You're listening to the Allender Center podcast with Dr. Dan Allender.

This week, Dan continues a series about the nature of wisdom by discussing the opposing category of foolishness.

Dan invites us to pursue wisdom by being open to instruction, being willing to learn from our mistakes,

and being devoted to kindness and care for others.

As we consider the topic of wisdom,

I think it's important to contrast the desire to become wise

and what wisdom is. in the antonym, and that is, foolishness,

or what it means to be a fool.

And no portion of Scripture is clearer and more lustrative of the nature of foolishness

than the book of Proverbs. Again,

strongly recommend my dear friend's book, How to Read the Proverbs, Trimper Longman. And the reflection

on foolishness can simply begin by you taking a Bible commentary or a compendium of verses that allow you to see the 70 to 80 verses just in the book of Proverbs,

let alone wisdom, literature, Book of Job, Clesiastes, to capture something of

the very nature of what is the essence of being foolish, because if we think about what is a fool,

we can pretty much begin that process of contrasting it to that, which is wise.

So there are four categories that I want to at least underline

as to the essence of what it means to be foolish or to be a fool.

The first you find really at the very beginning of the book of Proverbs,

and that is the fool despises wisdom and instruction.

That's chapter 1, verse 7.

And in the same chapter, verse 22, the fool hates knowledge.

That stance of, I do not want to take in knowledge. I don't want to take in discipline. I don't want to be

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