foolishness

This series will journal my exploration of the Corinthian church and how its corruption relates to our personal need for reformation. As much as we enjoy heralding the early church for their Spirit-led state and long to model their behaviors, Paul’s epistles remind us that Satan will plot deception wherever we allow the world to determine our values, practices, and attitudes about God.

During childhood I was regularly exposed to the advertising slogan of the United Negro College Fund: “The mind is a terrible thing to waste.” As with many first-generation, college-bound students, I lived with an expectation for excellence. While other kids were receiving money for honor roll grades, my dad was calling the teacher that had given me a “B+” to discover what I lacked. Better communication may have revealed my parents’ motivation. They did not want me sentenced to a life of factory work or military servitude.

Thus I developed the mind. My imagination had always been active; somewhere between ages 11 and 12, my greatest asset became a social deterrent. The growing machine turned itself to poetry, the one “listener” that understood my constant analysis. Less intelligent people than I have never succumbed to regular bouts of depression. Given a steady roof, three square meals, and parents that loved each other, I hadn’t any credibility to complain. I learned to suck it up. Page upon page was marked with rudimentary patterns, together expressing the complexity of my thoughts.

If this was wisdom, I wanted no part of it.

Like a pot of coffee already brewed, I couldn’t simply filter the black from my brain. I found it exponentially more difficult to re-stupefy. Lingering experiences left a hanging cloud of fog. I prided myself as a “realist,” the guy willing to identify evil that others seemed content to ignore. Why wouldn’t they? They were happy.

I’ve referred to my time in Kansas City as a walk through the wilderness; more so, it was an introduction to foolishness. My community was not aware that I was 28-years-old, working on my master’s degree in the privacy of my apartment. Within their context, I was a worker, a friend, a compassionate listener… a lover of Jesus. I had never felt more free.

That spring, a district camp of the Missionary Church asked me to speak. Diligently prepared with my sermon series, I met a series of audio-visual nightmares.

[BTW: How many moves of the Spirit have you witnessed that began with a plan gone “wrong?” Within a traditional church setting, this is almost always step one. I implore you to consider it grace and respond accordingly.]

As the camp director scrambled to fix the media disarray, I told him to forget it and began teaching from this passage:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12-1-3)

The rest of the evening was a blur -- a 5-year-old could have communicated the truth better than I had. But something broke in that room. (If you have never witnessed a group of preteens initiating heartfelt prayer, I pray you have that experience.) The minute my mouth closed, God told me to get out of the way. I left the room and the Spirit poured out for another two hours.

Foolishness. Yet another quandary that my flesh cannot reconcile: Christ crucified can be a nuisance to the sharpest minds.

Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength. (1 Cor. 1:22-25)

Corruption assumes contrary forms within the institution. One sect awaits a grand external display to give credence to the Gospel; the other desires to ascertain the knowledge of God through human facilities.

Jesus offers neither, but willingly employs something better. At the heart of the Gospel is this foolish notion of grace: that God would meet us in our filth and overcome us with His love. Oh, that the Holy Spirit would choose to make His mysteries known to the humble-hearted! How disturbingly wonderful that the God of creation would reconcile us not through reason, but through romance! My heart leaps from my chest, disrupting my analysis.