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"Different Strokes for Different Folks"
America's Quintessential Postmodern Proverb
By Alyce M. McKenzie

Postmodernism is a contemporary movement. It is strong and fashionable. Over and above this, it is not altogether clear what the devil it is.

-Ernest Gellner¹

Postmodernism should be flattered at its ability to draw a crowd. Everywhere it goes, and by now, that's pretty much everywhere, it is met by both protesters and fans. Postmodernism's insistence on the contextual origins and accountability of human truth claims is either feared or welcomed by various Christian communities. The contemporary, American-born proverb "Different strokes for different folks" epitomizes the best and worst implications of postmodernism for Christian faith communities: acknowledgment of diverse experiences of human communities and moral relativism.

Some communities are rolling out the red carpet, eager to embrace postmodernism as a manifesto for Christian communities unabashedly to espouse their choices and positions, freed from liberal modernity's compulsion to state a. Christian message in terms comprehensible and, often, palatable to its surrounding cultures. Others are squinting at battle maps and working on a defensive strategy, labeling postmodernism a dangerous descent into moral relativism, which places all choices and positions on a par.²

¹ Ernest Gellner, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 22.

² Diogenes Allen comments that "we live in a pluralistic world with any number of different views of reality and apparently no rational means of telling which view is most likely to be true," in which it is said that "all views are historically relative and merely reflections of social structures." Religious commitment, according to this view, would not be essentially different from a personal preference for chocolate ice cream over other flavors. Christian Belief in a Postmodern World: The Full Wealth of Conviction (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1989), p. 1.

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Still others attempt to stake out a terrain between the two extremes. They refuse to equate postmodernism with moral relativism and to give it the bum's rush. Nor are they willing to baptize it as faith communities' rationale to end all rationales to surrounding cultures. They seek, rather, a relationship between postmodernism and Christian faith communities in which the wisdom of each informs the life of the other. Christian faith communities need postmodernism's respect for the diversity of social locations' that inform human truth claims. This key insight is captured in the contemporary proverb "Different strokes for different folks." On the surface, this proverb sounds like a modern liberal affirmation of freedom of individual belief, by no means new in American culture. "Different strokes for different folks" is a postmodern proverb because, since its inception, a variety of communities have employed it in a postmodern challenge to the very notion of beliefs, implying that much of what have been considered as ontologically founded beliefs are socially constructed preferences.

THE CAREER OF A PROVERB

The career of the proverb "Different strokes for different folks" illustrates both the potential wisdom of the postmodern outlook it epitomizes and the need for a theological context within which those "different strokes" scan be adjudicated. Such a context is necessary if the proverb and the postmodernism it represents are to function as wisdom in contemporary Christian', communities.

Proverbs scholar Wolfgang Mieder calls "Different strokes for different folks" a "fascinating American proverb which has gained tremendous popularity and currency in a relatively short amount of time."³ He attributes its popularity to the fact that it "expresses a major element of the American" world view. Rather than telling people in a didactic and moralistic way what or what not to do, as so many traditional proverbs have done for centuries, the proverb `Different strokes for different folks,' acknowledges the fact that people are different and that they have different needs and dreams."⁴

The consensus among proverbs scholars is that "Different strokes" originated in the early 1950s among the African American population of the southern United States. As is the case with most proverbs, neither its precise situation of origin nor its author has been recovered. We can only use our imaginations to speculate as to the kinds of situations that might have given rise to it. It meets the criterion of proverbiality in that it is easy to say and hard to forget.

In each successive decade since its birth, "Different strokes" has been called into the service of its country to express a cultural axiom prevalent among various cultural groups. Throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties, it was put to work by authors of songs, sitcoms, and advertise-

³ Wolfgang Mieder, "Different Strokes for Different Folks," in American Proverbs: A Study of Texts and Contexts, edited by Wolfgang Mieder (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), p. 319.

⁴ Ibid., p. 322. .

