1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5 page 1
|
1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5 page 1 |
|
To open this passage in a separate window, hold down SHIFT and click here.
Foolishness. Take the other day, when we had got home from shopping and were trying to cram everything in the fridge-freezer. You really don't want to put anything in that doesn't need to be there when you are cramped for space. But I had put in six bottles of Rebekah's favourite flavoured long-life milk that had not even been opened. Somehow the small print on the bottle had eluded me. I'd like to tell you that Debbie pointed this out to me winsomely and graciously, but those of you who know her well would not believe me. It was followed by a later bout of sarcasm when she saw me transferring these unopened bottles to a cupboard in the kitchen. Foolishness is a specialist subject for the Christian church, too. Sometimes it is of our own making. We simply behave like idiots in full view of an unbelieving culture. I have sat under the ministry of preachers who have said that failing to believe in a literal six-day creation is the first step on a slippery slope to atheism. They seem to overlook the manifestly poetic way in which Genesis chapter one is written. Or we go over-the-top uncritically. Take the protests over BBC 2's recent showing of Jerry Springer - The Opera: a frequent claim made was that the show contained eight thousand swear-words. But do a quick bit of maths and you'll see that in a two-hour production, that is more than one profanity per second. Yet some Christians still repeated this figure as emails were frantically sent. The figure, by the way, was derived by this method: every time the chorus sang an obscenity, they counted twenty-seven, because that was the number of singers in the chorus. This is not to say that I think the show was OK - I don't - but it is to say that Christian idiocy, along with the organisation Christian Voice posting the private addresses of BBC staff members on its website, gave a field day to those who would mock the Gospel. But I have a different kind of foolishness in mind this morning. It is the foolishness of our faith itself. And that is what Paul has to remind the Corinthians. Like the Greek culture from which they came, they prized what they considered to be 'wisdom'. And they thought they were wise. Not that their ethical behaviour looked very wise. And their boasting of wisdom was perhaps meant to elevate their faith to respectability within their society. You might think that the apostle would be pleased at the thought of such a strategy. Not a bit of it. He sees right through it. Very comprehensively he describes the foolishness of faith and why that foolish faith is the true revolution. It's something we may need to recover today. Our faith is certainly seen as foolish. But to head for respectability in society may well be the wrong solution. Hear what Paul says, and see what that might say to us today. |
|
Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration. |
.gif){kind=small}