Repeated Folly

For Friday, October 12, 2007
Proverbs 26:11

Like a dog that returns to his vomit
is a fool who repeats his folly.

There are some images we would prefer not to enter our minds! It is nauseating behavior. What possesses a dog to do such a thing? Whatever it is, it is common in dogs. So it is with the fool. Indeed, this is what marks a fool as being a fool. He repeats his foolish behavior as though it is instinct.

All of us commit foolish behavior. We say and do things that afterwards we rue. "What was I thinking?" The mark of a maturing mind is to learn from foolish mistakes. We will make mistakes. We will act foolishly. But if we are maturing, we will learn from them and become wiser.

The fool not only doesn't learn from his folly, he does not catch on that he is committing folly. What disgusts everyone else, he thinks is funny or clever. He doesn't even catch on how others feel about him.

And so man appears before God. It in his great intellect and sophistication he grovels before images that have no reality; he values and praises the ridiculous. He mocks the truly wise. He scoffs at God. He even kills God when he appears. He looks back at God Incarnate and belittles him or turns him into an image that man can be comfortable with. And he thinks he is wise to do so. How does God view such a person? Re-read the proverb.