16. Don't Follow Fools Off a Cliff

Saying Sixteen

Proverbs 23:19-21

Hear, my son, and be wise; and guide your heart in the way. Do not mix with winebibbers, or with gluttonous eaters of meat; for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and drowsiness will clothe a man with rags.

Don’t follow fools off a cliff.

Watt Fawsite is the possessor of a particularly long nose. No doubt he does other things as well; but to his mates, he’s just the guy with the unabridged sniffer.

Now, despite the many downsides of being so liberally enbeaked, Watt has learned to turn his unique gift to his advantage. From an early age, for instance, he learned to see beyond it — a skill often lacking in many lesser-nosed members of the species.

It was this ability, in fact, that once saved him from a watery disaster. The story opens when Thomas, a mate of Watt’s, decided to throw his eighteenth birthday party on the family boat. To the casual observer, this seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. What could be more fun than celebrating adulthood whilst cruising down a moonlit river?

Such were the thoughts of Thomas’s modestly-snouted friends.

To the thoroughly-enschnozzled Watt, however, this was the bad idea to end all bad ideas. It easily capped the Hindenburg; it put Napoleon's invasion of Russia into the shade. Musing thoughtfully, he listed the reasons, including but not limited to: the category five cyclone already making landfall, the generous hole in the bottom of the vessel, and the glaring lack of toilets onboard.

Not wanting to make a scene, he humbly suggested to his mates the inadvisability of the scheme, and informed them of his nonattendance. And after swallowing a few oh-but-it’ll-be-funs, and parrying a volley of you’re-just-a-killjoys, Watt was satisfied that he had made the right decision. After all, he could see past his nose — an ability which never fails to instill confidence.

As planned, the party went ahead; and Watt, rising early the next morning, graciously decided to visit the survivors in hospital.

To the all-knowing, all-wise God, there must be things we do every day that make Thomas’s birthday cruise look like a stroke of genius. The sort of decisions which make one angel nudge another and say, chuckling, “You’re not going to believe what Bob did this time.”

When God grants wisdom, he is sharing a golden fragment of divine intuition — a way of seeing in a rare, exciting dimension: beyond your nose. Suddenly, you can see where actions lead, and you understand the why behind God’s moral law. The fact that ‘the drunkard and glutton will come to poverty’ will seem obvious, and you will scorn the very idea of indulging in these perversions because you can see the hole in the bottom of the boat.

Notice, however, the importance of the first word in the verse: “hear.” There is a symmetry between the ears and eyes — we have two of each. As such, it is almost as though wisdom enters through the ears, then peers out of the eyes like penetrating strobe lights.

If it never enters through the ears, or if you fail to keep its flame alive, it will die out, and your eyes will be blind. In the end, you will “come to poverty” and be “clothed with rags”. To put it another way, it will be you lying in a hospital bed while Watt Fawsite tries not to I-told-you-so too obnoxiously.

Scriptures for Comparison

Proverbs 4:14-15

Proverbs 13:20

Proverbs 14:15-16

1 Corinthians 15:33

Psalm 1:1-3

Matthew 7:13-14

Ephesians 5:15-18

Romans 12:2