Sunday, September 09, 2012

The Follower of the Fool


Psalms 49:13 KJV
This their way is their folly: yet their posterity approve their sayings. Selah.

Barnes Notes says,
“The idea is, that it is folly for a man to cherish these hopes; to feel that wealth is of so much importance; to imagine that it can deliver from the grave; to suppose that he can perpetuate his own name, and secure his possessions in his own family upon the earth. And yet the world is still full of people as foolish as were those in the time of the psalmist.”

More foolish than the fool is the man who follows the fool.

I have seen in my few years this folly both among the unbelievers and believers. I have witnessed and, to my chagrin, recognized in my own being the tendency to follow after family friends and peers, repeating their patterns even when I know or at least am suspicious that those patterns are foolish.

Men tend to cling to their circles of friendships so strongly; we tend to be so dependent upon those who have become our "herd" that we would follow our herd off the cliff rather than to risk the loneliness of being rejected by that same herd.

It is true that God calls us sheep and one of the strongest qualities of a sheep is his herd mentality. But there is a remedy offered the sheep who finds himself in a foolish flock; God has provided a Great Shepherd who calls His sheep to follow Him and not the flock. The most foolish fool is the one who continues to follow the fool.

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