Our Foolish God

   "For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;" (1 Cor 1:25,27).
   “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom,” Paul also writes to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 1:22).  It seems that things are no different today.  People tend to demand both signs and wisdom.  On the one hand we want science to prove everything.  We want proofs for God, trying to find out what God is like through human wisdom.  If God is as good and as loving as he says he is, we want a logical explanation as to why so much evil happens in this world and so much trouble happens in our own lives.  Or we treat our own feelings as signs from God. If God’s law is so perfect, we wonder why I feel this way or that way in opposition to that law.  If God is so powerful, why doesn’t he fix this problem or that problem.  People still want God to give them signs, and they still want to use human wisdom to figure him out.
   But the church doesn't have those things available to give.  We don’t have the answers to all the world's questions, at least not answers that the world wants.  We have only the word of the cross, which to the world today, as it was to many centuries ago, is folly, foolishness.  “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;”
   We don't like looking dumb or foolish.  The world thinks the church is foolish with her antiquated ideas of gender, sex, justice, and life.  We worship a God who died on a cross.  Foolish.  Our faith is predicated on that dead man rising from the dead.  Foolish.  We believe there is a life after death, and eternal bliss for those who trust not in themselves but in the promises of Christ.  Foolish.  But God chooses the foolish things to bring to naught all the wisdom of this world.  “But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.” (1 Cor 1:23). May we always be those who in Godly wisdom follow our foolish God.