"Tight lines" is a blessing fishermen offer each other, a wish for lines taut with the weight of good fish. May God grant that the lines written here be taut with His blessings.
Friday, 13 March 2009 | |||
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Wisdom or Foolishness? | |||
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It turns out I've never before preached on the passage which
is our text this week,
I Corinthians 1:18-25. There may be a fairly obvious reason. Here
Paul seems to be none too complimentary about an endeavor to which I've
given a great deal of my time and attention, namely philosophy, literally
"love of wisdom." The NIV/TNIV makes a serious mistake, in my personal perspective, by rendering verse 20, "Where are the wise? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? . . ." The word translated philosopher is not actually "philosophos" in Greek, but another word that much more literally means "debater" or "disputer" in the old KJV language. Contemporary readers of Scripture might be much more likely to identify the "debaters of this age" as media personnel or politicians, rather than as poor, much maligned academic philosophers just trying to get along in a time of crumbling support for study of the humanities. In the ancient world one might think more of the sophists, clever rhetoricians with a reputation for being able to make any proposition sound reasonable, rather than figures like Socrates, Plato or Aristotle, the shining lights of Greek philosophy. O.K., so the preceding was a pitiful piece of whining. I'm sorry. And, Scripture still has some lumps for philosophers in Colossians 2:8 wherein we are warned against being taken captive "by hollow and empty philosophy," where the word really is "philosophia" this time. We philosophers like to point out that the operative words here are "hollow and empty," with the suggestion that there might be another sort of philosophy, which is not so empty or dangerous. But all this is fairly petty defensiveness on behalf of my academic background. Our text has bigger fish to fry in terms of challenging a general cultural perspective on the message we as Christians hold most dear. The point is that a crucified God is, from the viewpoint of wisdom and power in the standard order of things, a foolish thing to worship. In ancient Rome, crucifixion was perhaps the most despised way to die, a clear sign of foolishness and failure. In America, both Christians and non-Christians are familiar enough with basic Christian teaching that we often don't perceive the inherent conflict between the knowledge, success and influence we value so much and a faith that has suffering and death right in the heart of its story. The question for the Church today seems to be whether we will in fact believe and act upon a faith that a crucified life is wiser and more powerful than a successful, profitable, victorious life. And what does a crucified life look like in concrete terms? Shall we be completely imprudent regarding making a living? Shall we let go of attempts to demonstrate the reasonableness and advantages of Christian faith? Or is it something more like foregoing attempts to show that Christianity can foster and support what is often called "the American dream"? These thoughts here are probably as humanly foolish as any. Thank God that, as Paul says, God's foolishness is wiser than any of this. May He give us some of that divine foolishness. | |||
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I am the pastor of Valley Covenant Church in Eugene, Oregon. I love to flyfish and hike along the beautiful rivers in our area. I welcome your comments as I share sermon work in progress and occasional other thoughts.
Thank you for visiting this blog. I invite you also to visit my web page.
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