How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?”
~ Proverbs 1:22
Wisdom can be defined as God’s perfect plan, principle, and perception for every situation. Additionally, in the book of Proverbs, “Wisdom” is often personified. And, in our text (above), this personified Wisdom challenges us to answer three questions:
- How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity?
- How long will the scorners delight in their scorning?
- How long will fools hate knowledge?
Do you have everything figured out?
The first question that Wisdom asks is, “How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity?” This question can be rephrased as: “How long will you, live according to your own made-up version of how life works?”
Complexity
Life is complex beyond our comprehension. There are innumerable inputs, countless factors, and endless relationships for us to process altogether. It’s even too much for supercomputers or for AI to compute.
Otherwise, we would have perfect weather forecasts. And we could even predict the future.
But we can’t.
O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walks to direct his steps.
Jeremiah 10:23
Biases and Desires
To make things even worse, as humans, we are vulnerable to both our biases and our desires. Those biases and desires make it difficult to examine life objectively. For example, suppose you have a sweet tooth (bias) and are very hungry (desire). Typically, under those conditions, you will find it harder to make the best choices while in a pastry shop.
How then can anyone, by his/her own reasoning, hope to understand life?
How can we decipher the right choices to make in each situation that arises?
Look to God for help!
Added together, the extreme complexity of life and our personal prejudices makes navigating life perfectly impossible.
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord.
Isaiah 55:8-9
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
Scammers and con artists know this to be true. They know that it’s hard for people, despite their best efforts, to always see through their schemes. And they know that our minds can be manipulated. They know that they can leverage our wants/desires to persuade us to make bad choices. And they prove it every day.
Back to the the question. We choose to go our own way because we believe we don’t need God’s help. Essentially, we believe that life is simple.
But that is the approach of a simpleton. While enduring the unpredictability of life and the consequences of their decisions, most people learn that life is far more difficult, far more complex, than they thought it was. So many look back wishing they had someone to help them avoid making some painful mistakes.
How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity?
Consider Eve
The original con artist, satan, deceived Eve by preying on her weaknesses (Genesis 3). After talking to the devil, Eve thought that if she ate the fruit, she would become like God.
But, she didn’t ask why the devil was prompting her to eat the fruit. Or why the serpent didn’t eat the fruit himself. She didn’t question whether the serpent was lying. She didn’t consider what would happen if she did become “like God”.
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.
Proverbs 3:5-6
Even if Eve had tried to think it through, predicting the complex consequences of her choice was too difficult. She had no way of calculating how her decision would affect the rest of her life.
Eve didn’t factor in her relationship with God, or how her decision would affect her husband. She simply wanted the opportunity to become wise independently of God (Genesis 3:6c). In other words, she wanted to make her own decisions about life and how to live it.
“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.”
~ Psalm 119:105
How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity?
The question is encouraging us to realize that we cannot make good/wise decisions on our own. We need help! We need God’s help. Yes, we need His Word, His guidance, His wisdom. Life is complex and difficult and we need Him to take us through it.
I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye.
There are so many things we just don’t understand. Our choices have so many unexpected results that we just can’t explain. Yet so many of us live according to our own perceptions. We pretend that life is simple and that we have it “all figured out”.
How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity?
Do you know more than God?
The second question that Wisdom asks is, “How long…will…the scorners delight in their scorning?” Again, this can be rephrased as, “How long will the proud love their pride?”
To scorn is to mock or deride; to show disdain or derision. The scorners in the text were mocking/deriding God’s way. For them, living God’s way was for chumps, for dummies. They knew better ways to live than God did.
Their scorning was rooted in their pride.
Who was God to tell them what to do?
Pride goes before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
Proverbs 16:18
Pride tells us that we are right and God is wrong. Indeed, if we decide to make our own choices, independent of God, then we must believe that we know more than Him. We must believe that we know how to navigate our lives better than He does.
Moreover, once we decide to go our own way, we must also decide to belittle (i.e., scorn) God’s Word: God’s wisdom. We imagine that our wisdom is superior to the wisdom in that outdated book called the Bible. We imagine that we know how to live in the real world.
But that is not true. We don’t know more than God does. His way is truly the only way to live.
As for God, His way is perfect; The word of the Lord is proven; He is a shield to all who trust in Him.
How long will the scorners delight in their scorning?
Pride/Scorn in the life of Believers
Those who reject God already have in derision. They will not stop being scorners until and unless they repent. Perhaps the more appropriate application of the verse is to those who have not rejected God.
“Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up.”
~ James 4:10
In that case, the question challenges the Believer to fully submit to God. It asks the Believer to stop mocking God by ignoring His instructions/teaching on righteous living. When Believers live by their own precepts/rules/ideas instead of God’s Word, we are actually disdaining Him. We are saying, by our actions and choices, that we know better than God does.
But that’s unsustainable. We cannot serve God while living for ourselves. We cannot “serve two masters”; we cannot “serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24).
How long will the scorners delight in their scorning?
Do you want to know the truth?
The third question that Wisdom asks is “How long…will…fools hate knowledge?” . First, we pretend that life is simple and we know what’s best. Then to justify our stance, we must elevate our way of thinking above God’s: we know better than Him. Now we come to the final and perhaps the most damaging stage: to “hate knowledge”.
To be clear, knowledge here means the Truth. Specifically, the truth according to God; Who is the only one who can define truth.
The fool hates knowledge. He hates Truth, because Truth constantly reminds him that he can’t make it on his own. Truth unquestionably shows him that he doesn’t know more than God.
Therefore, Truth must be shunned, despised, and shut out of his life just so that he can have some peace. God’s knowledge must be reviled so that the fool can live the life he wants to live. Just so he can live without fear of Truth’s rebuke.
The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.”
Sadly, fools have filled up the church. So few churchgoers know God’s Word, study God’s Word, and love God’s Word. The church has been crippled by a lack of knowledge of, and even a disdain for, God’s Word.
Instead of studying God’s Word, the church has replaced it with platitudes, psychology, and populist philosophies.
How long will fools hate knowledge?
Can you know God without knowing His Word? Can one worship God without knowing Him?
The fool lives without God’s Word by choice. He hates it. But those who claim to be Believers live like fools when they live without God’s Word.
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Psalm 1:1-2
nor standeth in the way of sinners,
nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
How long?
Finally, let’s examine the start of the question: “How long…?” The two words at the beginning of the question give us both hope and a warning. First, they tell us that we have a choice. They tell us that we can turn around; that we can respond to Wisdom’s call and get off the wrong path.
~ Psalm 90:12
They tell us that we don’t have to turn away from God’s voice forever. We can repent. We can be saved.
However, the second message from the cry “How long…” is perhaps more arresting. Because it tells us that we don’t have forever to make up our minds. We don’t have an eternity to decide.
And the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh…”
If we will answer Wisdom’s call, we will respond in God’s time, not ours. There is a finite window (that He alone determines) in which to make the right response to God. And when that window closes, there is will be no turning around.
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