Who Are We? Fools

I Corinthians 4:10

                Earlier this year I began preaching a series of messages around the queation, “Who Is Jesus?”  Now, I am beginning a series around the question, “Who Are We?”  For this first installment, I’ve chosen an unexpected answer Paul used to describe Christians.

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The hapless target of one of the Three Stooges’ schemes asked, “What kind of fool do you think I am?”  I believe it was Curly who replied, “I don’t know, how many kinds are there?”

Most of us resist calling ourselves fools.  But Paul does so to capture his reader’s attention.  He wants them to remember that being a fool is sometimes a matter of perspective.

Of course, Christians aren’t exempt from demonstrating genuine foolishness.  We can draw a line in the wrong patch of sand to our own hurt.  One example involves the issue of the age of the Earth.  Some of the loudest proponents of teaching creationism or intelligent design in public schools insist the earth is no more than 10,000 years old.  This is in clear contradiction to the evidence of geology.  As a result, anyone taking the Bible seriously is seen as an ignorant opponent of scientific discovery.  It is an unnecessary position for such Christians to defend.

From the earliest days of Christianity, students of the Bible had suggested that the “days” of Genesis might involve great periods of time, not just 24 hours.  There were even some Jewish scholars who felt the creation account may have referred to a lengthy time of activity.  There is nothing particularly “orthodox” in insisting the six days of creation comprised only 144 hours.

To take a hard line on this matter is to invite ridicule and to assure the rest of the gospel message is regarded with contempt.

But Paul is not talking about that kind of foolishness; he’s talking about how the world sometimes perceives the Christian.

In the minds of many, only a fool would promulgate a message branded as offensive and outrageous.

Paul knew that wherever he preached he would probably offend and outrage both the Jews and the Greeks in the crowd.  Both were offended by the picture of Christ the crucified.  While the Jews associated Paul’s message with weakness, the Greeks saw it as utter foolishness.

A story appearing in the Chicago Tribune in March 2001 helps explain the Jewish objections.  The story tells of a Jewish toddler killed in Hebron as she sat in her stroller. On a wall near where she died, someone had written a poem.

It spoke of the little girl’s sweetness and added, "We will take revenge; we will scream for revenge in body and spirit and await the coming of the Messiah."

That image of the Messiah was popular in Jesus’ day.  That’s why they were repulsed by a Messiah who called for repentance and faith, a Messiah who said little about the hated Romans, a Messiah who intended to do his work on a cross.  The Jews saw such a Messiah as weak.

But, for the Corinthians, the more important more important indictment was that of being foolish.

The Greeks tended to believe God was uninvolved in the human condition.  God would certainly not suffer for human beings.  The very idea of the incarnation and the crucifixion seemed foolish to the average Greek.  The occasional god might pose as a man but to actually become human?  No way. The Corinthians, though Christians, seem to have maintained the Greek pride in this kind of thinking.  In time, the message of the cross evidently lost its appeal. 

This is why Paul felt it necessary to assert his intention to place the cross at the center of his message.  As the New Living Translation puts his words, “I decided to concentrate only on Jesus Christ and his death on the cross.”  Of course, for Paul, the significance of the cross had to be understood in the light of the resurrection.  That’s why he spend an entire chapter (15) defending the event which is at the heart of the Easter message.  He would say: 

    And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.  [15] We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.  [16] For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.  [17] And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.  1 Cor. 15:14-17 (ESV) 

Paul made the message of Christ the core of his preaching because he knew that Christ’s crucifixion and subsequent resurrection provided the only way to deal with the great human problem of sin.

Throughout the history of the church, the challenge has been to remain faithful to the message of Christ, despite the disparaging views of the prevailing culture.  Those who surrender the message are often considered enlightened; those who cling to the orthodox message are considered backward and primitive.  Fools.

Every new generation of Christians must decide it if will remain true to the core of the Christian message, even though we embrace a different style in presenting that message.

It means holding on to that message and refusing to be side-tracked into other debates.  Yes, there’s a place to discuss serious questions about the gospel, but not if it means forgetting the singular significance of Christ.

Imagine some questioner approaching Paul to say, “I’d be a Christian but I don’t know where
Cain got his wife.”

I suspect Paul would say something like, “I don’t know either, but why are we talking about this—Christ is risen.”

If proclaiming the one message which reconciles men and women to God and to each other, the one message which lifts the burden of sin and overrules the power of death makes Christians “fools,” then our world needs more people engaging in that kind of foolishness.

In the minds of many, only a fool would embrace a lifestyle which might lead to discomfort, danger, and misunderstanding.

Craig Keener points out that Hellenistic culture considered the philosophers to be wise, which included the assumption that they were morally virtuous and honorable persons.  But their high regard for philosophers did not extend to the teachers known as Cynics.  You might think of the Cynics as somewhat like ancient hippies.  They sought to escape the establishment, even to the point of abolishing the family—all with the goal of leading people to live simpler lives.  Diogenes, one of the best-known Cynics, lived as a vagabond pauper.  Many other Cynics followed his example.  The Greeks considered the homeless Cynics to be foolish beggars. 

