Elevating Fools

Posted by Lorren on August 3, 2008

Proverbs 26:8 says “Like one who binds a stone in a sling, is he who gives honor to a fool.” My Life Application Bible says that binding a stone in a sling causes the stone not to go anywhere and it will swing back and hurt you. So I guess that’s a bad thing.

If you read the chapters around that verse, you will see that it’s not good to try to brag about yourself, or elevate yourself in front of others. Proverbs 25:6-7 tell us not to exalt ourselves in the presence of the king; it is better for others to exalt you, than for you to exalt yourself and have someone make you move to a lower position. Proverbs 27:2 says “let another man praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips.”

Proverbs (and of course the rest of the Bible) is a book of advice that we should live by, but do we do that? Do we exalt fools? Do we try to elevate ourselves and praise ourselves, rather than being faithful to our work and letting others do the praising for us?

Who do we as a society seem to put the most value on? Why do people follow the likes of Brittney Spears and Paris Hilton? Do they follow foolish principles or are they wise? Wise people are faithful to their spouses, they listen to the Bible, they tell the truth, etc. Sound like them? I don’t think so. Maybe Brittney was faithful to Federline when she was married, but the way she dresses and takes care of her kids doesn’t seem very wise to me. And Paris? Did you ever see any episode of The Simple Life? Nuff’ said.

But these are the people that we look up to. Rock stars. Athletes. Actors and actresses. Some of these might be very nice people, but what do they do other than entertain us? Some of them try to enter the political realm by commenting on some issue or stumping for one candidate or another, but when they do that, more often than not, they end up looking like the fools they truly are (not all of them, but many).

Then there’s YouTube. There are some good things on YouTube. It’s a great place to put up videos of the new baby for your family and friends around the world to see, and I’ve seen a few inspirational and informative videos up there as well. I’m sure that I could find some video of the congressional ruckus up there as well. But some of the videos that people put up there are quite foolish. People doing stupid, dangerous stunts in order to grab our attention for a few minutes. Kids beating each other up in order to make a cool video for others to see. People running through drive through windows and throwing soda or coffee on an unsuspecting worker. These videos tend to get a lot of popularity, but they are often made by foolish people trying to exalt themselves and get adulation from their friends and from the world. And what do we do? We give them honor by watching their videos and recommending them to their friends.

We do the same thing in politics. We elect the adulterers, the wrestling stars, and liars. Is it because nobody good is running? Or are those the people that we flock to?

Elevating foolish people is hurting us as a nation. Those that risk their safety or hurt others in an attempt to get honor and popularity are hurting themselves. We should try to think about what we give great honor to, and avoid adulating the stupid things of this world and gossiping about who forgot to wear underwear to some fancy nightclub last week.