that my father shared with me while I was growing up. He learned it from my grandfather, a stout farmer from East Germany who had dozens and dozens of these wise sayings. It is the kind of old colloquial wisdom that is born in a farming community, probably coined centuries ago. Colorful, textured, vivid (sometimes crude) and very illustrative in imagery – especially when applied. And this metaphor is certainly not without any of these attributes.
It is actually wisdom fathers would share with their sons, but today it is equally pertinent to women. It has to do with choosing a spouse. Today we would say “beauty is only skin deep.” But farmers are too practical to render a phrase like that – it is devoid of a certain earthiness.
Cats come in many different colors. Tabby, white, black, brown, patchy, striped, and everyone has their preference. But when you see a cat cross a street in the dead of night, with no streetlamp around, what color is it? Darkness is the great equalizer! They all become just gray shapes. So with people.
For the farmer, beauty is to be enjoyed. But the particular physical enjoyment that two partners share would, most often, be in the dark when one’s farm work was done. So when considering the factors for selecting a wife that are most important: Is she beautiful or homely? Does she have all her teeth or dentures? Is she too fat or too thin? A farmer might remark “at night all cats are gray.” To put it bluntly, beauty is not an important factor. The thing that people desire a beautiful mate for (sexual pleasure folks!) can still be enjoyed, even with a homely mate. Why? Because it’s dark — you can barely see her anyways!
Now this sounds crude and offensive to our ears. But let’s focus on the proverb’s implications: When searching for a mate, one should consider physical beauty a less weighty factor.
Many moralists have espoused on the obsession our culture has for fleeting physical beauty. The time, effort, and money we spend to make ourselves pretty. Or even reading about and looking at pretty people. If one wants to look more physically beautiful there are countless resources all claiming to be your salvation. But the wisdom of this phrase is only half useful if we do not ask what IS worthy or important to consider. It is even more useful if we consider whether we ourselves have the qualities that are important. And it is even a further blessing if we find the presence or lack of these qualities within us. This insight usually comes from others…we are too biased toward ourselves.
Proverbs, that great collection of timeless wisdom unparalleled in history, ends with describing the kind of woman a man would be lucky to get. She is not idle. She is hardworking, plans for the future, shares with the poor and she speaks wise words. I don’t know many people who put “gives to the poor” as a top quality when they look for a wife or husband. But compassion towards those in need is the same as one who is filled with love.
Proverbs claims that all these character qualities are a result of ‘fearing the Lord.’ Said another way, a dynamic relationship with God that listens to what he says. But why is fear of God connected to wisdom? Why would it be good to be afraid of God? We will look at these questions next week.
