“Honor is no more associated with fools than snow with summer or rain with harvest. Like a fluttering sparrow or a darting swallow, an undeserved curse will not land on its intended victim. Guide a horse with a whip, a donkey with a bridle, and a fool with a rod to his back! Don’t answer the foolish arguments of fools, or you will become as foolish as they are. Be sure to answer the foolish arguments of fools, or they will become wise in their own estimation. Trusting a fool to convey a message is like cutting off one’s feet or drinking poison! A proverb in the mouth of a fool is as useless as a paralyzed leg. Honoring a fool is as foolish as tying a stone to a slingshot. A proverb in the mouth of a fool is like a thorny branch brandished by a drunk. An employer who hires a fool or a bystander is like an archer who shoots at random. As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his foolishness. There is more hope for fools than for people who think they are wise.”
Proverbs 26:1-12 NLT
The antonym of wisdom is foolishness, but the enemy of wisdom is pride. Solomon drives his point home about foolishness in this passage. He points out how destructive it is to be foolish, both to the wise and to the foolish. This is in juxtaposition to the fruit produced by the wise. When a person is wise, it helps everybody prosper together. But it is dangerous to even entertain a fool. In fact, a fool is so volatile in their outcomes that you stop them, but it is certainly dangerous to do so. Yet, he ends the passage by citing the enemy of wisdom, not as foolishness, but as pride. Though it might be difficult to understand, this is because the two behaviors are not merely correlated, one creates the other. The son of pride is the fool. The son of the fool is destruction. No fool becomes prideful from being a fool. Being foolish knocks him down. Yet pride fuels the foolishness no matter how low he has fallen. It is pride which blinds him to seeing wisdom. Pride makes him drunk on his own thoughts. Pride only leaves as it hands one over to Death. Praise God that Christ conquers Death. This is why it is so dangerous for a Christian to not die to self. If they do not, they inevitably allow pride to render them a fool again.
JOSH McGARY.COM 