Foolish wisdom
This week's study is on 1 Corinthians 1:18-25:
These verses are better than a stack of theology textbooks. So many people have written so much trying to explain the crucifixion in terms that make it seem logical and fully explained, but none of that is necessary, and probably it isn't even possible. People have written long complicated papers on questions of whether Adam had a navel, or who fathered Cain's children, or how many ranks of angels there are, but we don't know the answer to any of those questions, and they don't really matter. There isn't a trivia test for getting entry into heaven. Do we need theologians to debate how salvation actually works under the hood? Are we going to be called on to repair God's mechanism of salvation if he takes a vacation and it breaks?
The message of the cross sounds foolish when you try to explain it. But so does anything sufficiently intelligent when you try to explain it to people who have nothing to relate it to. Does explaining a car engine to someone help it to work? And yet there are people who refuse to believe unless they have every detail explained logically to them down to an infinite level of detail. I've met people like this and I feel sad for them. They want to believe, and yet something in them is constantly looking for a bulletproof explanation, like trying to explain that car engine to someone in culinary terms without it being an analogy. I can't explain what makes them like that, but these verses help to make it not seem like something new.
If it were possible to explain the entire process of salvation on irrefutable, human-understandable, infinitely detailed level, where would the place be for faith? Where would the trust be in the relationship between us and God? It's silly to expect there to be a way to do it and yet people devote their entire careers to it. Paul says "Where is the wise man? Where is the expert in the Mosaic law? Where is the debater of this age?" These people are counted among Christians in much smaller numbers than you would think.
He says "Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks ask for wisdom." In other words, spiritual people are always asking for one more sign, and intellectuals are always asking for one more layer of apologetic proof. There's no end to either of those searches. If you come up with one, they demand another, because the story of salvation sounds so absurd. Think about it: The glory of God is shamed, the saviour of the world is tortured, humiliated, and then killed, and then he returns from the grave. It makes no sense, if you've got no experience with God.
I have a fairly deep level of expertise in my career field. But I can't tell you how many times I've had inexperienced people laugh away my advice on things in my area because they were too ignorant to even be able to conceive of how much they didn't know. And I think that's what Paul is saying in these verses and it's brilliant.
He's saying that we, and the people who always need another proof, are like that freshly credentialed college graduate, fresh from four years of scoring well on tests, of being the smartest guy in the room, running blindly into a world for which they have no experience to even be able to relate. Compared to God's infinite wisdom, our human experience is like those four simplified years of college. Some of us have the humility to see it and make a faith-based decision to trust, while the others find a reason to blow Christianity off. The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. Imagine that instead of that lack of experience being ten or twenty years long, it's infinite. That's the dilemma we're faced with.
So where are all of the "experts" to explain this? There can't be any. No human is going to condense the history of the universe into a foolproof philosophical proof within their eighty years on the earth. We have to trust. Or we can just call it stupid and still pretend we're the smartest guy in the room, that human wisdom is the sum total of all wisdom, and if God doesn't fit into it then he's irrelevant.
For those of us who trust, we're okay with a bit of mystery. We trust that God is real, and we trust he's honest with us, and we trust that he loves us. It's a relationship, not an intellectual construct, and relationships are built on trust, not conjecture and analysis.
For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will thwart the cleverness of the intelligent.” Where is the wise man? Where is the expert in the Mosaic law? Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made the wisdom of the world foolish? For since in the wisdom of God the world by its wisdom did not know God, God was pleased to save those who believe by the foolishness of preaching. For Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks ask for wisdom, but we preach about a crucified Christ, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
These verses are better than a stack of theology textbooks. So many people have written so much trying to explain the crucifixion in terms that make it seem logical and fully explained, but none of that is necessary, and probably it isn't even possible. People have written long complicated papers on questions of whether Adam had a navel, or who fathered Cain's children, or how many ranks of angels there are, but we don't know the answer to any of those questions, and they don't really matter. There isn't a trivia test for getting entry into heaven. Do we need theologians to debate how salvation actually works under the hood? Are we going to be called on to repair God's mechanism of salvation if he takes a vacation and it breaks?
The message of the cross sounds foolish when you try to explain it. But so does anything sufficiently intelligent when you try to explain it to people who have nothing to relate it to. Does explaining a car engine to someone help it to work? And yet there are people who refuse to believe unless they have every detail explained logically to them down to an infinite level of detail. I've met people like this and I feel sad for them. They want to believe, and yet something in them is constantly looking for a bulletproof explanation, like trying to explain that car engine to someone in culinary terms without it being an analogy. I can't explain what makes them like that, but these verses help to make it not seem like something new.
If it were possible to explain the entire process of salvation on irrefutable, human-understandable, infinitely detailed level, where would the place be for faith? Where would the trust be in the relationship between us and God? It's silly to expect there to be a way to do it and yet people devote their entire careers to it. Paul says "Where is the wise man? Where is the expert in the Mosaic law? Where is the debater of this age?" These people are counted among Christians in much smaller numbers than you would think.
He says "Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks ask for wisdom." In other words, spiritual people are always asking for one more sign, and intellectuals are always asking for one more layer of apologetic proof. There's no end to either of those searches. If you come up with one, they demand another, because the story of salvation sounds so absurd. Think about it: The glory of God is shamed, the saviour of the world is tortured, humiliated, and then killed, and then he returns from the grave. It makes no sense, if you've got no experience with God.
I have a fairly deep level of expertise in my career field. But I can't tell you how many times I've had inexperienced people laugh away my advice on things in my area because they were too ignorant to even be able to conceive of how much they didn't know. And I think that's what Paul is saying in these verses and it's brilliant.
He's saying that we, and the people who always need another proof, are like that freshly credentialed college graduate, fresh from four years of scoring well on tests, of being the smartest guy in the room, running blindly into a world for which they have no experience to even be able to relate. Compared to God's infinite wisdom, our human experience is like those four simplified years of college. Some of us have the humility to see it and make a faith-based decision to trust, while the others find a reason to blow Christianity off. The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. Imagine that instead of that lack of experience being ten or twenty years long, it's infinite. That's the dilemma we're faced with.
So where are all of the "experts" to explain this? There can't be any. No human is going to condense the history of the universe into a foolproof philosophical proof within their eighty years on the earth. We have to trust. Or we can just call it stupid and still pretend we're the smartest guy in the room, that human wisdom is the sum total of all wisdom, and if God doesn't fit into it then he's irrelevant.
For those of us who trust, we're okay with a bit of mystery. We trust that God is real, and we trust he's honest with us, and we trust that he loves us. It's a relationship, not an intellectual construct, and relationships are built on trust, not conjecture and analysis.
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