Become A Fool So You Can Become Wise

Become A Fool So You Can Become Wise

Stop fooling yourselves. If you think you are wise by this world’s standards, you will have to become a fool so you can become wise by God’s standards. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. Everything belongs to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God. –1 Corinthians 3:18-19, 22-23

Driving a car full of kids on a field trip is an education in itself. I’m never quite sure if I should try to be a hip and cool mom or simply keep my mouth shut. The kids’ conversations are a constant stream of attempts to one-up each other. They’ve all seen or done something more interesting, more daring, or more expensive. It is a less sophisticated version of the conversations we have as adults in our futile attempt to cover up deep-seated insecurities and shore up our worldly securities.

We all have a built-in sense of insecurity that comes from living in a world that is beyond our control. At the same time, we’ve fooled ourselves into believing that we have everything under control, that we know enough to solve our own problems or know someone who can. We’re a mixture of self-sufficiency and insecurity, and our big talk covers up our profound need and paralyzing fear. Both sides of this paradoxical self-deception are an affront to God. One side tells God we have no need for him. The other says we believe our needs are too great for him to meet. One appears strong and the other weak. But both require the grace of God in order to humble ourselves. God hears us talking big in the backseat of this ride through life, and he knows we are not as smart or self-sufficient as we think we are. Neither is he as powerless as we sometimes think he is. To our self-sufficiency, he says we must give up our own wisdom and embrace his. To our insecurity, he reminds us that because we are in Christ, everything that belongs to him belongs to us. We can be secure in his sufficiency.

God is not out to be impressive on the world’s terms, nor is it his goal to make you merely impressive. In this world, the wisdom and power of God come across as weak and foolish, and God wants it that way. Are you willing to humble yourself to enter into his sufficiency and security? Are you willing to become foolish in the eyes of the world so that you might become truly wise in the estimation of God?

Wisdom of God, you are everything I need. In the foolishness of the Cross, you are wiser than the wisdom of this world. You show me how to become a fool so I can gain life-giving, soul-sustaining wisdom.

DIGGING DEEPER