Well, it's a question we get a lot on the podcast.

Can we distinguish between making mistakes and sinning?

I don't know if we've covered it not in this way, but the question comes to us in an

email from an anonymous female listener who writes in to say this, hello, Pastor John,

what is the difference of any between my foolishness and my sin?

Well, as it turns out, this is a very illuminating question.

What's for me?

It helped me see something more clearly than I had seen it before.

Let me make, let me make the question more precise, though, instead of what's the

difference if any between foolishness and sin, let's ask, what's the difference

if any between foolishness and sin according to the Bible?

Right.

Yes.

Otherwise, I don't know whose definition she's asking about.

This is always the problem when you start arguing over foolishness or sin and you say,

whoa, whoa, wait a minute.

Who's meaning do you want me to use yours?

You know, Joe blows or the Bible.

So I'm going to go with the Bible here because I assume that's really what she's asking.

So let me read a sampling of biblical texts about the fool or folly and then draw out

some inferences about its relationship to sin.

Mark 7, 21, from within out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, sexual immorality,

...