I enjoy idioms: phrases whose meaning is not obvious when taken at face value. For example, you could spend hours puzzling over why “raining cats and dogs” means “raining heavily”, but in hopes of ever figuring it out, you’d still be all wet. Likewise, don’t waste your time on the famous gun-related idiom — just give up and “bite the bullet”.
I suppose I should blame one of my least favorite idioms on the Greeks. Well, not the entire population, just those living in Corinth. And only those living there 2,000 years ago, when Saint Paul came a-calling. For it was their behavior that prompted Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth, in which he coined a phrase that has been twisted into a modern idiom.
He was pointing out to the Corinthians that they were listening to false itinerant preachers — false apostles — as opposed to focusing on the true teachings of Christ. He admonished them: “For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise”.
The whole phrase is actually rather splendid, since it seems to be dripping with sarcasm. Paul is scolding the Corinthians for thinking themselves wise while listening to teachers who are in actuality fools. Could this be a rare example of Biblical snark?
The problem is that the modern idiom reverses Paul’s phrasing to a negative statement. We phrase it now as “not to suffer fools gladly”, meaning “to become angry with people you think are stupid”. I have been shocked at the obituaries I have read over the years where it was pointed out that the dearly departed “did not suffer fools gladly”, as if this were some kind of delightful personality trait.
Being an educator for fifty years (and counting, I hope you’re kind enough to think) I have waged a quiet war against this mindset.
Having taught thousands of students in Los Angeles for five years, and then in North Carolina for the next forty-five, I can say with great authority that I never saw one fool sitting at any of my classroom desks. Whether my students were good ones who were there to learn as much as possible from me, or poor ones who transferred out of my class during drop-add period in search of an easy-A instructor, fools they were not.
If this were one of my classroom lectures, I would point out to my students that we must discover what the term “fool” means in order to decide who falls into this unenviable category. I assume they would be as surprised as I was to learn that our word “fool” derives directly from the latin word “follis”, meaning “hearth bellows” — the device with an empty bag that emits a stream of air when squeezed together by its handles.
I would hasten to add that no student I have ever taught could be labeled as a “gasbag,” full of sound and fury, signifying nothing except a love of hearing their own vapid, windy opinions. No, that’s a silly behavior reserved for us adults only. Truly, there is no fool like an old fool.
And as I warmed to my lecture topic, I would mention that students also are not “ignorant”, a term meaning “lacking knowledge in general”. Yes, all students lack a great deal of academic knowledge and go to school to learn. But after reading and responding to thousands of student thought journals and holding an equal number of conferences during office hours, I have discovered that most students of mine had hobbies, skills, and talents in fields where I was the woefully ignorant one.
Will Rogers, the wildly famous American humorist of the early twentieth century, said it best: “Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects”. Where is he today, when we so need him? He recognized that all his fellow men possessed the dignity and decency of lovely gifts hidden from others.
What Rogers might not have anticipated was his beloved country of the 21st century being burdened with such an abysmal divide that almost half of Americans today feel that the other half, who don’t agree with them politically, are fools they cannot suffer gladly or even civilly. Worse still, far too many of us have decided that those who don’t support our views are extremely dangerous to the future of our country.
Here it is well worth mentioning Will Rogers’ most famous quip, one that sounds like it was spoken in a language foreign to the world today: "I never met a man I didn't like.” Yet isn’t it true that if each of us would spend enough time with those of opposite political views, we would no doubt find something decent and winsome in every one of them? The way forward has always been the same: love one another.
Before you accuse me of getting a bit maudlin at the end here, let me conclude with a chuckle, courtesy of the one person I have lectured about for over forty years: Winston Churchill. Even before the Second World War, Churchill was a favorite lecturer in America. In the early 1930’s, he was told that he’d be opening for Will Rogers, the evening headliner. Churchill asked: “Isn’t he the chap who has never met a man he didn’t like?” His host enthusiastically assured him that indeed he was.
Churchill puffed on his cigar and muttered: “So I see then that he’s never been introduced to my son, Randolph”.
Email Elliot at huffam@me.com or click here