Sermon – “The Way of Folly” (Psalm 14)

On my bookshelves I have a little volume entitled The Darwin Awards. In case you’ve never heard of the Darwin Awards, here is how its author Wendy Northcutt describes them:

Darwin Awards commemorate those individuals who ensure the long-term survival of our species by removing themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion… To qualify, nominees must improve the gene pool by eliminating themselves from the human race using astonishingly stupid means.”[1]

Here is one example from 2005:

One fateful afternoon, 55-year-old Marko retreated to his workshop to make himself a tool for chimney cleaning. The chimney was too high for a simple broom to work, but if he could attach a brush to a chain and then weigh it down with something, that would do the trick. But what could he use as a weight? He happened to have the perfect object. It was heavy, yet compact. And best of all, it was made of metal, so he could weld it to the chain. He must have somehow overlooked the fact that it was also a hand grenade…[2]

I will spare you the gruesome details.

In this morning’s reading from the psalms we meet with a character who makes not infrequent appearances on the pages of the Bible. And while they do not strictly qualify for a Darwin Award, they surely fall into a related category. I am referring to the fool.

In our New International Version Bibles, the word “fool” occurs 182 times—and seventy-two of those occasions are found in the book of Proverbs, where we encounter them in little aphorisms such as these:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. (1:7)

The waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them. (1:32)

The wise inherit honour, but fools get only shame. (3:35)

The wise in heart accept commands, but a chattering fool comes to ruin. (10:8)

We meet with fools in the New Testament as well, particularly in the teachings of Jesus. Perhaps you remember the story of the two house builders—the wise man who built his house on bedrock and his foolish counterpart who went ahead and built his on the sand. Or how about Jesus’ dramatic parable of the rich landowner who spent all his time building more and bigger barns to store his crops? God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you.” And the apostle Paul counsels us, “Do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is” (Ephesians 5:17).

But of all the references to fools in the Bible, it is surely the opening verse of the psalm we have read this morning, Psalm 14:1, that has to be the best known: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ ”

A definition

Author and preacher Eugene Peterson suggests that there are three kinds of atheists in the world. The first are what he describes as subscribing to an atheism that develops out of protest.

Angry about what is wrong with the world, they are roused to passionate defiance. That a good God permits the birth of crippled children, that a loving God allows rape and torture, that a sovereign God stands aside while the murderous régime of a Genghis Khan or an Adolf Hitler runs its course—such outrageous paradoxes cannot be countenanced. So God is eliminated.[3]

A second brand of atheism can often be the result of a quest for intellectual honesty. It is the atheism of the person who has rejected the childish distortions of God that New Testament translator J.B. Phillips described in his little book Your God is Too Small: the celestial killjoy, the parental hangover, the grand old man with a beard, the heavenly bellhop… And on the list goes. But of course as Christians we reject all those false notions as well.

These kinds of atheism [writes Peterson] can be treated with appreciation and respect. The passionately protesting atheist, sensitive to suffering, can be welcomed as a partner in the spiritual and moral struggle against evil… The intellectually discriminating atheist can be accepted as an ally in skeptically rejecting all the popular, half-baked stupidities named “god” that abound in our time…[4]

However, the Bible is not launching a diatribe against atheists of either of those two varieties. For one thing, that kind of unbelief didn’t exist in the ancient Middle East 1000 years BC when David was writing. Atheism, at least as we know it today and represented by writers like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and the late Christopher Hitchens (who have been dubbed the four horsemen of atheism!), is a relatively recent phenomenon.

So who is this psalm about? A more literal rendering of the Hebrew text might help us to understand. Word-for-word the original text runs like this: “The fool says in his heart, ‘No God.’ ” The words “there is” are not there in the Hebrew. They have been supplied by our English translators in the interests of rendering the verse into more fluent English. So what the psalm is referring to is not someone who doesn’t believe in God, but a person who has chosen to ignore God—someone who has decided either that God does not matter or that God has no particular interest in what they do, whether good or bad.