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ments. It made its musical debut in 1968 as the threefold refrain of the hit song "Everyday People" by Sly and the Family Stone. "Everyday People" was of major importance in spreading this new American proverb beyond its regional, ethnic origins across the entire country. The song decries the fact that people; of different colors, hair lengths, and social classes refuse to accept one another. It scolds the "long hairs" who reject the "short hairs," at the same time chastising the "short hairs" for being "rich ones" unwilling to help the "poor ones." It lifts up people from varying walks of life-a butcher, a baker, a drummer-asserting that it makes no difference which group one belongs to, since all are "everyday people" and are basically "the same in whatever they do." The song mandates mutual acceptance by appealing to the proverb "different strokes for different folks" at the end of every verse.

"Everyday People" issues a reminder, on behalf of "everyday people," to groups on both sides of the issues of the social protest movements of the sixties that, despite our differences, "we've got to live together." This same theme dominated the highly successful comedy show "Different Strokes," introduced by NBC in 1978. The show, which ran for several seasons, depicted the frustrations and joys of a racially and economically blended family.

"Different strokes," is being pressed into service to express a cultural axiom of the decade of the sixties that seeped like tie-dye into the seventies: that tike social cohabitation of differently motivated groups made tolerance the paramount social virtue. The proverb is being used as an antidote to the social divisions of what Sidney has called "the Traumatic Years."⁵ As such, it offers a wise challenge to the self-acclaimed superiority of one group over another ("I am no better and neither are you"). The antidotal dosage, however, is too high, and the result is that any grounds for ethical choice and evaluation are undercut. In any and all decisions and lifestyles, "We are the same in whatever we do."

During the decade of the seventies, many cultural groups lived by the cultural axiom that self-knowledge is to be equated with human happiness. Though the need for political activism was greater than ever, deep social divisions and suspicion of government caused political concern to be replaced by a search for meaning within privatized, self-seeking limits.⁶ The identification of self-knowledge with happiness was expressed in an advertisement for Psychology Today that appeared in the November 24, 1975 issue of Newsweek. The ad pictures a young man, with his "shag" haircut brushing against his collar and a seventies-style mustache, planting a seedling. The caption, in big, bold letters, reads, "Different strokes for different folks." Underneath, in small print, is the following.

What does it take to make someone happy?

It all depends how you live your life.

⁵ Sidney E. Ahlstrom, "The Traumatic Years: American Religion and Culture in the 60s and 70s," Theology Today 34 (January, 1980), pp. 504-522.

⁶ Ibid., p. 514.

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I have a new sports car parked out in front, and Janine has a kitchen full of new appliances, and yet sometimes a 49 cent packet of flower seeds is all we need for enjoyment.

It's different for everyone. Our friends May and Myrna are into collecting old books. David and Janet are ski nuts, and Lew and Dulcie are big theater
goers.

Janine and I and all our friends came to the conclusion that the key to happiness is more than having money. It's having knowledge. About yourself. Knowing what your priorities are.

And then, doing something about them today, instead of tomorrow.

After, all, self-satisfaction comes from self-knowledge.

That's why we're interested in Psychology Today.

It's a magazine about the human experience. It helps explain what makes people tick.

In fact, there was a seven-page questionnaire in this month's issue of PT about what makes you happy. I heard that 40,000 readers filled it out and like me have already sent it in. Happiness is something that everybody takes seriously.⁷

Though the ad wears a veneer of antimaterialism, it cannot pass itself off as wisdom. Its solipsistic substance shines through too clearly.

Throughout the seventies and into the eighties, "Different strokes" was brandished in comic strips, cartoons, and advertisements. They reveal that the seventies axiom that self-knowledge is happiness is holding steady, but the content of that self-knowledge is shifting in a not-so-subtle way. In the 1975 Psychology Today ad, there is at least the veneer of antimaterialism. In the comic strips, cartoons, and ads that move the seventies into the eighties, even that veneer is rubbed off. The proverb becomes a parody of itself, as the names of various consumer products are substituted for the word "strokes." Self-knowledge still leads to satisfaction, but it is primarily the consumer's knowledge that she has an array of choices, whether in toasters or moral values. Deciding among them on the basis of individual desire and need is the substance of self-fulfillment.

