Abraham Lincoln is credited with saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” There is another version that adds, “Fool me three times… leave me alone. I’m obviously an idiot.” There’s more there than just admonishment to pay attention and not believe everything you hear.<\/p>\n

Today, fool equates to silly. In Proverbs, it mean morally deficient. Both definitions have a role here. We’re foolish (silly) for continually going back to foolish (immoral) things. You can probably think of one sin you have troubling leaving behind. Many put anger or gossip in that spot, but it could be a lot of things. My point is, there is something you know is wrong, but keep returning to it.<\/p>\n

Proverbs has something else about this. A fool (immoral person) returns to his folly like a dog goes back to its vomit. There’s a picture to keep in your head. You may not have had the privilege of seeing a dog do that. You can understand the grossness of it just the same. As disgusting as that is, we do the same thing by going back to that sin.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I say this to myself first, anyone else who reads this will have to address it themselves. That, and I’m liable to get into territory unfit for sensitive stomachs.<\/p>\n

I had never really thought about it that way until now. Think how repulsive it is to watch a dog eat something that obviously made it sick the first time. If it is our dog, we would try to discourage that habit, we want what is best for it.<\/p>\n

Aside from the differences between humans and animals, the situation is the same with our sin. If we keep going back to that thing that is wrong, regardless of the fact we know it didn’t do us any good the first time, we are just like the dog.<\/p>\n

God would be us in this example. He wants what is best for us, and vomit is most definitely not it. I think He looks on us with compassion when we do that. Which is better than I would do, as I would probably say something like, “You doofus, stop doing that.”<\/p>\n

Though gross, this is something to think about. It shows a little of what God thinks of us sinning. Hopefully, it also ruins our appetite for doing that which is wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abraham Lincoln is credited with saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” There is another version that adds, “Fool me three times… leave me alone. I’m obviously an idiot.” There’s more there than just admonishment to pay attention and not believe everything you hear. Today, fool equates to silly. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotional"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1121"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1124,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions\/1124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}