Day 3952 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Corinthians 1:21 NIV

Foolish wisdom

It’s something that we both already have and yet are ironically called to turn around in order to find. And it’s this entirely oxymoronic undertaking as is to be undertaken at first backwards and then forever then on rather upside down that has led many to conclude that faith itself is something that, though existing, makes to no sense for an existence. And it’s that conclusion that either begins or ends the confusion in regard to this call still ringing from a cross taken to crosses taken.

Indeed, the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing as those who are perishing presently haven’t the audacity to imagine that getting the dying over with early might somehow achieve for us an inability to do it again should such a fearful opportunity present itself in the future.

Which it will.

For such is the promise of both every life and then of Judgement Day itself. Simply because both are promised the presence of what is death, as is the veritable loss of life that we, in our wisdom, are actually correct in so knowing it to be. The only question is whether or not that death is truly the end of life, as it will be here, the continuing of life, as it can be then, but then too where said life shall then continue to be lived after this life here has been died if in fact the end proves on the beginning of something else.

And yes, this is all entirely deep, impressively doom-laden and thus quite heavy to allow thoughts to tinker with and fight against.

Which is why most don’t.

And too why many who do only eventually come to find themselves only desperately unwilling to continue such enduring of what is in every way a sound teaching, all because the sound of the ease of the life that used to be continues to sing the song of nostalgia’s warm familiarity. Which is something that I know all of us know as we seem to know that what we’ve known is perhaps worth knowing once more as it was in many ways easier, safer, warmer, funnier, friendlier, and well, just more conducive unto the life we’ve lived and thus know best how to continue so.

Which seems an entirely logical choice to choose seeing as how none with a life seek their life to lose as here is said to be a world of gain just waiting for us to get in line and follow behind those who know the way to the things and thoughts they know will help us be what we should all be so elated to become that, once there, and along the way too, we find that we’ve both nothing to lose as we’re gaining so much that with it we don’t really know what to do which leaves us then with having gained so much that we fear we’ve entirely too much to lose to risk doing anything at all.

See the confusion yet?

Sadly, no, no it seems as though we don’t because we continue to just keep rehashing it in what’s become a way of life in which all we know is what’s already known as is learned simply because someone else both said we should and proved we could and, well, that’s good enough for us!

If it makes sense to someone else and seems easy enough for our to learn, seek, find, understand for ourselves, we’re all in.

Which is why the way to life remains the path of which, on which, toward which and for which so few have, are, will find themselves walking.

It’s simply because narrow is the way which leads to life and it aims right through the eye of a needle which is somehow said to be plausibly gaping enough to welcome a camel but yet entirely too skinny to embrace a rich man.

Again, seems to make no sense.

And indeed, just last evening my family and I were watching a show that was supposed to be about weather and the power of this planet in which we are but through which we’re only passing and we found ourselves faced with a problem. And that is that all of the sudden what was supposed to be an episode about an Arizona rainstorm turned into an atheist talking all about how he was raised as a Christian but grew up only to determine that it made no sense and how he finds that he has far more fun now that he believes in so much nothing.

Put an end to our watching pretty quick!

Not because I’m, we’re opposed to opposing perspectives and points of view as we’re all well aware that we all have them and such is because God both created us all to be unique people and that, as such, we’ve all been given said freedom to live our lives as we so choose and thus have the right to determine what we believe and what we don’t.

Just not looking for darkened evangelistic advice on a Wednesday night while I’m just trying to spend some time with my family.

But it did leave me thinking as it seems to have lined up quite perfectly with what we’ve been talking. For we’ve been discussing here lately the oddity that is our faith and how God seems to have inspired, created, ordained, planned, predestined it to go this way as, well, whether anyone believes the Bible or not, it seems to be pretty accurate to what we’re seeing, hearing, feeling, finding in what is in every way a continuation of the very fall which it recounts both the beginning of, the continuation in, and the promised evacuation from.

For a few, that is.