"Different spokes for different folks" was used for the title of a book of comical drawings involving bicycles (1973). "Different hopes for different folks" 'was the caption beneath three high school students in widely different attire, emphasizing that "people want different things from a college education," and in an ad for U.S. Savings Bonds (1974). A cartoon has the, caption "Different smokes 'for different folks," and we see a successful businessman smoking a large and expensive cigar while a young hippy-Pike person is smoking a (marijuana?) cigarette (1975). Yet another cartoon shows one man taking an armful of firewood into his home and his neighbor a carton of rye whiskey and has the caption "Different Strokes for Different Folks" (1974). Air Canada used the slogan "different slopes for different folks" to get people to fly to Canada for a skiing vacation. Proctor-Silex stressed the versatility of its new toaster with the headline "different toasts for different folks" (1980). Volkswagen, beginning in

⁷ Reprinted with permission from Psychology Today magazine, Copyright © 1975 (Sussex Publishers, Inc.).

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1974, used the slogan "different Volks for different folks" to convey that they had other car models besides the famous Beetle.⁸

In these cartoons, slogans, and ads, one can hear the gradual development of a key cultural axiom of many groups in the eighties. It is that having a variety of choices in consumer products, lifestyles, and values is paramount and that these choices are all equally valid because they boil down to individual preference. The rights of individuals to diversity of belief and individual choice have long been characteristic of the American experience. The formative traditions of classical republicanism and Reformation Christianity placed individual autonomy with its attendant freedom within a context of moral and religious obligations that brought in the component of accountability as a partner to freedom. In many spheres of American culture in the mid-eighties, this context had largely been eroded, leaving the self at the center of a private, nonaccountable domain.⁹

After over three decades of public service, it was only fitting that, in 1986, "Different strokes" attained every proverb's dream: it was officially listed in a proverb collection.¹⁰ It now has the assurance that, even if it were for some reason to fall out of use, it is officially registered as a text that was proverbial in the 1970s and 1980s. Interestingly, young Americans asked to list a few proverbs cite it as frequently as old standbys such as "Haste makes waste" and "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." Other authentic American proverbs, such as "Paddle your own canoe" and "It takes two to tango," have not reached this level of

"The recognition of their limitations and God's sovereignty forms the subversive seen that curbs the tendency toward complacency of the Hebrew sages' wisdom of order."

popularity. Mieder thinks that the popularity of "Different strokes" will continue to increase: "We . . . have a liberating new American proverb here, and we venture the prophecy that it will and should remain current for many generations to come."¹¹

Several citings of the proverb in the decade of the nineties bear out Mieder's prediction. The proverb appears as the headline of an advertisement for The Pointe Tennis and Golf Resort in Phoenix, Arizona, to convey the fact that the resort, formerly limited to tennis, now includes a golf course. The cover of the August 10, 1992 issue of Maclean's, Canada's

⁸ The citations in this paragraph and the one preceding it are from Mieder, "Different Strokes," pp. 321-346.

⁹ Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1!185), pp. 142-143.

¹⁰ R.W. Burchfield entered it as a "popular saying" in his Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), vol. 4, p. 580.

¹¹ Mieder, "Different Strokes," p. 322.

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weekly news magazine, carries the title "Different Strokes," with a picture of women rowers who won medals at the Barcelona games. The title of a U.S. News and World Report article about ergonomic computer keyboards from October 10, 1994 reads, "Different folks, different keystrokes." The proverb serves as the headline for a McDonald's commercial advertising three different meal combinations.¹² It appears as the subtitle of an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer (January 1, 1995) about the variety of techniques road warriors use to overcome travel fatigue. The article is titled "How Business Travelers Spell Relief." The proverb bears watching, to see if this more limited, literal application of its usefulness to keystrokes, rowing strokes, and tennis and golf strokes continues.

