![[Photo of a Scripture verse]](https://www.deankwilson.com/Blog_images/Ecclesiastes_7_25.jpg)
| “So I turned my mind to understand, to investigate and to search out wisdom and the scheme of things and to understand the stupidity of wickedness and the madness of folly.” |
| —Ecclesiastes 7:25 |
Even when we see the evidence of evil around us, we cannot process the depth of harm, the level of destruction, the viciousness of its purpose, and the damage it produces.
Imagine the horror of the American soldiers who first arrived at the German death camps during the liberation as World War II came to an end. History books record the amazing and devastating emotional effect the discoveries those soldiers made had on them for the rest of their lives.
We have a similar reaction when we read of the kind of evil perpetrated by Islamic extremists. Even with the immunity to shock that depictions of brutality on the television and movie screens has produced, most people still blanch at the beheadings, burnings, and mass drownings done in the name of extremism.
Sometimes, when we watch politicians try to destroy the reputations of their opponents through lies and harsh rhetoric, we can become ill from the weight of sin contained in their words. Likewise, we can readily recoil when we hear of a child who has been harmed, or someone caught in the terrible web of domestic violence.
King Solomon also knew great sin in his day. He was surrounded by enemies who wanted to destroy the children of Israel. In today’s passage, Solomon reacts by examining what it would be like to try to process evil through the lens of someone who is utterly without God in his or her life. Notice what he writes in Ecclesiastes 7:23-26:
All this I tested by wisdom and I said, “I am determined to be wise”—but this was beyond me. Whatever exists is far off and most profound—who can discover it?
So I turned my mind to understand, to investigate and to search out wisdom and the scheme of things and to understand the stupidity of wickedness and the madness of folly. I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare, whose heart is a trap and whose hands are chains. The man who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner she will ensnare.
Solomon uses an interesting descriptive phrase: “the stupidity of wickedness and the madness of folly.” And, that is what is produced in someone who does not have a relationship with God. Wicked acts reveal stupidity. And, foolish acts reveal madness.
We who follow in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus Christ, should all the more rejoice that we know sin and its effects all too well. We see it everywhere, sometimes within our own behaviors. While we know we are forgiven by God, there are still times when we sense the horror of how easy it is to sin.
May sin always produce a grieving within us. And, may the Holy Spirit use that grief to promote us toward holiness, as well walk along the path that He lays out before us.
