No, this isn’t a post about the 1962 hit by Anthony Newley. It is about the existential question the book of Proverbs begs us to consider in nearly every chapter. For the Bible has a LOT to say about being a fool. The first mention of which appears in vs. 7 of chapter 1: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

Newley’s song, co-written with Leslie Bricusse, is a lament about the loneliness, emptiness and self-doubt that plagues a person who never risked the kind of vulnerability that loving another deeply requires.

Proverbs on the other hand, often appeals to the wretched condition of one who never trusted themselves to the revelation of God in His Word, and ends up too in loneliness, emptiness and self-doubt.

Even worse.

Newley’s song never gives an answer as to why he remained that way.

Proverbs does: “Fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

In a nutshell, the Fool, is the one who takes the very notion of God lightly (the idea behind the word “despise” here), and takes true wisdom and instruction lightly. He or she does not know that one cannot understand the universe and the meaning of human life, apart from fearing the God who made it all.

If He is not in His rightful place in our thoughts, we can know nothing of the truth, only uncontextualized facts.

Fools do not want a sovereign God.

An untamable God.

A demanding God.

A holy God.

A judging God.

A God with absolute rights.

A God who is to be feared on any level.

One who imposes Himself in any aspect of life – and who cannot be quantified and harnessed to their own wills.

This is what makes a fool.

The Fool wants fantasy above reality.

I pray this is not you.

Flee to Him today.

Own the self-evident reality of this God. Believe the Gospel and be saved. For this God, so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that all who believe in Him would not die, lost as they are, but have everlasting life.

Only a fool, would refuse the obvious and heralded truth.