THE WISDOM OF THE PROVERB

The career of America's quintessential postmodern proverb confirms biblical proverbial wisdom's insight that a proverb can be "an apt answer [that] is a joy to anyone" (Prov. 15:23) or "like a thornbush brandished by the hand of a drunkard" (Prov. 26:9). The variety of uses to which "different strokes" has been put illustrates my contention that postmodernism needs to function in a theological context in order to honor the diversity of human experience while avoiding the abyss of moral relativism. Biblical proverbial wisdom's view of revelation provides such a context. It operates out of a twin insistence: Human wisdom is a search that arises out of and is accountable to social contexts, and human wisdom begins and continues as a gift of an ever-revealing, yet still inscrutable, God. This tensive theological affirmation is the "setting of silver" within which postmodernism's "different strokes" can be "a word fitly spoken" for contemporary Christian communities.¹³

Proverbs are scattered throughout the Bible, in many cases culled from popular sayings of Israelite and other ancient Near Eastern cultures. These proverbs represent the product of centuries of observation of daily life in home, clan, school, and court, edited and collected to serve as the stabilizing collective wisdom of the tumultuous postexilic period. In the Book of; Proverbs, expressed as the body of teachings of personified Wisdom, proverbs advocate moderation in food and drink, industry, and discipline of the tongue and the passions, as leading to personal and social harmony (šalôm).

James Williams rightly classifies the wisdom of Proverbs as a "wisdom of order.” At the same time that Wisdom's proverbs seek to order reality, they acknowledge the complexity of human life that resists simplification of interpretation. The sages recognized the limitations of the human ordering impulse, in the form of exceptions to the rule that wise choices lead to auspicious outcomes. They acknowledged the presence, inscrutability, and intervention of Yahweh as the constant context of the search for wisdom. The recognition of their limitations and God's sovereignty forms

¹² Jet (December 26, 1994-January 2, 1995), outside back cover.

¹³ "A worn fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver" (Prov. 25:11).

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the subversive seed that curbs the tendency toward complacency of the Hebrew sages' wisdom of order. This subversive impulse is central to the integrity of early Israelite wisdom and is later brought front and center in the sayings attributed to Qohelet and to Jesus in what Williams calls a wisdom of counter-order. In both cases, these sayings, while they share the form of proverbs, differ from proverbs in that their author is known and they tend to subvert rather than inculcate values of normative wisdom. ¹⁴

Proverbs are by no means limited to the biblical literature. The genre has appeared in almost every known society, and it is a ubiquitous rhetorical force in contemporary life. Whether biblical or contemporary, proverbs are brief sayings treat have arisen out of the observation of particular situations. "Different strokes for different folks" epitomizes the qualities of proverbs in general. While it clearly arose out of observing specific situations, it does more than offer a report of something that happened in the past. It is equipped with poetic features that allow it to transcend a specific setting in the past to offer ethical guidance for certain contemporary situations. "Different strokes" contains metaphor: Strokes is a metaphor for ways, means, actions, movements, or approaches. Its poetic features include rhyme (strokes, folks) and repetition ("different" appears twice). All these features taken together make this and other proverbs "easy to say and hard to forget." Like many proverbs, it is in the indicative mood, making an observation about human experience, namely that people are different and have different needs, dreams, attitudes, and habits.

A proverb is a partial generalization, a statement of truth appropriate to specific situations and not to others. It seeks what Thomas G. Long calls an "apt fit" with certain contemporary situations. It is up to the wisdom of the proverb user to decide whether, in a given situation, a given proverb is an ethically clarifying or an inappropriate, even misguided saying. Because they depend so heavily on the wisdom of the proverb user, proverbs are a "risky rhetorical form." It takes wisdom to use wisdom.¹⁵ For example, the biblical proverb "A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger" (Prov. 15:1) would be an ethically clarifying word in a situation within a congregation in which two groups needed to reconcile to achieve a common goal. It would not be appropriate in a situation in which that same faith community needed to take an immediate and vocal stand against vandalism of a local synagogue. Thus, the postmodern proverb "Different strokes for different folks" depends upon the wisdom of interpretive communities to determine whether its invocation will be helpful or misleading. It offers a perspective that can reduce truth claims to matters of personal choices or build respect for diverse human experiences and contexts into theological constructions.

¹⁴ James G. Williams, Those Who Ponder Proverbs: Aphoristic Thinking and Biblical Literature (Sheffield: Almond, 1981), pp. 47-63.

