Fools, how to avoid them, and how to tell if you have some fool in you.
Today’s chapter covers foolishness, foolish behavior, and general traits of a fool in quite a bit of depth. Here’s a summary of the things fools do, in case you were wondering if you fall into Solomon’s definition of a fool.
- Ill fitting of honor
- Unworthy of delivering messages
- Useless like a lame man’s legs
- Unable to understand proverbs
- A danger to hire
- Repeating the same mistakes over and over again
Sometimes I have felt like these things, other times I have actually done some of these things. Do people in your life come to mind when you read that list? If it’s someone other than you first, you should probably re-read verse 12:
12 Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes?There is more hope for a fool than for him.
Be sure you are not being wise in your own eyes before you start pointing fingers or listing off foolishness of others in your life. It’s also great to get someone in your life that can play the part of identifying your foolishness for you and agreeing to work to remove it from your life. So much freedom comes with such accountability. Once you have someone doing this for you, you can start being this for others. The action in verse 5 should only be take if you are already a recipient of that action in your life:
The real trick with foolishness is that we can stumble into it in many areas in our lives. Be it in our finances, friendships, daily routines and habits, our diet, our exercise or lack thereof, our occupation, foolishness creeps in easily as we let our guard down, as we take our focus off the things that matter; and most easily when we are not willingly allowing ourselves to be held accountable for how we behave in any area of our lives.
So, my encouragement to you, today start the process of finding people whom you can trust to hold you accountable in one or more areas of your life. You may not see the benefits today, or tomorrow, but over time, you will see yourself transforming into someone that is fitting of honor, worthy of delivering messages, useful to others, more understanding of proverbs, desirable to hire, and most importantly someone that learns from their mistakes.