Beautiful Folly

[. . .] and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
(Philippians 2:11)

The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God. As the Scriptures say,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise

and discard the intelligence of the intelligent.”

 
So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish. Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe. It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from heaven. And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom. So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense.

But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.

Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God.

God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin. Therefore, as the Scriptures say, “If you want to boast, boast only about the LORD.” (1 Corinthians 1:18–31 NLT)

The construction on the Eiffel Tower was completed in 1889 and served as the centerpiece of the World’s Fair that took place in Paris, France, that same year. Yet even though it has become one of the quintessential Parisian landmarks alongside the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, and even the River Seine itself, not everyone was a fan of the tower prior to its completion.

In fact, a year before the final rivet was put in place, a collection of artists and authors published an open letter titled “Protest against the Tower of Monsieur Eiffel.” They referred to it as “this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower” that would “dominat[e] Paris like a gigantic black smokestack.” It wasn’t until the tower was actually completed and they saw the finished work – and the overall public sentiment in favor of the tower – that many of them changed their minds. However, not everyone was won over in the end; author Guy de Maupassant supposedly ate lunch at the Eiffel Tower’s restaurant each day because it was the only place in the city he couldn’t see the tower he hated so much.

Sometimes what one person sees as folly, another knows to be beautiful and wonderful, and often times it takes a bit of hindsight vision to transition from the former view to the latter.

For those of us who follow Jesus Christ and proclaim the beauty of the cross and the empty tomb to any within earshot, we are likely to be seen as fools. The way of Jesus is the way of abundant life found through death, of overcoming evil through grace and love rather than sword and violence, of strength found in weakness. It is the story of the upside-down Kingdom of God, where “many who are the greatest now will be least important then, and those who seem least important now will be the greatest then” (Matthew 19:30).

As we commit to proclaiming the Gospel through every word and action, we must also accept we will often be thought of as fools and failures. Our response to any such claims should never be to push back against them but instead to boast all the more in the Lord. May we learn to allow the beauty of the cross to shine through in the end.
 
 
Michael Benson is the communications director for the North American Baptist Conference.