Although Paul and his team did not share the Cynics message, they were essentially such homeless persons, even though this “homelessness” was a voluntary price for doing their work as traveling evangelists/missionaries.  They often had to depend upon the hospitality of strangers in their travels.  In his later letter, Paul would remind the Corinthians of some of his experiences in preaching the gospel:  “I have worked with unsparing energy, for many nights without sleep; I have been hungry and thirsty, and often altogether without food or drink; I have been cold and lacked clothing.”

Some of the Corinthians may have wanted to escape the stigma of embracing a message about a crucified Jew preached by a homeless evangelist.  His discussion of the Lord’s Supper in chapter ten suggests there were some Christians in the church who were financially better-off than most other believers. They may have been especially embarrassed by the charge that Christianity lacked philosophical and social sophistication. Of course, had these Corinthians been truly wise, they would have seen that wisdom was on the side of the apostles.

This is why Paul speaks with such irony as he describes his commitment to the Corinthians.  He is willing to be considered a fool for Christ’s sake.  He is contrasting his commitment and that of his fellow laborers—a commitment willing to face ridicule and misunderstanding for the sake of the gospel—to the haughtiness of the Corinthians.  Ultimately, he wants them to understand that if they are truly followers of Christ they are aboard that same ship of fools—fools in the eyes of the culture but not God’s eyes.  Yet, the Corinthians seem to want to appear to be wise or clever in the eyes of their neighbors.

But their viewpoint is warped, their perspective is all wrong.  In almost every age those who follow Christ have been perceived as fools by the undiscerning culture.  This is especially true when those Christians give up what is thought to be the good life, thing not really wrong but which can become a consuming force which stands in the way to radical commitment.

Yet, there have always been those who have understood the higher wisdom of such commitment. 

  When William Borden graduated from a Chicago high school he was different than most of his fellow graduates.  He was a millionaire.  He was also fully committed to Christ.  While enjoying his graduation present—a trip around the world—he resolved to become a missionary.  In 1905, this heir to the Borden dairy fortune enrolled at Yale.  While at Yale he participated in several student-led prayer groups and Bible studies.   During his remaining years at Yale he worked to help the poor in New Haven and to prepare for mission work in China.   During his senior year he hosted a large student missionary conference and served as president of Phi Beta Kappa. 

After graduating from Yale, he turned down several lucrative job offers to enroll at Princeton Seminary.  When he completed his seminary work he set out for China, where he hoped to work with some of the Muslims who had settled there.  His plans called for him to stop in Egypt for language study.  While in Egypt he contracted spinal meningitis and died on 9 April 1913, at the age of twenty-five. 

At the time, Borden was considered a hero.  I wonder how he would be seen today. 

I can’t remember a time in my life when certain newsmakers have been more willing to brand Christians as fools or losers, at best, or dangerous fanatics, at worst. 

The contributions of Christians to culture and the improvement of society are largely ignored or denied.  Yet, should those whose tireless work has spread the gospel, brought hospitals and schools to the poorest, and improved the status of women and children wherever the message be considered fools?  Ask the countless souls who have benefited from their sacrifices.

In the minds of many, only a fool would champion a moral vision which challenges the passions of a culture which welcomes no restraints.

You know that Corinth was a city known for its immorality.  The phrase “to live like a Corinthian” suggested a lifestyle of abandonment to lust and physical desires.  Yet, in I Corinthians 5, Paul mentions conduct going on in the Corinthian churches which even the pagans would find shocking.  Amazingly, the Corinthian Christians don’t appear to be shocked.  Instead, Paul says to them, “… you are proud of it, instead of being sorry for it….”  Paul seems to be saying that the Corinthians were proud of their enlightened open-mindedness, an attitude which ignored behavior which ought to have been swiftly and openly condemned.

Christians make a mistake when they approach those who have failed morally with a censorious attitude which implies they are exempt from such failures.  At the same time, the church makes an equally grave error when it fails condemn sin for the dangerous condition it is.  In our culture, the church seems more likely to make the second of those mistakes.  Though we know the mantra to “hate the sin and love the sinner,” we find it easier to love the sinner and ignore the sin.

But Paul understood we can’t take that course.  Sin is self-destructive.  Love can’t ignore that. If we love the sinner, we will hate the sin because we know what sin does to the sinner.  This is why Paul is so blunt when he writes to the Corinthians about sexual sin.  He says, “There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others.  In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love.”

When the young church burst onto the first-century world, it faced a staggering task.  Not only were these ragtag Christians to call men and women to faith in Christ, they were to be salt and light in their communities.  They were to make a difference.  In time, they did.  The moral climate of the world was changed because of these Christians.  No, the world has never been perfect because the church has never done its work perfectly. 

Yet, the high moral vision of the church did make a difference in the world.

Conclusion

I don’t know the answer to Curly’s question about how many kinds of fools there are. 

There are fools who think they are wise.  Con artists love to meet them.

There are the wise that are labeled fools.  They have invented devices or discovered things that have benefited the whole world.

For the sake of the gospel, Paul was willing to be labeled a fool by those who thought they were wise.  Those who have followed on that same “fools’ errand” have discovered that it was the wisest thing they could do—for the world and for themselves.