The Fool

Psalm 14

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”

They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds;

there is none who does good.—Psalm 14:1

The “fool," in biblical parlance, is not an ignoramus, but a rebel. Radical unbelief is rarely a sincere, misguided choice; it is a gesture of defiance. (I think of poor, sad, aging, mostly forgotten Madonna and the cross she wears. It is, by her own admission, a symbol of her contempt for the Church.)

The result of this rebellion is moral and intellectual suicide: Those who fend off God become corrupted and can produce nothing beautiful" (The Hebrew word "good" suggests aesthetic as well as ethical good, which explains why the entertainment industry and other contemporary media are not only corrupt, but banal and lacking in imagination. (As someone has pointed out, “‘medium’ is exactly the right designation, for the television and movie industry for they neither rare nor well-done.) "Claiming to be wise, they become fools" (Romans 1:22).

Radical unbelief is a fool's choice. It has little to do with the intellect, which is why apologetics and argumentation have almost no effect on those who have chosen to turn their faces away from God. 

What then will turn them around? When they see that "God is with the generation of the righteous" (14:5). Put another way, when they see the beauty of Jesus in you and in me.

David Roper

11.8.19