Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live; and so the Lord of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken. Amos 5:14

The Biblical definition of a fool has nothing to do with his intelligence or education. A fool is defined as someone who does not recognize God as an authority who can tell him not to do harmful things to himself or others. The fool also does not recognize other authority figures like his political leaders, judges, police, or parents.

As a result, the fool makes up his own rules to live his life, and woe to anyone who tries to tell him differently. Unfortunately, most fools choose rules that allow them to harm others. They recognize that their actions would be highly undesireable if someone else did it to them, but they are too proud to admit that no one should be doing it to anyone to start with, especially since it is usually something God said not to do in the first place. A fool resists any correction of their attitudes and behavior, be it from God, concerned parents, or the judicial system.

One of the things that most amazes me is that people get so outraged because God tells them to seek good and not evil. "Don't force your morality on me! It's my choice how I want to live!" they cry. Just what is that supposed to mean? Do they really want to keep doing things that hurt themselves and others just because they think that there is some advantage to themselves? Evidently they do!

That kind of mindset is called "the spirit of disobedience" in the Bible. It means that they have the same rebellious, destructive attitudes that Satan and his followers have. There isn't a rational reason for having a belief system like that, unless you are so proud that you think you are above the same rules of behavior that govern others and that no one should be able to inflict the same abusive treatment that you can readily inflict on them.

This nation is living in such darkness that it no longer knows how deeply we have sunk into sin. America used to be a country that knew and followed the Lord. Not every person was saved, but enough were that we held God's standards as the official standards of conduct for the nation. Now we have people clarifying their values and coming up with a hodgepodge of pagan beliefs and insisting on their "right" to adhere to them as their own personal culture.

Sometimes I wonder how we have the nerve to insist that the laws on the books be upheld and even more passed when we don't even follow God's basic law of loving Him and loving each other as we love ourselves. We insist that women should have the right to get an abortion, and then prosecute women who wait until after their babies are delivered, sometimes even years later, to kill them. How can we have abortion as a legal act on the law books and enforce any of the laws against any form of taking human life? We even have protests when a clearly guilty murderer is put to death, yet protect the people who run the abortion industry. What hypocrisy!

One would think that calling for the protection of all human life at all ages would be heartily approved of by everyone, yet Christians who stand up for life are treated as hated bigots. If you try to tell anyone that what they are doing is wrong, you risk getting denounced as an intolerant meddler. That holds true for condemning other destructive behavior as well. Too many people would rather protect their own pet sins, which they consider their personal business, than call someone else to account for behavior which would have been considered clearly criminal conduct only a few short decades ago.

If you read the Bible with an open mind, you will find that all those supposedly restrictive "Thou shalt not" laws are actually to protect you from harm. God encourages people to participate in all the healthy, socially positive and productive behavior that they want. Any time a people builds their society on His ways, they thrive and prosper. It is when a people builds their society on Satan's anti-God ways that they suffer and eventually either self-destruct or are destroyed by another anti-God society that has grown stronger than they.

God leaves the choice up to you, with the warning that if you harm others that He has created, He may intervene on their behalf if they belong to Him and pray for deliverance from your hands. He is giving mankind their wish, as expressed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, to learn the Knowledge of Good and Evil by direct experience instead of listening to His wisdom and following it without having to try sin for themselves.

God commands parents to teach their children responsible, godly behavior while they are young and pliable enough for the lessons to shape their character. While there is no guarantee that a child will not turn out to be a fool as an adult even with the best of parenting, it is a lot easier than trying to deal with an older fool. Even an older fool can change if they want to, but the problem is that the longer you persist in foolish behavior, the less likely it is that you will want to change. Unfortunately, foolish behavior may have short term benefits to the individual using it, and they don't carefully consider that they will have to deal with the long term consequences of it eventually.

A big part of wisdom is learning how to judge whether an idea is a good one or a bad one. A bad idea, no matter how well carried out, is still a bad idea and will lead to bad results. God's basic rule of thumb in making these decisions is the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." If you act towards others as you want them to treat you, you won't do harmful things to them. You will treat them with love, mercy, and justice, just as God treats us.

God actually likes you to judge your ideas yourself by His standards to decide if they are good ones or not, especially before you try them. Even after you do and the results show that the idea was a bad one, He would like you to decide wisely and turn from using ideas like that in the future. He wants you to acquire skill in choosing good so that you gain experience to guide yourself when making decisions about your life.

God wants people to learn how to tell the difference between good and evil and to choose good. This is an essential skill both here and in eternity. He would much rather forgive someone who turns from evil as a sign that he has learned to avoid it in the future than to punish someone for the sin because he has no intention of avoiding it in the future.

However, there eventually comes a time in the life of a chronic sinner where God will judge and punish his actions. God, as our Creator, has the responsibility to stop his creatures from harming Him and each other. Even people who haven't heard the Gospel message still have an inner conscience that warns them when they are sinning, although chronic sin will sear it until it is no longer heard. When they finally pass "the point of no return", when there is no hope they will ever repent of their evil choices and turn back to God's ways, judgment will surely come.

The prisons are full of fools who wouldn't listen and ended up locked up for the protection of society. However, there are plenty of fools still left free in society causing havoc. The rebellious child chronically in trouble is a fool. The abusive parent who recognizes no authority to stop battering a child is a fool. The office schemer constantly causing confusion to advance his career is a fool. Anyone who stubbornly keeps committing acts that harm others and will not modify their attitudes and behaviors to stop it is likely a fool or on the way to becoming one.

We are finding out the hard, expensive way that mistakes have to be paid for, and it is always cheaper and less expensive to learn from someone else's mistake than to make it yourself. The Old Testament has a long section of historical books for us to see by past examples just what happens when you sin, either personally or nationally. There are libraries full of history books that tell the same sad story of the evils that mankind inflicts on itself when we turn from God's ways and try Satan's ways.

Please read the Bible with an open mind and see for yourself. Mankind may have improved its technology, but the same personal sin problems plague us today as they did in older ages. Compare how people handled their problems and what the outcome was to how closely they followed God's ways, and you will see that only seeking good as God defines it leads to peace, joy, and prosperity.