1 Corinthians 1:25, 27-31
“For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength...God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’”
When I was sixteen, I had a mad crush on a college boy, who I met through a local summer camp. He was very invested in following Jesus, and I was very invested in following him. We started a postal correspondence, because even though Queen Elizabeth II sent her first email in 1976, I am not an early adopter of technology and didn’t get my first account until I was out of high school (and that was to correspond with an entirely different boy, because I didn’t make very forward-thinking choices between the ages of sixteen and twenty two).
Anyway, in one of those letters sent through the U.S. postal service, my camp friend included a piece of paper with the following song lyrics typed on them:
Seems I've imagined Him all of my life
As the wisest of all of mankind
But if God's Holy wisdom is foolish to men
He must have seemed out of His mind
For even His family said He was mad
And the priests said a demon's to blame
But God in the form of this angry young man
Could not have seemed perfectly sane
When we in our foolishness thought we were wise
He played the fool and He opened our eyes
When we in our weakness believed we were strong
He became helpless to show we were wrong
And so we follow God's own fool
For only the foolish can tell-
Believe the unbelievable
And come be a fool as well
So come lose your life for a carpenter's son
For a madman who died for a dream
And you'll have the faith His first followers had
And you'll feel the weight of the beam
So surrender the hunger to say you must know
Have the courage to say I believe
For the power of paradox opens your eyes
And blinds those who say they can see
So we follow God's own Fool
For only the foolish can tell
Believe the unbelievable,
And come be a fool as well
Here it is performed live:
Following Jesus doesn’t make sense, and I’m not sure it’s supposed to. It doesn’t make any more sense to break from our surrounding culture’s status quo now than it did for Jesus to go up against the occupying powers of Rome, or the religious elite of Israel. It doesn’t make sense to give everything we have to the poor, to turn the other cheek when we’re harmed, to pursue peace at the risk of our own lives. It doesn’t make sense to eat, spend, and live in ways that put ourselves last and others first. In a world of swords and guns and drones, it’s foolish to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors...downright dangerous, even.
And yet.
Come be a fool, as well.
About the Author
Sarah is the author of Vegangelical: How Caring for Animals Can Shape Your Faith (Zondervan, 2016) and Animals Are Not Ours (No, Really, They’re Not): An Evangelical Animal Liberation Theology (Cascade Books, 2016). She spends her days working for CreatureKind, helping Christians put their faith into action. She lives in Eugene with her husband, son, and animal companions and enjoys action movies, black coffee, the daily crossword, and dreaming of her next international journey.