"To change the pace entirely, look at the opening line of Psalm 14: 'Fools say in their hearts, 'There is no God' (14:1). I have a friend in Australia who has a bit of a reputation for talking about Christ with a bluntness that other cultures might find more than a little aggressive. He once gave an address titled 'Atheists Are Fools, and Agnostics Are Cowards.' Whatever you may think of the approach, there is a sense in which my friend is in line with this psalm, which begins: 'Fools say in their hearts, 'There is no God' (14:1). That is so out of line with contemporary perceptions. In some circles shaped by the contemporary 'new atheism,' the fool is the idiot who believes that there is a God.
But look at it from God's perspective. Just grant for a moment that the God of the Bible is the God who is there: who is the fool? This is not written from the point of view of someone who sets himself up in the heritage of Rene Descartes, a sort of Cartesian independence, saying, 'I think I'm in the place where I can evaluate whether God exists and which God it will be.' This is the God who is there, who has named himself and disclosed himself. In his mercy he has come back again and again to save his people, and he keeps promising an even greater deliverance to come. He insists that the reason people do not see this reality is that this side of the fall we human beings suffer from such a deep moral and spiritual corruption that we are blind to the obvious. It is the fool who says in his heart, 'There is no God.'
This does not mean that no Christian is a fool. What it means is that everyone who has become a Christian started off a fool, and if in this respect we are no longer fools, that too, in the Bible's storyline, is a mark of singular grace. Christians never have the right to say, 'I am smarter than you are,' because Christians deep down know that they can never be more than fools who have been shown forgiveness and grace. We are never more than poor beggars telling other poor beggars where there is bread. But it does us a world of good to hear the Bible's perspective on who is the real fool."
- D. A. Carson
Psalm 14
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds,
there is none who does good.
They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds,
there is none who does good.
2 The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man,
to see if there are any who understand,[a]
who seek after God.
to see if there are any who understand,[a]
who seek after God.
3 They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one.
there is none who does good,
not even one.
4 Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers
who eat up my people as they eat bread
and do not call upon the Lord?
who eat up my people as they eat bread
and do not call upon the Lord?
5 There they are in great terror,
for God is with the generation of the righteous.
6 You would shame the plans of the poor,
but the Lord is his refuge.
for God is with the generation of the righteous.
6 You would shame the plans of the poor,
but the Lord is his refuge.
7 Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion!
When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people,
let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.
When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people,
let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.
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