¹⁵ Thomas G. Long, Preaching and the Literary Forms of the Bible (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989), pp. 57-58.

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PROVERBS AND POSTMODERNISM

Roger Lundin correctly observes that a key to understanding the term "postmodern" as a description of contemporary culture is the hyphen buried within it. "In architecture, literature, and theory, postmodern culture focuses upon contemporary culture as an advance upon, or an abandonment of, the modernist movement that was at the center of Western culture in the first five or six decades of this century."¹⁶ Compressed in that unwritten hyphen is postmodernism's announcement of the chapter 11 status of modernism's key presumption: that the solitary self, equipped with its panoply of powers, simply observes the world around it. Over against that presumption, postmodernism claims that the socially situated self constructs the world and is constructed by it. Furthermore, it challenges the notion of universal, objective truth, blurs the line between subject and object, and regards all human truth claims as shaped by the social context of the person-in-community who makes those claims. Postmodernism's insistence on the influence of social context on individual perception spans a variety of disciplines: linguistics, hermeneutics, sociology, history, political science, anthropology, legal theory, literary criticism, comparative literature, and even physics.

In the realm of theological discourse, postmodernism's influence on systematic theology, hermeneutics, and homiletics is, by now, both profound and seemingly irrevocable. Postmodernism challenges the very notion if a; systematic, universal theological schema, insisting on the contextual, socially located origins and accountability of theological truths. Traditional hermeneutics portrayed a disinterested reader approaching a text objectively and extracting a "universally valid interpretation" by applying scientific strategies of historical criticism. Postmodern hermeneutics affirms the contribution of the socially located reader to an interaction between text and reader in which readers both confirm and subvert the text. In its radical, deconstructionist forms, postmodernism asserts that the only meaning texts have are those that interpretive communities bring to them. Modernism in homiletics envisioned the delivery of "the" meaning of a text, gleaned by the objective, disinterested reader and addressed primarily to the cognitive faculties of the hearer. Postmodern homiletics views the contribution of the social location of both preacher and hearer as an integral part of the sermon event.

Despite their ancient lineage, proverbs are a genre with postmodern aspirations. They do not intend to construct a system of order encompassing all of life but, rather, to impose order in particular situations. James Williams describes biblical proverbs as embodying "the conviction that any truth to be found in human existence is to be discovered in manifold actualities or fragments . . . [in] various `occasions' of order rather than a total system."¹⁷ Postmodernism delights in exposing modernism as hope-

¹⁶ Roger Lundin, The Culture of Interpretation: Christian Faith and the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), p. 3.

¹⁷ Williams, Those Who Ponder Proverbs, p. 14.

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lessly mired in the attempt to systematize human experience by means of overarching theological rubrics. In the same spirit, biblical proverbial wisdom has relished its role of being a thorn in the side of the biblical theology movement's campaign to confine biblical revelation to a series of mighty acts of God. At the same time that postmodernism and deconstruction have gained ascendancy in the academy, respect has grown for the distinctive view of revelation represented by biblical proverbial wisdom.

Proverbial wisdom insists that the created order and daily human experience, not just the mighty acts, are loci of Yahweh's revelatory activity. The basic paradox of its view of revelation is that wisdom is a search that is also a gift. Daily human experiences are a field for the operation of both communal insight and divine sovereignty.¹⁸ The search for this insight is decidedly not an inherently humanistic, autonomous endeavor. It can be, of course. A person or community can become what the sages called "wise in their own eyes" (Prov. 3:7), refusing to acknowledge that the search is a gift, reducing reality to a rigid order, and imposing it on the community-an "our-strokes-for-all-folks" approach.
The sages, however, sought not just to impose order on the world but also to listen to the world. Roland Murphy has referred to their stance toward life as "the listening heart" (1 Kings 3:9), their "openness to the

"The sages opened the community to a respect for the complexity of life and the diversify of its interpretations."

world." ¹⁹ The sages' listening heart opened the community to many invaluable insights obscured by the rigidity of those who were "wise in their own eyes." Chief among them was the sense of the limitations of their community's ordering impulse. They punctuate their collection of proverbs with a series of proverbs called the "limit" proverbs. These proverbs are pointed reminders that the best-laid plans are still at the mercy of the unpredictability of life and the sovereignty of a generous but inscrutable God.²⁰

The sages opened the community to a respect for the complexity of life and the diversity of its interpretations. Hence the diversity of valid interpretations on such pressing issues as wealth and poverty and speech and silence in the Book of Proverbs. The presence of what seem to be

¹⁸ Roland Murphy, The Tree of Life: An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature (New York: Doubleday, 1990), pp. 114-115.

