A Fool For Christ
Apr 8th, 2008 by Brian Robertson
Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 3:18-19: “Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.”
My recent entry, “Only a Hobo,” has drawn a surprising range of comments, some I would take issue with, some I am in awe of because they seem to get right to the very core of things. I’m grateful, of course, for all those who comment and those who read whether they choose to or are moved to offer up thoughts.
Why, I ask myself, are we so angry with people who are in obvious bad straits. Perhaps they are not panhandling for money for breakfast, but for a morning bottle. Perhaps they really have money and are “posing” as poor and destitute when their SUV is parked two blocks over, waiting to take them to a nice house somewhere for a shower before the “work day” begins again tomorrow.
Sometimes, I think, the anger is really fear, fear that the lot of these people’s lives could become our own if we are living paycheck to paycheck or if the money we spent has proven to be teetering on the brink of vanishing down a collapsing mortgage. More often, it seems, we are apt to turn away from someone homeless or poor, scornful, because we simply don’t want to be the victim of some wild-eyed con artist who makes us look like a fool, a softy, a sucker.
Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, makes a point that I think is too often missed by Christians today — but it is a concept that has played throughout the heritage of the faith. Examples are found in the Eastern Orthodox tradition and in the more “Western” church in the form of St. Francis. The idea, of course, is that one is to be “a fool for Christ” as a way of expressing faith and reaching out to other people.
A “Fool for Christ”, as the preacher used the term, is someone who is secure enough and devoted enough in their Christian faith that they don’t mind looking foolish and socially unacceptable for the sake of their faith. The term can be a bit difficult to wrap our heads around nowadays, but harkens back to a day in the early church when living as a Christian meant violating all sorts of social codes and taboos. This might have meant inviting lepers, Samaritans, tax-collectors, prostitutes and adulterers into your home. What fool would do that? A fool for Christ. Or it might mean disobeying some of society’s commands about class and gender and rank. What kind of fool would worship with slaves? A fool for Christ.
….Rev.Thom Belote
Loving the unloved is a risk. We are always an inch away from being taken in life, and not just by those on the street but by politicians and advertisers and, yes, ministers. The question is, if you are eventually going to be a fool, if you’re not a Fool For Christ than, pray tell, who or what are you a fool for?
In a very real sense, Paul is making a simple comment — that the person who is “a fool for Christ” risks reputation and image and propriety and the resulting derision from the world in order to be pleasing to God. Think, if you will, not of insanity but of a different kind of sanity, the kind that breaks through the countless stories of the eccentric and childlike monks of the great Zen tales. Think of St. Francis speaking to the animals, telling a wolf that feeding on people will never do and that the villagers will bring the wolf food daily to keep him from attacking. Think of countless figures in the Eastern Orthodox tradition with their often zany ways of dealing with the world.
Now think of yourself. If you give the man on the street corner a dollar or a coupon for a free hamburger or a prayer, you step that much away from hate and toward God, decidedly foolish in the eyes of the world but precious in the eyes whose gaze is boundless, who looks out from our very soul and sees something of itself in the tarnished, hungry or battered soul of another.
Blessings,
Rev. Brian
Technorati Tags: christian mystic, mystic, st. paul, fool for christ, mystic christian, christianity, st. francis, eastern orthodox
For some reason I feel like a dog-with-a-bone-to-chew and keep wanting to point out the other side of the coin.
I teach math. In the formal study of logic, there’s a kind of statement called a conditional statement, more informally known as ‘if-then’ statements. (Ex: If today is Christmas, then it’s a holiday.) Given any ‘if-then’ statement, you can create another related if-then statement called it’s coverse, by switching the ‘if’ and the ‘then’. (Ex: If today is a holiday, then it is Christmas.) When the original is true, the converse may or may not also be true. It is well known in the study of logic, that a common instinctive error we humans frequently make is, using a ‘truth’ to guide our lives WITHOUT making a distinction between the ‘truth’ and its converse. In other words, sometimes it’s the ‘truth’ guiding us, sometimes it’s its false converse.
Being a ‘Fool-for-Christ’. “If you are committed to the Christian life, and speak out in defense of Christian Love, then sometimes you will find yourself being ridiculed for being a fool.” But don’t be afraid of that. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. Agreed? (By the way, I stand before 140 adolescents 5 days a week. I’m not afraid of being laughed at anymore. I don’t like it, and it still bothers me, but I’m not afraid of it anymore.
)
I think some people believe that “If I am being ridiculed for being a fool-for-Christ, then I’m ‘doing it right’. I have a truly strong committment to Jesus.”
Sometimes, when we’re being ridiculed for being a fool, it’s NOT a ‘fool-proof’ method of guaging that we’re on the right track, sometimes, sadly, we’re just being … fools.
I honestly believe some people shoot for being seen as fools. They delight in irritating other people while spouting off about Jesus, and convince themselves that because they’re getting a rise out of others, they’re ‘doing-it-right’.
But, we shouldn’t be AIMING for being ‘fools-for-Christ’. We should be aiming for truly understanding the heart of Christ and St. Paul’s message, and righteously following it, and IF we are seen as fools, so be it.