More than that, notice that the fool does not utter this decision aloud. It is a denial that lies hidden deep within the confines of his heart. To quote Peterson once again,

This is a quiet, unobtrusive atheism … These people do not say with their mouths, “There is no God.” To the contrary, they say with their mouths what everyone else says about God. They recite the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer along with the best of them. With their mouths they articulate impressive arguments for God’s existence. With their mouths they demand public prayers and official religion. But in their hearts they say, “There is no God.”[5]

Thus it becomes clear that the word “fool” in the Bible has nothing to do with intelligence or brains. Rather, it is a moral category. A fool is someone who has chosen to live life without reference to God. And as a consequence they have no sense of moral responsibility. We hear more about this sort of individual in Psalm 10:

     He blesses the greedy and reviles the Lord.
In his pride the wicked man does not seek him;
     in all his thoughts there is no room for God…
     Your laws are rejected by him …
He says to himself, “Nothing will ever shake me.”
     He swears, “No one will ever do me harm.” (Psalm 10:4-6)

The apostle Paul offers a stinging criticism of the same kind of person in the opening chapter of his letter to the Romans:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them… Although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools… (Romans 1:18-19,21-22)

A denunciation

I can imagine that if you had heard only the first verse of this psalm, you might be tempted to mentally gaze around your workplace or among your relatives and maybe come up with some suitable candidates—and you probably wouldn’t need much time! Without wishing to be too political, I suspect there are not a few among us who might be tempted point to certain politicians—I’ll leave it to you to choose your favourite.

But before we become too smug, we need to look at the second half of the verse. And what do we find there? The focus shifts, first from the singular (“The fool has said in his heart, ‘No God’ ”) to the plural (“They are corrupt, their deeds are vile”), and then it becomes universal: “There is no one who does good.” And to make his point perfectly clear, the psalmist continues,

The Lord looks down from heaven on the human race
to see if there are any who understand,
     any who seek God.
All have turned away, all have become corrupt;
     there is no one who does good,
     not even one.

We begin to realize that if a finger is pointing anywhere, it is pointing at us all. It is pointing at you. It is pointing at me. There are no exceptions.

Jesus made the point dramatically in the course of that famous incident of the woman caught in adultery. The men had already made a public spectacle of her and were ready to stone her. But then Jesus challenged them, “Let the one who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone.” And the silence that followed was deafening.

Could this be why Jesus warned his followers, “Anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell”? Because folly is the universal human condition. Because there are times in our lives—in my own case, I know there are times every day—when we live without reference to God, when we put God on the back burner, when we choose to travel the road that is broad, because things are so much easier, so much more convenient, without him. We read those early chapters of Genesis thinking they are about someone else, when in reality they are about us. We miss the point that I am Adam; I am Eve.

A deliverance

After all of this, is it any wonder that the psalmist should cry aloud in verse 7, “Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion”? The deliverance we need is as much from our own foolishness as the foolishness of others. And God has chosen to do it through what the Bible calls the foolishness of the cross.

A crown of thorns was shoved mockingly on his head, a purple robe on his back, as the soldiers slapped his face and spat on him and ridiculed him with the words, “Hail, king of the Jews.” A notice was placed above his head in derision: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” The passers-by laughingly shouted, “You who were going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!” The religious leaders sneered, “He saved others, but he can’t save himself!” For all who witnessed the cross on that fateful day, the man who hung there was a fool. What they did not know was that in his suffering and death Jesus was taking into himself the consequences of their folly—and of yours and mine.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God… Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? … Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. (1 Corinthians 1:18,20,22-25)

That the creator of heaven and earth should take upon himself our mortal flesh… That the one who rides upon the heavens should be born as a helpless baby in a broken and persecuted nation… That the hands that formed the dry land and spread out the stars in the sky should be fastened to a cross… It all seems like foolishness. It contradicts every tenet of human logic. But it is the way in which our gracious God has chosen in the lavishness and mystery of his grace.

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” cried the apostle Paul. “How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Romans 11:33-34). “The fool has said in his heart, ‘No God.’ ” We may abandon God. Thank God that he has not abandoned us!

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[1]     The Darwin Awards II: Unnatural Selection, 2,3

[2]     http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2005-09.html

[3]     Earth & Altar, 107

[4]    Earth & Altar, 109

[5]     Earth & Altar, 109