¹⁹ Roland Murphy, "Wisdom Theses," in Wisdom and Knowledge, edited by J. Armenti (Philadelphia: Villanova University Press, 1976), pp. 198-199.

²⁰ The limit proverbs are Proverbs 16:1,2,9; 19:21; 20:24; 21:30-31. "The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps" (16:9). "No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel, can avail against the Lord" (21:30).

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contradictory proverbs side by side (for example, Prov 26:4-5) is evidence of the sages' respect for differing interpretations of recurring situations.

This acknowledgment of "different strokes for different folks," however, did not lead the sages to the moral relativism many Christian communities fear in contemporary postmodernism. Rather, it led them to search out the gift of the presence of Yahweh. John Collins sums up their central insight: "No degree of mastery of the rules and maxims of wisdom can confer absolute certainty. Life retains a mysterious and incalculable element, land it is precisely in this incalculable area that Yahweh is encountered.”²¹ The sages' encounter with Yahweh in this "incalculable area" gave birth to twin theological convictions that served as the guidelines for community life and are explicitly stated throughout their proverb collection: Wisdom is a gift from God, and the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.²² These convictions later came to serve as the theological context for Jesus' proverb-like sayings. Increasingly, a number of postresurrection communities interpreted the identity of their teacher in light of the Wisdom of God. Obedience to his often subversive sayings became their active acknowledgment of God as the source of moral insight for daily living.²³

THE WISDOM OF THE CONTEMPORARY PROVERB

While contemporary American proverbs lack the theological context of biblical proverbs, they fulfill a similar social function. They convey "the traditional notions that a group of people have about the nature of man [sic], of the world. and of man's life in the world." Folklorist Alan Dundes

²¹ John J. Collins, "Proverbial Wisdom and the Yahwist Vision," Semeia 17 (1980), p. 10.

²² Fear of the Lord here means the basic recognition that commitment to God is both the motivation for and the ultimate source of insights for daily life. Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, the fear of the Lord has varied meanings. In Isaiah 6, it refers to the awareness of the gulf between the human and the divine; in the Psalms it refers to cultic piety; and in Deuteronomy, to covenant loyalty (Roland Murphy, "The Faith of Qohelet," Word and World 7 [1987], p. 256.) The injunction to fear the Lord punctuates the collection (1:7; 9:10; 15:33) and appears in 31:10 as a kind of conclusion to the book.

²³ The figure of personified Wisdom in Proverbs 1-9 is a metaphor connecting the skills and contributions of women in postexilic Israel with divine wisdom. As such, she is a temporary legitimization of women's social value. Yet, even while proverbial wisdom is spoken by Female Wisdom and taught by mothers as well as fathers, her guidance is directed only to young men, and she images foolishness and community chaos in terms of sexual union with foreign women. Before long in the Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sirach, Woman Wisdom is formally equated with the Torah, taught to and read by males almost exclusively (Claudia V Camp, "Paraenesis: A Feminist Response," Semeia 50 [1990], pp. 247-248).

Jesus' subversive wisdom, which challenged the dominant social, religious order of his day, empowers contemporary silenced groups to subvert the values of dominant cultures that marginalize them. It is absolutely crucial that contemporary christology acknowledge the depth of a male savior's indebtedness to Woman Wisdom. Evidence of this debt is his courage in exposing the limitations of dominant religious, cultural groups which, in each generation seek to reign in both Woman Wisdom and the women on whom she was modeled. As Rosemary Radford Ruether says, a male savior can save women only by being "the prophetic iconoclastic Christ." That is to say, Jesus as subversive sage, now the living Wisdom of God, in the spirit of Personified Wisdom, inspires and empowers women to resist forces that seek to silence their wisdom (To Change the World: Christology and Cultural Criticism [New York: Crossroad, 1990], pp. 53-54).

