Today is day six of the #iheartBible challenge that I’m hosting. If you have joined up, hooray! I’m glad you’re here. If you want to join up, then awesomesauce. Check out the challenge post for details and join in on the linky so we can all read one another’s posts during the challenge. I love Jesus and blogging, so I’m glad to see people joining in. We’d love to have you join, too.
Today’s verse is Psalm 14.1. Please read it below:
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds,
there is none who does good.
This verse is pretty in-your-face. Well, if you say that there’s no God, that is. According to the verse, if you believe that there is no God, you are fool.
What’s a fool? I think of a court gesture.
My mother thinks that calling someone a fool is one of the most insulting things you can do to a person. Insulting. In fact, I once called someone a fool in front of her and I got the mom look.
Matthew 5.22 says that calling someone a fool will make that person risk being “liable to the hell of fire.”
Intense.
This leads me (and others) to believe that being a fool has an awful connotation in Bible times. I wonder what the equivalent of that would be today. Vulgar words come to mind. Words that I could never type on this blog.
According to some commentaries that my husband just pulled out of his collection, calling someone a “fool” in the Bible would be like very bitterly expressing hatred toward someone–committing murder in the heart against that person.
Wow.
Just. Wow.
These days, when we literally say the words, “I pity the fool…” we don’t really mean that we hate the person. I mean, it’s one of those funny things that Mr. T says. In this respect, we usually mean something like: “I pity the silly-face,” or “I pity the goofball…”
In context, the word “fool” in this verse refers to a Godless person, a rebel.
This very easily leads to the rest of the verse; a Godless rebel are corrupt and do horrible things. Not good things. A Godless person has no good influence in his/her life. A Godless person will not care about others and will likely not care for him/herself.
This is an observation David made, anyway, when he penned the psalm. He obviously had seen his share of Godlessness. He’d seen God’s mercy bestowed upon him endlessly, but he had also seen evil. He’d stared into the face of evil. He’d done evil. And he’d been forgiven of evil.
David knew the significance of Godliness and the dangers of Godlessness.
What a deep verse. I am glad this verse showed up and I have no idea who suggested it. But now I better understand the concept of a “fool” in the Bible.
Be Godly,
