The Fool

For Friday, December 14, 2007
Proverbs 28:22

Crush a fool in a mortar with a pestle
along with crushed grain,
yet his folly will not depart from him.

It is difficult to change a fool. Try explanation. The fool nods as though understanding; he then acts as if he had received none. Try reasoning with a fool. He argues irrationally so that you become befuddled. Try education. He will take in little, and what he does take in, he will misapply. Try discipline. He may behave better, but still without understanding and likely with resentment.

A likeable fool will at least try to please others and even acknowledge his defficiency (thus being wiser than many a "wise" man). But especially troublesome is the fool who is angry with everyone else for getting it wrong. He goes his whole life offending others and bothered by the reaction of everyone else.

Like a disease that cannot be cured but instead managed, so one must accept for the fool. We will only frustrate ourselves in attempting to change his way of thinking and behavior. We need to think, rather, in terms of setting boundaries so as to restrain his offending behavior and to protect him from his own folly.

And then pray. For though we cannot change a fool, it is the specialty of the Holy Spirit to do just that. After all, consider what he has done in us. Without the Spirit, we also are fools easily going the way of the world. It took the "folly" of the cross to make us wise in Christ.