Psalm 14:1 - The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.
Merriam-Webster defines godless as without a god; not recognizing or obeying God. I set a backpack out, along with enough items to fill the backpack to the top, leaving no room for anything else. We could barely zip it up! Then we told the youth that we'd forgotten to pack the most important item and challenged a few of them to fit it in the backpack. It was a Bible. After a few failed attempts, the kids agreed that there was no more room in the backpack for the Bible. We told the kids that this illustration represented another kind of fool in the Bible.
Fools fill up their lives with so many other things that they "have no room for God" in their lives. God is just not a part of their lives at all. They never read the Bible. They don't talk about God. They don't even think to pray about a decision or consider what advice the Bible gives. They are without God. They are GODLESS.
Madalyn Murray O'Hair was one such fool. She fought in the 1970's to have prayer taken out of the public schools...and she WON! We gave one of the kids a quarter then and asked him to read the inscription on the coin. O'Hair even tried to get the phrase "In God We Trust" taken off U.S. money! She wanted the phrase "under God" removed from the Pledge of Allegiance as well! She wanted to remove all reminders of God. She started an organization of atheists - people who don't believe God exists. She once said, "Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer."
Here's a video of Madalyn on a 1970's talk show.
Not all godless fools are atheists mind you. Many say there is a God, but they have no room for Him in their lives...just like there wasn't room in the backpack for the Bible.
Walking in the way of the wise or walking in the way of fools is a heart thing. It's not just about knowing something or saying something. It's about having it in your heart. The fool may proclaim there is a God with his mouth, but in his heart he says there is no God. He doesn't love God, think about Him, or care about God. There is no sign that God matters at all to him.
We read Luke 16:19-31 then about Lazarus and the rich man and discussed the events of the story in detail. In the end, even though the rich man begged Abraham to do so, Abraham refused to send Lazarus to the rich man's family to warn them of the realities of hell and tell them about God. Why? Abraham knew that the unbelief of the rich man's brothers was not a matter of hearing the truth. They had already heard it before. They would not believe even if a person came from the dead to tell them. They were spiritually blind and had no interest in spiritual things. They were fools...just like their rich brother.
Here's an illustration of the story from YouTube.
Godless fools treasure other things more than they treasure God in their hearts. Does it work to fill your heart with other things and ignore God? O'Hair's 1973 New Year's wish list "included a mink coat, a Cadillac, a cook, and a housekeeper". But even if she got these things, would they ultimately make her happy? After O'Hair died, her diaries were found. In them, she talks about crying and crying, being a failure, and wanting someone to love her. She died a bitter, unhappy woman who hated God and His people. She spent her entire life trying to erase God, but ended up miserably unhappy without Him. She also died a violent death, as she was murdered by an employer of hers.
What things in your life are pulling your attention away from God? What are you crowding Him out of your life and heart with? We got answers like TV, video games, laziness, texting, etc... What can you do, or stop doing to focus all of your heart on God....to "make room" for Him? Our goal is to be God-full...not God-less!
We ended on a happy note. Madalyn's son William Murray, at the age of 33, after being taught as an atheist his entire life, renounced his atheism and proclaimed he was a born-again Christian. It didn't matter what having the most hated woman in America for a mother meant growing up. God had a different plan for William. Amen! Here is William in a 2012 interview with Mike Huckabee.
