The mocker seeks wisdom and finds none, but knowledge comes easily to the discerning. …Fools mock at making amends for sin, but goodwill is found among the upright. (Proverbs 14:6 & 9)
Mockery. It seems to be one of the top ten Human pass-times. We love to watch TV shows and movies that allow us to look down on others. Voice an opinion that doesn’t happen to be popular, and both the opinion and you are likely to be mocked. In fact, I know people who post things in order to get a response, and then accuse those who respond of being trolls. That’s gaslighting. According to the Urban Dictionary, trolling is “the deliberate act, (by a Troll – noun or adjective), of making random unsolicited and/or controversial comments on various internet forums with the intent to provoke an emotional knee jerk (sic) reaction from unsuspecting (or even suspicious) readers to engage in a fight or argument Trolling on-line (sic) forums as described above is actually analogous to the fishing.” It’s also trolling if the goal is to bait someone to respond so you can mock, ridicule, belittle, abuse, or gaslight someone. And it’s just as true if you’re putting stuff on your own wall/timeline. I need to find a Trolling gif.
But how can Scripture say that a mocker looks for but doesn’t find wisdom? They can’t find it because when they walk up to the bin marked “wisdom” and look in, they say, “Some idiot has mislabeled the bin. You call this wisdom?” The problem is that what’s in the bin is too simple. It’s too obvious. It’s too real. It’s too easy. It doesn’t involve climbing up a mountain to find some guy who looks older than dirt wearing two turbans (one on his head, the other on his hips) who says something that has nothing to do with the question and sounds like it came from a mass-produced fortune cookie or a newspaper horoscope.
One of the things that fools mock is the idea of making amends for sin. It’s hard to pay someone to make up for the harm one has done, especially if one doesn’t think one has done any harm. Part of this might be because we don’t actually want to forgive the guilty parties in our lives. The idea that there might be an objective means of determining when we are supposed to be satisfied when someone has paid enough. How can you forgive someone for ruining your life in whatever way it was ruined? How can you forgive a rapist? How can you forgive a mass murderer, serial killer, or pedophile? How can any reparation be enough? The truth is that no reparation – and no revenge – can ever be enough if you are thinking in terms of getting paid back of vengeance. So again, we look in the box and say, “Some idiot mislabeled the box,” because we don’t like what we see.
But how can Scripture say that a mocker looks for but doesn’t find wisdom? They can’t find it because when they walk up to the bin marked “wisdom” and look in, they say, “Some idiot has mislabeled the bin. You call this wisdom?” The problem is that what’s in the bin is too simple. It’s too obvious. It’s too real. It’s too easy. It doesn’t involve climbing up a mountain to find some guy who looks older than dirt wearing two turbans (one on his head, the other on his hips) who says something that has nothing to do with the question and sounds like it came from a mass-produced fortune cookie or a newspaper horoscope.
One of the things that fools mock is the idea of making amends for sin. It’s hard to pay someone to make up for the harm one has done, especially if one doesn’t think one has done any harm. Part of this might be because we don’t actually want to forgive the guilty parties in our lives. The idea that there might be an objective means of determining when we are supposed to be satisfied when someone has paid enough. How can you forgive someone for ruining your life in whatever way it was ruined? How can you forgive a rapist? How can you forgive a mass murderer, serial killer, or pedophile? How can any reparation be enough? The truth is that no reparation – and no revenge – can ever be enough if you are thinking in terms of getting paid back of vengeance. So again, we look in the box and say, “Some idiot mislabeled the box,” because we don’t like what we see.
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