God Has No Pleasure In Fools
FOOLS –
“The Way”
Sir
Robert Anderson
GOD has
no pleasure in fools, the Book of Ecclesiastes tells us - that wonderful
treatise upon the philosophy of life.
"Be more ready to hear than to give the sacrifice of fools."
"Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to
utter anything before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth; therefore
let thy words be few."
"When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for He hath
no pleasure in fools."
Fools are of different types; and, as a reference
to the Hebrew will tell us, it is "the fat fool" that is
here intended.
Not that
he is always fat; and if any one assumes that men are fools because they are
fat he will soon find out his mistake.
But the
fat fool is the "type."
We all
know him. And we are disposed to like him; for he is generally an amiable sort
of creature, with no malice, and not a little good nature.
If his
good resolutions were realised, he would be counted a saint; and if he carried
out his projects he might pass for a genius.
But he
has neither strength of will nor force of character for achievements of any
kind.
This is
one of many passages of Scripture intended to warn us against trifling with
God.
It tells
us that it is better not to make vows than to make them and then leave them
unpaid.
It
reminds us, moreover, that the God of revelation is the God of nature. For
nature is stern and unpitying with fools.
And the
revelation of Grace in the Gospel is not, as some suppose, an effort on God’s
part to make amends for what they deem His lapses and mistakes in bygone ages.
Neither
is it a setting aside of the great principles of His government.
On the
contrary, it is a provision for bringing fallen men to blessing and peace by bringing
them into harmony with those eternal principles.
God has
no pleasure in fools. And Grace has failed of its due effect upon the heart and
life if a man does not cease to be a fool when he becomes, in the true sense of
the word, a Christian.
"But," someone
will exclaim, "are we not told to
become fools for Christ’s sake ?"
Yes, and
people are apt to make this an excuse for playing the fool, which is not at all
what it means.
A
Christian may seem to his fellowmen to be a fool. But it is one thing to be a
fool, and quite another thing to seem to be a fool.
A man
once built a great ship far inland. He must have been reckoned the greatest
fool of his day; but as events proved, he was the only wise man.
For "things
not seen as yet" were realities to Noah. Everybody saw them
afterwards when it was too late.
I
remember the case of a young man who married a moneyless girl and then sailed
for Australia, taking with him his bride and what little money he could scrape
together; it was only about £600.
When the
two families heard that he had used his capital in buying some land in an
out-of-the-way place, they said he ought to be shut up in a lunatic asylum.
But there
was gold in that piece of land, and when, some years later, I met him in
London, he was very rich; and the relatives had given up talking about lunatic
asylums.
The
Christian is a follower of Him who likened Himself to a man that parts with all
that he has in order to buy a field, because he knows there is treasure hidden
in it.
The
Christian acts in the present with a view to the future. For he knows, that
while the things which are seen are temporal, the things which are not seen are
eternal.
But the "fat fool" is not the worst
type of fool. Though his "thoughts" never come to anything, he means
well.
But the
fool who is pilloried in the fourteenth and fifty-third Psalms has thoughts
that are positively evil, and they govern his conduct.
"The
fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."
In his
heart, mark; for the Bible never contemplates folly so gross as to say it
openly.
The only
atheists are the apostates; for there is no darkness so dense as that which
covers us when some strong clear light is quenched.
"I had rather believe all
the fables in the Legend and the Talmud than that this universal frame is
without a mind." These were Bacon’s words.
"The understanding revolts
at such a conclusion," is Darwin’s repudiation of the suggestion that
"blind chance" could account for "that grand sequence of
events" of which biology treats.
Herbert
Spencer proclaimed this sort of academic atheism; but, here in England at
least, notwithstanding the efforts of a clique of second-rank scientists,
Spencerism is as dead as its author.
As any
intelligent thinker can see, his objections to the hypothesis of creation apply
with far greater force to his figment of abiogenesis.
The word
used for "fool" in these Psalms of David has no kinship with
Solomon’s fool in the passage above quoted from Ecclesiastes.
I wonder whether, when David here wrote the word “nabal,”
his thoughts glanced back to his wife Abigail’s first husband, the man of whom
she said, "Nabal is his name, and folly is with him."
The man who was "very
great" and very rich, but who was "churlish
and evil in his doings," and who repelled David’s courteous appeals
with insult.
Proud of
his wealth and greatness, he despised David.
That same night, we read, "he held a feast in his
house like the feast of a king." "But it came to pass about ten days
after that he died."
In one of
his parables our Divine Lord pictures for us a fool of the Nabal type.
Such an one is "he that layeth up treasure for himself
and is not rich toward God."
God has a
place in the creed of his lips, but the creed of his heart is atheistic; and
the creed of his heart finds expression in his acts.
