“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good” (Psalm 53:1).

In Scripture, a fool is one who is spiritually blind. A person can be quite intelligent and still be a fool.

In His stinging rebuke of the “scribes and Pharisees” (Matthew 23:2–36) who were the lawyers and scholars of His day, Christ called them (among other things), “ye fools and blind” (vv.17,19) who even killed the “wise men” (v.34) sent unto them.

As seen in our text, there is a correspondence between foolish behavior and a chosen lifestyle of evil. As Christ told Nicodemus, “this is the condemnation, that Light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). Without doubt, the unwillingness to give up a sinful lifestyle has kept many a “fool” from accepting the free gift of salvation.

King Solomon, perhaps the wisest man who ever lived, mentioned fools and foolishness over 100 times in his writings. He had been granted great wisdom by God as a young man (I Kings 3:12; 4:29–31). But there came a time when even Solomon chose darkness over light, by marrying many pagan wives who “turned away his heart after other gods” (I Kings 11:4) and which caused him, eventually, to devote his energies to pleasure and wealth. During this time, he would perhaps have found a kinship with the evolutionary humanists, who, “professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22).

But when he was old, he returned to write wise counsel. “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not. . . . Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments” (Ecclesiastes 12:1,13). JDM