Alas, that few is they who, as defined here, are saved through what pleases God which is, as defined here, what is rightly deemed entirely foolish to what is this world’s wisdom. For, in the wisdom of the world, Christ makes no sense as why would God come to die for the sins He didn’t Himself commit, dying on a cross that’s just blatantly brutal and brings then all sorts of undue suffering, only to then raise Himself back to life only to be still denied by the majority that He knew always would.

And thus the Bible is nothing more than a fairy tale set in the obvious fiction which makes said stories so filled with the awe and wonder that we grown ups apparently believe only cannot exist as we’ve instead settled for a way of life in which “it’s all just death and taxes” and we’re both good with that but entirely unhappy about it on an almost daily basis as we get our paychecks and can afford so much that we don’t need that we don’t remember how to be happy with the meeting of our needs (such as water, air, sunlight and other such sustenance) as is done on the daily even when we’re not working.

Which we’re never not as we find that we’ve so much we always need to do in order to continue to always prove that we’re “winning at life” that we’ve come to consider time as money and thus count our cents and yet can’t then count on our sense.

Why?

Because we’re living to die instead of dying to live as is proven in how all of what we’re doing is only done to get something that death will steal.

Simply because, in our wisdom, it just makes more sense to live for dollars and cents than to give all we have to the poor and embrace the fact that these are nothing but our lives to lose, and that only those who agree to lose them well will find themselves given another later on.

All because the Bible says that whoever has will be given more whereas those who have not will have what even they think they have taken away from them.

Because one reality that we have gotten right, somehow, is that less is more, a truth we seldom actually live by because we’ve instead become better convinced that to want is to buy than to live is to die.

A truth defined as true seeing as how from those to whom much has been given, the same is then justly required as we’ve given nothing to ourselves and thus must owe all we are and all we have back unto whomever happened to have placed this life into our hands.

Meaning then that maybe the Bible is onto something when it describes us as those created of the dirt, of which we, thanks to science, know our flesh and bones to return once our hearts have stopped beating and our minds ceased from thinking.

But no, that’s just a lucky coincidence.

Such as luck itself, ironically.

For indeed, whenever something good happens in life, we consider ourselves lucky. Almost as if to say that we kind of agree with the Bible in that life here ain’t what it should have been seeing as how we do in fact face and feel so many more of those moments met and made in struggle than we do those enjoyed in success. But again, it can’t be God merely choosing to bless His creation in the hopes of their turning from their sins and seeking both Him and then too life again.

Nope, gotta be the stars aligning.

Even though science proves that the stars in the sky only stay in place as it’s rather the earth (not flat) which spins that seems to only make them seem as if they’re in a different place than they were the night before, and even that entirely unmoved as a constellation such as the well-known and easily found belt of orion still somehow looks exactly the same today as it did way back when people used to use the stars for such progression as nightly navigation and the tracking of seasons.

Meaning that maybe the stars don’t move and thus can’t align.

Which only brings us right back to coincidence.

My personal favorite being this big bang that we’ve all heard about but have just about as much proof of as we do bigfoot. For both are incredibly theoretical and yet many claim to know plenty about them. Such as how this bang somehow caused a bunch of what’s essentially dust to just happen to appear out of the nothing that was there before, and in such a way that it started joining together with itself to create all these little clumps of dust that somehow became clumps of cells that somehow spun themselves in such a way that even more cells were made and those cells made more cells of what could have thus been only themselves.

And this process repeats for however long some expert said it probably had to have had the chance to and we arrive at these bacteria, which become what they say is something like a tadpole kind of thing that then grows, thanks to its ability to eat what just happened to have become something entirely different from the very same magical dust that came from nowhere, into what becomes fish I guess which then manage to sprout legs and start heading for the shore (made of even yet a different kind of magic dust) which it finds more enjoyable (somehow thanks to opinions having formed along the way) and thus determines to leave the water behind (which I have no idea how the water happened since some of it became soil).

And it continues until we have dinosaurs which become both birds and their own prey as is known in the form of reptiles, which also prey on mammals such as monkeys which is where we got our start.

And yes indeedy, that all makes far more sense!

Thankfully someone else already figured it out because I don’t know how else we ever could have!

Because we all both already know everything and yet always look to others to help us either figure out what we know, why it matters, what it means, where it goes, why we don’t. Indeed, we look daily to the world to tell us everything from what’s healthy for us to eat to who we’re supposed to be as is anymore only really defined by what we do.

