A fool’s lips walk into a fight, and his mouth invites a beating.
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” Alexander Pope wrote, and the line is no glory to fools. As it turns out, when angels fear to tread somewhere, that somewhere is probably inadvisable to tread upon. The fool enters there not because he is brave but because he shut his eyes or neglected to add 2 to 2.
We live in a world of many dangers, physical, social, and spiritual. The fool’s interaction with physical dangers is perhaps the most apparent. He’ll do the most harebrained stunts, with a middling survival rate, not because he calculated the risk and decided jumping off the roof with a parachute was worth the try, but because he figures it couldn’t be that bad (splat). Other, slower, subtler ways of foolishness exist, though. Eating food in excess, without regard for health or long-term consequences, probably with little care for the financial aspect, this foolishness too brings a metaphorical beating. Over-indulgence in alcohol, leisure time, or work (which can be an excuse as much as an occupation), all these can be foolishness leading to retribution.
The fool’s social folly also causes him issues. Most obviously, the fool can mouth off to the wrong person and get a literal beating. Foolishness, however, need not be so physical. Foolishness can be quiet selfishness, disregard for the thoughts and lives of others, leading to hurt and to broken relationships. Foolishness in relationships can be anger, laziness, obtuseness (born of lacking diligence), selfishness (whether material or in how I conceive of others, as iterations of myself rather than other people), fear, pride, envy (a terrible poison and manifestation of covetousness), or something else. Regardless, it brings a ‘beating’ in the end- a relationship which is broken, a relationship which inflicts great pain on all participants (though perhaps the fool experiences it more as a lack of a benefit he never recognized the need for).
We must recognize that in all cases we are a little bit foolish. We take care of our health, but we’re imperfect in doing so (that one day, it seemed too much to take the supplements; that one week, proper dieting was too much to fit in). Lapses are very often not originally moral failures, but too often we get ourselves in more trouble than we need to because of lack of self-discipline (Mark 9:50).
Our perpetual leaven of foolishness is more apparent in social (and spiritual) interactions. Can you say that the last meaningful conversation you had was perfect? Was there no way to improve it, on your end? I certainly know that my understanding of my family, as thorough as I seek to be, is flawed, warped by the myopia of a me-centered perspective. Yet all too often in interacting with them I intuit without consideration for my flawed perspective, letting my passions rule even just a little. Does this bring disaster? No. Strong relationships don’t break that easily. Strong relationships are built in part to take that load. But these small follies bring more pain and suffering than need be.
The root of all this foolishness is spiritual foolishness. Spiritual foolishness, more than any other sort, is ‘cruising for a bruising.’ Sin recoils upon the sinner just as it lashes out against the world. Every act of rebellion against God is a grenade or a bomb dropped on the sinner’s own feet, an assault upon the foundations of the world. To say, ‘There is no God’ (Ps. 53:1) is at once the fundament of sin and the summit, the damnation of pagan man.
Even a Christian, though, is on this earth still a sinner (1 John 1:7-10). From personal experience, I can say with Paul that “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand” (Rom. 7:21). Foolishness lurks deep in my heart and drips off my fingers, wriggles within the root of my tongue. So I sin, and my sin is foolishness which rebounds upon me suffering. In part, this suffering is the just judgement and natural result of sin; the man who sins greases the steps before he descends the ladder. However, by God’s grace, the judgement due to sin is made not into my destruction but into discipline. “The Lord disciplines the one He loves” (Heb. 12:6), and thus the ‘beating’ which the Christian’s foolishness brings upon him is in the end an urging on to salvation, to behold and rejoice in the glory of God face-to-face.
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
