Matthew 7:6 -
6 ¶Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.
How is this not saying "discretion in who you tell things to"?
Yes, but for what reason(s)? St. John Chrysostom (d. 407) says in his first homily on Matthew that it is to not give succor to the enemies of God. He uses the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden as an example:
But let us see what he (the serpent) saith. "What is this that God hath said, thou shalt not eat of every tree?" Assuredly indeed God did not say this but the opposite. See the villany of the Devil. He said that which was not spoken, in order that he might learn what was spoken. What then did the woman? She ought to have silenced him, she ought not to have exchanged a word with him. In foolishness she declared the judgment of the Master. Thereby she afforded the Devil a powerful handle.
See what an evil it is to commit ourselves rashly to our enemies, and to conspirators against us. On this account Christ used to say, "Give not holy things to the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before the swine, lest they turn and rend you." And this happened in the case of Eve. She gave the holy things to the dog, to the swine. He trod under foot the words: and turned and rent the woman.
And St. Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258) explains it in the context of an epistle against his opponent, Demetrianus, characterizing him as a man who had no desire to learn, but instead to simply declare his own views:
I had frequently, Demetrianus, treated with contempt your railing and noisy clamour with sacrilegious mouth and impious words against the one and true God, thinking it more modest and better, silently to scorn the ignorance of a mistaken man, than by speaking to provoke the fury of a senseless one. Neither did I do this without the authority of the divine teaching, since it is written, "Speak not in the ears of a fool, lest when he hear thee he should despise the wisdom of thy words; " and again, "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him." And we are, moreover, bidden to keep what is holy within our own knowledge, and not expose it to be trodden down by swine and dogs, since the Lord speaks, saying, "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." For when you used often to come to me with the desire of contradicting rather than with the wish to learn, and preferred impudently to insist on your own views, which you shouted with noisy words, to patiently listening to mine, it seethed to me foolish to contend with you; since it would he an easier and slighter thing to restrain the angry waves of a turbulent sea with shouts, than to check your madness by arguments. Assuredly it would be both a vain and ineffectual labour to offer light to a blind man, discourse to a deaf one, or wisdom to a brute; since neither can a brute apprehend, nor can a blind man admit the light, nor can a deaf man hear.
And Pope St. Clement of Rome (d. 99 or 101 AD) invokes the same passage in his First Epistle on Virginity while teaching Christians how they should comport themselves in non-Christian lands:
If, moreover, it chance that we go to a place in which there are no Christians, and it be important for us to stay there a few days, let us be "wise as serpents, and harmless as doves; and let us "not be as the foolish, but as the wise," in all the self-restraint of the fear of God, that God may be glorified in everything through our Lord Jesus Christ, through our chaste and holy behaviour. For, "whether we eat, or drink, or do anything else, let us do it as for the glory of God." Let "all those who see us acknowledge that we are a blessed seed," "sons of the living God," in everything-in all our words in shamefastness, in purity, in humility, forasmuch as we do not copy the heathen in anything, nor are as believers like other men, but in everything are estranged from the wicked. And we "do not cast that which is holy before dogs, nor pearls before swine;" but with all possible self-restraint, and with all discretion, and with all fear of God, and with earnestness of mind we praise God. For we do not minister where heathens are drinking and blaspheming in their feasts with words of impurity, because of their wickedness. Therefore do we not sing psalms to the heathens, nor do we read to them the Scriptures, that we may not be like common singers, either those who play on the lyre, or those who sing with the voice, or like soothsayers, as many are, who follow these practices and do these things, that they may sate themselves with a paltry mouthful of bread, and who, for the sake of a sorry cup of wine, go about "singing the songs of the Lord in the strange land" of the heathen, and doing what is not right.
You could certainly argue that in some of these there is a sense of withholding information from people, which is not generally what is to be done. However, this is because of the context of each of these situations which mandates that for these specific scenarios there is a better way to deal with the reality of the situation. Being open to others does not mean bringing sacred things before those who will blaspheme against God or anything like that, but we cannot therefore be hiding things from people who sincerely seek answers from us. The prince of the apostles St. Peter tells us that we must always have an account for our hope! (1 Peter 3:5)
Anyway, in the first passage, we are dealing with a situation wherein it did more damage to correct than to simply avoid ("she ought not to have exchanged a word him"). In the second, we are dealing with someone who has no true desire to learn anything. In the third, we are in a situation where there is no appropriate way to share the gospel, as we are not to preach in the assemblies of the heathen (think of how inappropriate it would be for a Christian to barge into a mosque and start reciting the gospel there, in the midst of the Muslims' prayers; that would not be appropriate in either religion), and presumably the people would deal with us as common singers, cheapening the message in the process (think of all the discussions that have gone on here where Mormons have pointed out that crosses may be purchased out of 25-cent prize machines or whatever; we both agree that this is not a good state of affairs).
Do any of these fit the thread? If they do, which ones and how do they do so? If not, why not just answer the questions in the OP?
