At the heart of April Fools’ Day is misplaced trust: we believe some news story or a friend’s tale and so are surprised when what we believed to be true turns out to be false. Living as we do in an age of perpetual misinformation, fake news and AI-generated imagery, our trust is now more cautiously given. I know this only too well. At our ministry we are constantly battling against bogus J.John Facebook sites and online attempts to ‘befriend’ followers for the worst of all motives.
In fact you could say that when the Bible speaks about fools, it doesn’t joke about it. It uses the harshest of language and in Psalm 14:1 and 53:1 we read the uncompromising statement, ‘The fool says in his heart, “There is no God”’ (NIV).
Here, in the word fool, the Bible is not referring to those who lack ‘mental ability’ – after all, Jesus praises a childlike trust in him (Matthew 18:3-4; Mark 10:15). To be a fool in the Bible’s sense is not to have a low IQ but instead to be someone who chooses to deny truth, scorn wisdom and to prefer wrong over right. The biblical fool decides to neglect the light God offers and instead to prefer darkness.
What’s cause and what’s effect here? Is it that people are foolish to deny God or is it that by denying God they become foolish? Both are true. To reject God is an act of foolishness but because God, his word and Jesus himself are wisdom (see Proverbs 9:10; Daniel 2:21-22), to reject him is a foolish action that leads ever deeper into foolishness. To deny God is like losing your wallet or handbag: it is a loss that, almost inevitably, brings other losses as a consequence.
Let me suggest three ways in which to reject God is to harm yourself.
First, to deny God is to reject meaning. In denying God, a fool has no option but to find the world pointless and devoid of purpose. Atheism is to see the world, existence and life itself as the worst of bad jokes. It is to say there is no ultimate purpose in existence; that we and our world come from dust and, eventually, go back to dust. The price you pay for denying the existence of God is terribly heavy: it is the loss of all ultimate meaning.
To deny God is to reject morality. To say there is no God is to undercut any moral foundation from life. You may say of some appalling event – and there’s no shortage of them these days – ‘That is so wrong!’ Yet without God, right and wrong are ultimately meaningless human ideas. Without God we may as well adopt the cruel rule that all that matters is to be tougher, rougher and meaner than anyone else. While we might not like such savage ruthlessness when it gets applied to us, in the absence of God we have no basis for a protest. It’s notable that after saying, ‘The fool says in his heart, “There is no God,”’ the Bible bluntly adds, ‘They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.’ Yes, there are atheists who seek to live good lives but they have no reason to do so.
Finally, to deny God is to accept other ‘gods’. There’s a tragic irony here that to reject the one true and living God of the Bible is not to live a life free from him. It is instead to be burdened by harmful and inferior alternatives. There is a God-shaped hole in all our lives that, unless we fill it with him, will inevitably get filled by other things. The theologian Calvin wrote that the heart of human beings is ‘a perpetual factory of idols’. It’s a wise comment. We human beings are worshipping creatures and if we eliminate God then we will find that our hearts are soon focused on and dominated by other things such as possessions, wealth, politics, pleasure, sex, power and fame. Those idols – and others – will soon control what we are and what we seek, and with their insatiable demands, wreak havoc in our lives.
The real foolishness of rejecting God is that it makes those who do so ever deeper fools and with ultimately fatal consequences. Yet the Bible makes it clear that to reject atheism is not simply to tick some box saying, ‘Yes, I believe in God.’ It is rather to put your trust in God, to live according to his word and, above all, to know Jesus Christ ‘who has become for us wisdom from God’ (1 Corinthians 1:30 NIV).
Don’t be a fool. Remember that one day there will be an ultimate and final reckoning of accounts with God and that it will be no laughing matter. Make peace with God through Christ while you can.
