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The Advice of Fools

By Dan S. Shipley

 “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. . .“ Who, better than his Creator, knows what it takes to make man truly happy? He not only knows it, He has told it! He has told it in such passages as the first two verses of Psalms, a portion of which is noted above. Here, we are shown that happiness involves more than just doing and having. What we don’t do can be a factor too. Like, for instance, not being influenced by the advice of ungodly people.

But who are the ungodly? Properly identifying them is essential if we are to shun their counsel and attain the resultant blessedness. But aren’t they just the atheists and infidels? Yes, but not “just”! These represent only a small and more obvious segment of a mostly unrecognized host who are without regard or reverence for God. Not that they try to hide it— it‘s only that they are not considered ungodly by others who are either like them or who have a too-limited concept of ungodliness. The ungodly are not necessarily mean and unprincipled criminal types as commonly thought. In fact, they may be a sincere, honest and benevolent sort of people, of good reputation and high morals. But such qualities are not always attributable to God-related influences. The ungodly are those who are uninfluenced by God. Whether by design or by neglect, they have no place for Him in their lives. They are such as have either disregard or defiance for the person of God.

It is this sort of a person whose counsel is not to be followed because they show themselves to be foolish in their ungodliness. There is no greater fool than the man God calls a fool. Among those so labeled is the one who says there is no God (Ps. 14:1) and the one who lives as if there is no God (Lk. 12:16-20). Theirs is the advice of fools. Their counsel does not take into account the existence, the sovereignty or the will of God, let alone man’s accountability to Him. They ignore that vital and eternal part of man that is after God’s image. Their advice is oriented to externals, toward the material and temporal; it is based on the anti-scriptural concept that man can live by “bread alone” (Matt. 4:4). Their urgings are flavored with the notion that man is as well off without God as with Him. To be influenced by the counsel of men who refused to be influenced by the counsel of God is to become as foolish as they.

And yet, we see that the advisor’s chair is too often occupied by the ungodly and influential character at whose feet flock multitudes, impressionable youth included, where they imbibe the poisonous counsel of fools. There they have “learned” of their ape ancestry; that the Bible is little more than antiquated folklore and of the “new” morality of taffy-ethics. From both sought (and paid for) and from uninvited counsel comes the encouragement to “do your thing” (even if illegal or immoral); “look out for number one”; “when in Rome...“ and similar foolish advice. Take it! —if you want to be miserable. But God says happy is the man who shuns it—and whose delight and meditation is in God’s law. He should know. And we should learn.   

 Other Articles by Dan S. Shipley
It Won't Wash Off
They Kept Right On
Last Things First