At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“Fools make a mock at sin: But among the righteous there is favour.”
Proverbs 14:9
The basic breakdown of this proverb is this. Fools are those who mock at sin, and by this is not meant that they are mocking sin as sin. Rather, they are mocking the idea that sin is sin, or that sin is serious, or that sin leads to disaster. In other words, they mock at the idea that sin will have any dire consequences.
The righteous are privileged to dwell where there is “favor.” The word here is rason, and it is rendered in quite a number of different ways. A small representative list will help to give some idea—delight, pleasure, good will, or desire.
What this means is that the pleasure that the fool takes in mocking at sin is an acrid sort of pleasure. It is sharp, unsettled, biting.
In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis discusses a point related to this when he dissects the sin of flippancy. He says that it takes real talent to make a joke, but the flippant man never has to do this. What he does is cut to the head of the line, assuming that the joke was already made by someone else, and so he just starts laughing.
It takes no special talent to mock. All that is necessary is a crowd of people who are willing to do the same thing. If someone is sitting in the seat of mockers, this can usually be arranged pretty easily. The spirit that drives this is a sort of demonic laugh track, a comedic cattle prod, letting everyone know when to jeer. The jeering is the point. Everything about such mockery is hollow.
With the easy laughter that attends the conversation of the righteous, sitting around the table with good friends, things are different. The joke is the beer, and the laughter the foam.
