Joker

In a recent moment of pique regarding the actions of a colleague, I rashly labeled them as a fool. If I had taken half a beat to filter my thoughts before I uttered them, I would have said something different, less emotionally charged. I think when most of us toss around the word fool, we use it as a synonym for idiot. As I found a quiet place to cool down after this incident, I began to think about the term "fool" and its different meanings, and I realized that not all of them have such negative connotations. In this series of posts, I wanted to explore the different senses of the word fool.

Fool #1 - Someone whose life is marked by a series of unwise decisions.

I think that we all could provide a list of folks in our lives who we would label as a fool by their consistently bad choices. Typically their lives are marked by a pattern of decisions and actions that lack judgment or sense. Whether they regularly drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol, remain in deep debt by unwise spending choices on items that they can't afford and they don't need, jump from bed to bed sleeping with one sexual partner after another, or whether they live their lives as hypocrites, they can be marked as a fool.

Scripture gives us wise insight regarding such a person,

He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm. Proverbs 13:20

This clearly tells us that getting too close to such a fool can have a long-lasting negative impact on our own lives. Allowing such a person too close to our own lives should cause us to throw up big red flags of DANGER!, lest we allow them to take us down with them.

(Part 1 of 4)