9 ¶ Speak not in the ears of a fool: for he will despise the wisdom of thy words.
Proverbs has given us several warnings not to waste our time arguing with a fool. He or she isn’t interested in advice, wisdom, or understanding. They are in love with their own foolish ways.
Proverbs 10:8 The wise in heart will receive commandments: but a prating fool shall fall.
Proverbs 10:23 It is as sport to a fool to do mischief: but a man of understanding hath wisdom.
Proverbs 13:19 The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul: but it is abomination to fools to depart from evil.
Proverbs 12:15 The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.
Proverbs 17:10 A reproof entereth more into a wise man than an hundred stripes into a fool.
Proverbs 18:2 A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself.
Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
We know from previous Leviticus 26:15 and 1Samuel 2:30 and other verses that to despise something is to hold it in low regard and even to abhor or detest it.
For example, since 1966 cigarette packages in the United States have at least had the warning on them “Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health”. That’s forty five years. Smokings link to cancer and emphysema and heart disease is well established. It sucks the moisture and beauty from a woman’s skin and takes away the ability to breathe normally. You can see its effects all around you in the world. How many fools still smoke or will start smoking cigarettes?
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approximately a third of all traffic fatalities involve a blood alcohol level of .08 or above. And yet, fools still get tanked up at the bar and drive their cars anyway. Alcohol’s effect in even small amounts can affect mood and conditions like chronic depression for up to a week after a single drink. It affects judgment in even small amounts and slows down reaction time. It damages the unborn with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. It plays a huge part in domestic violence and abuse. And yet, fools still think they can drink socially or “recreationally” and suffer no negative effects.
Pornography is a factor in divorce, especially internet pornography. In fact, the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, at a meeting in 2003, is reported to have said that online porn contributed to over half the divorce cases they handled in the previous year. Again, more recently, according to Business Insider reporting a study done in 2010 by onlinemba.com there are 24 million porn websites on the internet, every second $3100 is spent on internet porn and 28,200 people are looking at it, 1 in 3 porn viewers are women, 70% of men aged 18-24 visit porn sites each month, in the US internet porn pulls in about $3 billion while worldwide its only $5 billion, 2.5 billion emails every day or 8% of all emails are porn, 25% of all search engine requests in a single day or 68 million requests are porn related, 35% of all downloads per day are pornographic, the average age that a child sees online porn is 11, 20% of men admit to watching porn at work,and the most popular day of the week for viewing porn is Sunday.
More than half of child molesters in one study claimed to use pornography to prepare for acts of sexual violence against a child.
And yet, in spite of all this information, fools still think they can look at porn and not be affected negatively.
Fools do not want to hear wisdom, sound advice, or the truth. Its sport to them to do mischief. They wink with the eye and laugh off any correction. What’s worse, they go down to the pit and drag everyone simple and naïve enough to go with them.
We’re not perfect in either the world’s sense or the Bible’s. We make no claim to perfection in moral living. I’m not pretending to be someone I’m not. I’m telling you that I’m weak and sinful and prone to fall into temptation’s trap and because of that there are just some things I can’t associate with. But, we warn people about sin, about Hell, about the Lake of Fire. We tell them about Christ, about God’s free gift of salvation. Christians exhort, admonish, teach, pass out tracts, cajole, inflame, rebuke, invite and almost everything else we can do to get the unsaved to consider what God has provided for them. And yet billions of fools will end up in Hell because they hold that wisdom in utter contempt.
I could go on and on about fools still believing that abortion isn't the murder of an innocent individual or, like Darwin, in Chapter 6 of his book Descent of Man, that we evolved from monkeys, that random chance could even “create” one functioning amino acid to establish life, and that fools still believe that mathematical impossibility in spite of the fact that the probablilty of life happening on earth by chance is about the same as a tornado going through a junk yard and leaving behind a fully functional 747 airplane but that could go on for volumes.
More importantly, in any given fundamentalist church service you have to wonder, is there a fool who has sat in there, heard the Pastors, the evangelists, the lay people, the Sunday School teachers, and the testimonies from the congregation, week after week, and yet, remains a fool who has not submitted his or her life to Christ? I didn’t say submit to the Pastor’s personal opinions or charisma, submit to the church organization, submit to the practices of American Christian culture, submit to the dictates of right wing or left wing politics or submit to a political party, submit to a creed, submit to extra-Biblicial traditions, or the demands of some strong willed leader in the congregation. I said submit to Christ, the one who created you. Is there a fool who actually despises God’s wisdom that bad after hearing it week after week and who still thinks he or she can’t accept Christ because Christians aren’t perfect?
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