It’s one thing to live with zero desire to be respected and it’s another thing to live dishonorably and demand to be respected. Some people are hard to steer, others are hard to motivate, and still others are both yet they love to give advice.

The common denominator, and it is the lowest one, is of persons who are deceiving themselves. They think they are wise, but they may be the only ones who don’t know the truth.

These sorts of fools use proverbs but they are useless, like a lame lan’s legs. They get assignments but they hurt those who send them or hire them. They do the same painful, sickening things over and over, like a dog that returns to his vomit.

Solomon once took eleven verses to talk about how bad a fool is, only to follow it by saying: “Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him” (Proverbs 26:12).

The issue of self-deception is explicitly bad in James 1:22-24. There is a religious person, a person who hangs out with church people and even one who listens to God’s Word, but who cheats himself from the blessing of obedience.

The word “deceive” comes from the idea of catching or ensnaring. To deceive someone else is to try to gain an advantage over them, to deceive oneself is to make-believe something that isn’t true. The only advantage of deceiving oneself is to not have do deal with uncomfortable reality. There’s more hope for fools than deniers.