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labels these notions "cultural axioms."²⁴ A cultural axiom conveyed by many contemporary proverbs is that the human will and effort of the individual are adequate for meeting any challenge. This axiom is conveyed by such proverbs as "Where there's a will, there's a way," "When the going gets tough, the tough get going," and Nike's recently coined proverbial slogans "Just do it," and "Just do it, USA." The self-help movement's "If you need a helping hand, look on the end of your arm" and "When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on" lionize individual human initiative and endurance. Other contemporary proverbs imply compatible cultural axioms. Among these are visual empiricism ("Seeing is believing"), the idea that everything is reducible to a monetary value ("Time is money"; "Everyone has his price"), and the American notion of unlimited good ("There's more where that came from"; "The sky's the limit”).²⁵

These contemporary proverbs are like many biblical proverbs in their emphasis on hard work and discipline as the formula for a successful life. However, their random and opportunistic use by individuals and groups testifies to the fact that proverbs require the wisdom of communities in order to function as wise sayings. Proverbs that advocate healthy self-reliance can be used for personal advancement at the expense of the community; those that advocate a wholesome measure of mental toughness can be used in an automatic equation of suffering with weakness. And a proverb that acknowledges a cornerstone of postmodernism's contribution to Christian communities, that is, the diversity of human experience ("Different strokes for different folks"), can be used to reduce all truth claims to matters of personal preference.

I have little doubt that "Different strokes" will continue to be current in the nineties and into the twenty-first century. I am going to be watching carefully the way in which it is used. "Different strokes," like the postmodernism it captures, can only express its wisdom in a liberating way for Christian communities if they exercise wisdom in its use. A consistent theological context is crucial for our quintessential postmodern proverb's future. Without that context, some Christian communities will gladly retire the proverb to the pages of a proverb collection, like a poisonous pressed flower, fearing that its celebration of diversity is relativity in disguise. Others will be content to literalize it and limit its application to tennis games, rowing; events, and computer keyboards. Lacking a theological compass, others may bloat the proverb from partial truth into a universal moral relativism and lose the ability to distinguish between choices among toasters, cars, lifestyles, and faith claims.

Biblical proverbial wisdom's theological context urges us to allow the partial wisdom of today's faith communities, the "different strokes," to open us to the complexity of the world and one another. Biblical proverbs

²⁴ Alan Dundes, "Folk ideas as Units of Worldview," in Essays in Folkloristics (Meerut: Ved Prakash Vatuk. Folklore Institute, 1978), p. 109.

²⁵ Ibid.

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offer a theological summons to interpret the diversity of interpretation and the limits of human certainty in a risky, faith-filled fashion rather than as a warrant for relativism. They remind us that the mysterious element of life, which no degree of mastery of the rules of human wisdom can dispel, is precisely that arena of life in which an ever-revealing, ever-inscrutable God is encountered. When we view the uncertainty that attends our search for wisdom not as grounds for relativism or defensive tactics but as a summons to faith, biblical wisdom promises us that we will receive a valuable and guiding insight, namely, that our search for wisdom, in all its socially shaped diversity, is a gift from God. Our search is instigated and sustained by the corporate recognition that commitment to God is the ultimate source of insights for daily life. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (Prov. 1:7).

This affirmation is the "setting of silver" within which our quintessential postmodern proverb can become "an apple of gold." In this theological context, the liberating potential of our proverb and of the postmodernism it epitomizes can be realized in contemporary Christian communities: In this silver setting, the uncertainty and diversity of interpretation captured by "different strokes" become not fuel for paranoid fears but a summons to faith. When the "fear of the Lord" is recognized as the beginning of wisdom, "Different strokes for different folks" is set free from relativistic, random usage to become a "word fitly spoken, like apples of gold in a setting of silver" (Prov. 25:11).