When Fear Makes Us Fools 

Defining Wisdom

Wisdom and conversely, foolishness, as attributes do not get a lot of attention anymore. It’s difficult to find a good working definition of wisdom or foolishness even though we often use the words. We do, however, recognize wisdom when we see it. If a person sees a danger coming and avoids it when everyone else falls into it, we recognize that person as having had wisdom. If a person makes a decision or takes action that other people don’t understand, but which works out well for them, we recognize wisdom. We recognize wisdom when a person not only knows what is right, but also consistently does it. We recognize wisdom when a person reacts differently to a situation than we expect them too, but sees success.

Wisdom is more than education or knowledge (although it includes aspects of those), intelligence, or logic. However, wisdom is always seeking out more knowledge with an awareness that not all common or given knowledge is true. Wisdom learns where and how to find the truth and pursues it aggressively. It is focused, and fearful of the right things. And with this we get to the crux of the matter.

Wisdom and fear have a very close relationship. The wisest man to ever live tells us, “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 1:7). Why would this be? Very simply, fear is the motivator!

(It is also true that a person can be motivated by desire, but Solomon knew that in our natural “fallen state” we don’t desire the right things. If we can’t be motivated to desire God, we can be motivated to fear him.) The whole point of the Pentateuch (first five books of the Bible) is to teach us to fear God:

He is the one who created us exactly the way he wanted (Creation account), the one who makes the rules for us to follow (tree of life vs. tree of knowledge of good and evil), and the one who sees our sin even though we try to hide it (Cain’s murder of Abel). The Pentateuch also shows us that he can, and is willing to, destroy or selectively destroy his creation (Noah’s flood, Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, Egypt). He is the one who sets up rulers for good (Joseph) or for destruction (Pharaoh in Exodus). He sends plagues, storms, natural disasters, famine, wild animals, and war to punish anyone or any nation as he sees fit. He waits patiently when people or nations fall away, both to give them time to repent, and also to allow them to think their actions have no consequences.

The point is, God is utterly in control of the rules, our lives, our prosperity, and of the timing of our destruction. If we are wise we will fear the LORD!

Motivating Fear

This fear then motivates us to:
·         study diligently in order to discern what God wants of us
·         focus on what is important and therefore keep from wasting time
·         be discerning and know that not all knowledge is true
·         develop an ability to discern between knowledge that is trustworthy and knowledge that is only sometimes or partially true
·         act on the knowledge we know to be true
·         look ahead to the final goal and ignore setbacks and failures
·         never stop learning and to throw off useless hindrances
·         forget past failures while learning all we can from them

It also makes us hate pride - pride that would prevent us from learning from unlikely sources or pride that would cause us to think we are done and start coasting before the race is done. It teaches us to know that different situations call for different solutions and motivates us to learn how to know what to do when.

The Fearful Coach

We can apply these same principles to any part of our lives. For example, a team’s coach can stoke fear of losing to keep himself focused on learning, on discerning truth from illusion, from cutting out whatever is a hindrance, and to learn from past failures (and then let them go). He can use the fear to focus on the final goal rather than immediate success. He can use the fear of losing to protect himself from underestimating an opponent, to make himself aware of traps and to fill his playbook with options for any eventuality. He can use it to avoid the pride which comes from success, because he knows the season is not over until the final whistle – and the final whistle signals the start of the next season. Fear will make him capable of avoiding traps and make him seem to be aware of every trick in and outside of the book. He will never stop collecting knowledge or throwing away whatever is useless. It will cause him to take into account how every action can and will have unforeseen consequences and will make him good at predicting and accounting for those consequences before they cause things to spin out of control. Fear will make his team a winner.

Foolish Fear

But what do we do when the very things we fear, and are trying to avoid, are the very things that happen? More than that, they seem to be happening because we are trying to prevent them from happening. This is where we see the effects of fear making us fools.

Solomon told us “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” because that needs to be our first fear. This is the fear that makes us obedient to the One who can bend space and time to change water into wine and who conversely can change wine into water. God can not only turn apparent failure into success, he can also turn apparent success into failure. Not only can he, God is more than willing to do so to get our attention.

When we fear losing something temporal more than we fear obeying God; are convinced we know what God wants, but do not fear him enough to study his Word to find out; or if we have allowed ourselves, through laziness, to form our own ideas of what God sees as important rather than knowing what God sees as important – we will make foolish choices based on our inappropriately assigned fears.

Do we fear losing friends, our position, or reputation more than we fear God? Do we fear our church closing its doors more than we fear doing or preaching what is right? Do we fear how people will react if we tell them the truth more than we fear deceiving them? If so everything we fear will, by the grace of God, happen to us.

For our good and His glory, God demands that we fear him first and obey him no matter what the consequences appear to be. That nothing, even things he has created to build his kingdom, are elevated above obedience to him and above the fear of him. If building our church, or the failure of our church becomes more important to us than obedience to God, we are doomed to fail. If we are willing to fail in order to obey God we will succeed even if everything we thought was for Gods glory and for his kingdom falls apart around us.

Misplaced fear will make us foolish, it will make us fail at what is important. However, the antidote is easy to find even if is difficult to apply: we need to get our priorities straight! We need to line our fears up in order, and make sure fear of the LORD is first on the list. Let’s leave the kingdom building for God to accomplish, while we focus on learning to know his will (by reading his Word) and being obedient to his demands on our life and our time. Let’s fear the LORD first!