But, we shouldn’t be AIMING for being ‘fools-for-Christ’. We should be aiming for truly understanding the heart of Christ and St. Paul’s message, and righteously following it, and IF we are seen as fools, so be it.
Kathy
I don’t disagree at all and I don’t believe the original post disagreed with the final paragraph. I think, however, you’re (as Mark Twain said) confusing lightning with a lightning bug. I see it not just in this instance but over the past few comments. When one talks about a concept such as “Fools-for-Christ”" the mundane world’s voice is to talk about irritating people by acting foolish on purpose, etc, etc. which has nothing whatsoever to do with how the term was used and has been used in Christian tradition.
The point, however, is that St. Francis and any of the others one can read about (remember, Google is your friend) in moving closer to God became less conformist and not more, more involved with God’s Presence no matter how it might appear and not taken with the concept of acting weird just to be able to stand out. Spirituality is not a calculated publicity stunt or public relations plan such as one sees in politics where a multimillionaire runs for office and attempt to portray his or herself as “one of the simple people” with laughable results.
In other words, when words/terms such as “Fool for Christ” comes up, like the word “mystic” one simply has to realize one has entered a kind of poetry where words mean more than if lifted out of a newspaper or instruction manual. It is, in many ways, a rather different language. Trying to twist it into concrete, everyday terms is to miss the point, to fail to move beyond to what it points toward.
To say, “My love is a red, red rose” is to to say that one is dating a shrub.
Blessing,
Brian
Dear Brian:
I tried e-mailing this to you also.
Please accept my apologies for any offense I have caused. (To your readers, also; I tried to post another comment explaining last Friday; it was rather lengthy and twice it didn’t go through … hence the most recent questioning if I was blocked…it was kind of a test, I didn’t expect it to go through.)
Please allow me to try to explain where I was coming from:
The brother that I mentioned being involved in a divorce/custody battle is not homeless, but easily could have been, many times over, and is struggling, while fighting for custody of his child, to hold his head up and maintain the belief that he is deserving of custody.
His marriage was not riddled with fights, as are many marriages that end in divorce. His ex-wife is in the military, frequently fooled around, and filed for divorce only 1 ½ years after their child was born. They had been married for 10 years and finally decided to have a baby together, and in that short year and a half, she decided to end the marriage, thereby breaking up the family, and making it impossible for the child to be raised by both. Being involved in raising his daughter was so important to him, he and his (ex)wife agreed he should quit his job and be a stay-at-home father, and he was from the time she was born.
We’ve (his family) learned so much about the law and society through his circumstances, and most of it is shockingly, appallingly upsetting. It’s been 3 1/2 years, it’s not over, and there’s a very real possibility that she will win. During this time, it’s been clear that the law and society is showing an overwhelming amount of sympathy for her because she is ‘the mother’. And bringing up background info regarding the divorce only angers the courts; it’s ‘unrelated’. I know that if I could ‘see’ his soul, it would be lying, not standing, crying and bleeding. And I’m having to watch him get kicked again almost every time he reaches out for help.
Add to his story all the (in some cases more appalling) other stories we’ve been hearing about the mis-appropriation of justice, and my experience with today’s parents of adolescents who can be bigger, whinier babies than are their kids, …. and I cannot escape the view that there is an imbalance is the administering of compassion, sympathy and forgiveness. It’s seems that the ‘wrong-doer’s’ are being given the compassion and forgiveness, and those who are wronged are paying the price, suffering the consequences.
It’s backward; I do not want the rules of spiritual conduct discarded, I want them strengthened. And I believe that acknowledgement of the need for ‘tough love’ can help strengthen them, and turn the situation around. (I was at an Orthodox Christian retreat on Sat.; one thing, more than any other, made it worthwhile for me, coming on the heels of my bumbling attempt to plead this case: a quote from St. John Chrysostom, an early church father: “If you give a gentle word when a harsh one is required, you are a corrupter of souls.”)
I guess the only connection to “Only a Hobo…” is that homelessness and broken families are both ‘social ills’. And the only reason I brought it (that radio comment) back into my posts was out of a subconscious awareness that this is not my blog, but that I was selfishly using it to vent about a confusingly-related topic.
But I NEVER tried to defend or excuse the radio announcers’ comments. In my 1st posting, I stated that I hoped nobody misunderstood me as defending the attention-getting comment of the radio announcers. In my 3rd posting, I called Sgt. Sam a ‘jerk’ and said that the comment was ‘so awful it was not worth the time it took to criticize it’, because to criticize it, is to give it a voice again.
I agree that it is ‘wrong, wrong, wrong’. There’s a wide range of possibilities in the hypothetical ‘insensitive comments towards the less fortunate in life’ that I kept mentioning. Insensitivity may be perceived because the comment ‘withholds sympathy’. Those are the hypothetical comments I was trying to defend. That is very, very different from insensitively directing more hurt towards life’s less fortunate, which is what the radio comment was. I know and agree, there is no attack to a soul more ‘killing’ than the ones that de-value it’s very existence.
Again, please accept my apologies. No ‘insensitive’ offense was ever intended.
God Bless You.
Kathy