What We Think Is Smart May Not Be!

In my most recent posts I have been writing about how hard it is to trust/believe/have faith.  Well, maybe this letter Paul writes to the people of Corinth (see below) has a key to our quandary!

For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.

Isn’t that an interesting thought? 

I wonder if that is really true!  Or, is it that we don’t even understand how to understand this statement?

Surely we find faith in God through our mental capacity.  How else can we hope to know God? That is how we learn everything! Or is it??

Plus, Jesus came to teach us so that we might be able to understand.  Right??? He even made sure we could be taught. He did that by leaving us with a helper — the Holy Spirit.  Who would “guide us into all truth.” So why can’t we use our minds to understand God?  Or!  Does the Spirit have other ways to teach us?

Could it be that what this all means is human wisdom alone?  Human understanding alone — without the faith-power of the Holy Spirit -- is foolish and useless?  Could it be that left to our own thinking, without God’s Spirit, we spew from our senseless minds meaningless babble?  

It is interesting!  Because we human type creatures do tend to think that we are superior in our mental capacities. We are quite sophisticated in our power to reason and figure out.  And! I do think that God gave us this amazing ability to think and create, reason and imagine, and invent amazing things.  Things, that in most ways, make life more enjoyable and even easier.  God did create us to be the care takers of all He had made. Right?  And yet, Scripture does suggest that we just may be treading on thin pride!

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart."

Go figure!!!!!!

It might be helpful to know what Paul is concerned about here. It is, what I will call, the beginning of denominational divisions.  Even before the Roman Church was established the first small Christian communities showed signs of claiming allegiance to their own choice for leader of the pack.  Apparently, in the community of Corinth, some people felt that Paul was the true leader; some felt it was Apollo; other saw Cephas as the one to listen to.  Paul is reminding them that Christ is the only true leader.  And there needs to be only that one point of agreement.  That was to live in Christ.  Nothing else mattered!  Because no human mind can take Christ’s place.  He says this best at the beginning of Chapter two of this letter: “When I came to you….My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.” 

These wise words from Paul have a lot to do with the conflict — quandary — we find ourselves in on how and when to trust God with decision we make and/or a future we don’t always plan on.  So when we have these questions and doubts about God’s ability to guide us in ways that don’t always feel comfortable; it would be good to take time to think about stories like the Exodus, Moses, Abraham and Isaac, Jeremiah, Job and yes, even Jesus.  Or, how about Jonah?   All of those people had to walk into unknown futures with God as their only hope. God as their only source of knowing how, when and where to go!

18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart." 20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, 23 but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.(1 Cor. 1 18-25)