Give a Fish or Teach to Fish?

You know the old adage…

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; show him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. – Anne Isabella Ritchie (1837 – 1919)

If you are one who is viewed as an expert in a field, you will have a choice to make every time you are asked a question.  Do you answer it, or show the questioner how to dig out the answer for themselves?  Sometimes you have no choice you have to answer the question.  For me that is the last thing I want to do.  I only do that if there is no option to show how to fish.

It happened again this week.  I was on a conference call with a person in another country.  We were working through a particularly difficult issue for most people in the Bible.  We worked through a fairly long passage together with me showing him how the structure of the passage helped one understand what was being said by the author.

At the end of the time he asked me to send him a message on the topic that he could translate into his language and use to teach his people.  As I was reiterating his request to make sure that I understood what he was asking, I realized this was an opportunity for fishing lessons.  So I told him I would send him some passages to study on the topic and we would work through them together so he could come up with the message.

That way he is not dependent on me.

We need to do this with our kids as well.  I wrote about this earlier it is worth another look...