So,
forgetting the Giver of all his heaped-up blessings, he lays himself out for a
life of ease and sensual enjoyment.
"But," the parable proceeds, "God said unto him, Thou
fool: this night thy soul shall be required of thee."
For such
a man, to live is self, and to die is loss.
The
sixteenth chapter of Luke brings before us fools of both types. It is one of
the perverted chapters of the Bible.
The
popularly accepted version of it may be summarised as follows:
A certain
rich man had a steward who was accused of robbing him. So he gave him notice of
dismissal. The steward then set himself to rob him more flagrantly than ever;
and, his master commended him for his cleverness.
Never,
surely, did rustic preacher propound anything sillier to a company of yokels!
And in answer to the ridicule which it naturally
excited, the Teacher then propounded another parable, with the moral, "Woe to the rich; blessed are the poor
" - thus seeking to cover mere nonsense by pestilent error.
Indeed,
if error and nonsense were solid, enough has been said and written upon the
sixteenth chapter of Luke to sink the biggest ship that ever put to sea!
In these
parables we have a series of exquisite pictures drawn by the hand of the Master
to illustrate the great life - choice.
In the prodigal of the preceding chapter we have
the case of one who "wasted" his "portion of goods" in the
pursuit of selfish and sinful pleasure, but who afterwards repented and was
restored.
In the steward we have the case of one who wasted
his master’s "goods" by unthrift and neglect, but who repented and
was forgiven.
And in
the rich man of the closing parable of the series, we have one who lived for
this world and died impenitent.
This "steward" was a typical "fat
fool." He was "unrighteous" in the sense
that he was not a true steward; unrighteous in the sense in which the money is
called "unrighteous mammon."
Not because it was what men call bad money, but
because the best of good money is not "the true riches." He was
a listless, easy-going man who let things slide, leaving debts uncollected, and
allowing accounts to run on.
He was
thus wasting his master’s property. It was a case of habitual carelessness, not
of definite acts of dishonesty. His dishonesty was of the passive kind.
And what
earned for him his employer’s praise was not his dishonesty at all, but his
action when brought to book, and dishonesty of any kind was no longer possible.
Instead
of making enemies of his master’s debtors by suddenly forcing payment of
long-standing accounts, he set himself to make them his friends - to place them
under obligation to him - by giving them receipts in full for payment in part,
making good the balance from his own money.
And this, as he said, in order that, when he was
put out of the stewardship, they might receive him into their houses. This is
the whole point of the parable. Its lessons are explained by the Lord Himself:
"Make to yourselves friends by means of the mammon of
unrighteousness, that when it shall fail ye may be received into the
everlasting tabernacles."
It is not
meant to teach us that roguery is commendable.
The moral
is akin to that of the parable of the treasure hid in a field, namely, the
wisdom of incurring a seeming loss in order to secure a real gain; of using the
present in view of the future; of living in a world which is "passing
away," though apparently so real, under the power of that other
world which, though unseen, is abiding and eternal.
It is the
enforcement, in a higher sphere, of that which is a common-place with "the
children of this world."
For no man ever achieves success who has not
learned to make "today" subordinate to "tomorrow" who
is not ready to yield some immediate advantage in order to secure a prospective
gain.
It is the
philosophy of the man who foregoes pleasure for the sake of business, or who
parts with his money in order to secure a provision for old age.
The opposite extreme is a case like that of Esau, "who,
for one morsel of meat, sold his birthright "- bartered his future
to secure enjoyment in the passing hour.
And the
Esau’s are many in every age - men and women who give way to some strong
passion, or even, it may be, to some passing whim, at the cost of their whole
life prospects.
If the
popular reading of the parable were right, the words which follow would be
quite unmeaning.
Rogues
are often shrewd and careful in dealing with their ill-gotten gains; but many a
man who may be trusted absolutely with what belongs to others is thriftless and
careless with his own.
And so the Lord adds, "If ye have not been
faithful in that which is another’s, who shall give you that which is your
own?"
Spiritual
gifts are our own: the mammon is entrusted to us as stewards.
How false, then, is the notion that the life of the
Christian is divided into watertight compartments, the religious being
shut off from the secular!
The
Christian is as really God’s servant in the one sphere as in the other.
And this
leads to the final lesson. The Christian is to use the world; but if he is
betrayed into using it excessively, it becomes his master.
And though mammon be a good servant, it is an evil
master. Moreover, "No servant can serve two masters. . . . Ye cannot serve God and
mammon."
But with the money-loving Pharisee this via
media is the ideal life. "Making the best of both worlds," it is called.
But this
God will not tolerate. We must choose between them, and the next parable is given
to guide our choice.
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