Guess we’ve just reached the inevitable end of “evolution” which leaves us then with so little less to become that we’ve just become angry because we don’t have enough of the shiny dust that came from nowhere apparently but yet is widely agreed upon as being worth more than the none shiny stuff.

And all the while God sits in Heaven probably either laughing or lamenting at the whole ordeal.

Simply because we’ve so willfully chosen to make it all so incredibly hard on ourselves when life itself is something so easy that we’re literally born knowing how to do it. And yet we forget just as soon as this world gets a hold of us and starts ushering us in the directions it all but demands we go. Start school at five. Get your license at 16. Graduate 18. Better attend college as there’s simply more to learn about the world if you’re to be a productive member thereof.

Start a job you think you’ll like until you’re in your 60s and finally given back the money you trusted to a government for safekeeping. Marry in your twenties or look and live like a lonely loser the rest of your life. Have some kids, or just kill them if you want, doesn’t matter. Buy a house and plan on letting it fall apart as upkeep is hard and getting too expensive. Break down for some midlife crises in which you start to finally ask some questions that only cause you to maybe think you might have messed up and missed some stuff.

Chalk all that stuff up as a loss and move on because you’ve got to be back at work on Monday to that job you now hate because you somehow managed to learn or grow or become a different person in the 20 or so years since you started. Bide your time and ignore your wife and kids until you hit retirement, by which hopefully the youngsters will have finally left you and misses alone so you can finally spend some time together going on expensive cruises spent floating on the very same magical water that somehow our fish ancestors were none too eager to leave behind.

And again, that all is all that’s supposedly supposed to make sense.

Because we’ve been told it does by those doing it that way because someone else told them they should.

And thus the cycle perpetuates itself whilst feigning progress in the form of advanced technology that’s always aimed at only comfort and complacency.

And God just keeps laughing.

Or crying.

Probably crying.

And being mad.

But who can blame Him? Except this one guy I sadly saw a clip of yesterday on the youtubes talking about how it doesn’t make any sense for a father figure such as God’s supposed to be to ever become angry with His children, as if the little freaks never do anything wrong and the parent is never then able to experience anger.

Give me a break!

Are we truly happy with all this nonsense we’re feeding ourselves? Do we enjoy this kind of life in which we always have to come up with some new cockamamie theory to placate our now violent unwillingness to be humble?

Do we truly think that the Bible makes no sense when it was somehow written years ago and yet manages to all but perfectly predict all of this?

Look, I know there’s nothing I can ever say or do to get through to those who are not of the ability or willingness to be gotten through to. For such is the wall that all of us build of what are hard hearts heat-treated by the way we treat ourselves and one another. We’ve arrived at such a mind of so much hatred and doubt that life and love are all but considered expendable and nonsensical.

Is that who we want to be? A people quicker to doubt than to believe?

Or do we not only agree to doubt because we find that it gives us some sick sense of superiority that we then use only to be even more angry all the time?

The point I’m trying to make is that mentioned right at the start: Foolish wisdom. It’s this reality we’ve managed to find ourselves in in which we’re fools who think ourselves wise. And it’s also the reality toward which we’re called in Christ, to live as those who know their tendency toward foolishness so that they can in turn begin trying to become wise.

The issue is that the wisdom of this world, which we all know plenty about, is foolishness to God and the wisdom of God, as is proven most perfectly in the cross managing to sew life back together through the sinful death we’ve all chosen, is considered foolishness to those living choosing the death.

And, again, the Bible nails that one too!

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.

Why?

Because they haven’t perished yet and, being a people who see first and believe only maybe thereafter, having not seen themselves die leaves them doubting they might. And thus most here, as we’re all taught to fear death as it stands at the end of this life we’ve come to love a little too much (and that because we love ourselves entirely too much), doubt then anything which asks that we hurry up and get the dying part of life over with so that death can truly lose its sting and thus us our fear of being stung.

But no. We don’t yet see or feel the weight of our wrongs and so we remain far more easily swayed that we have none.

And thus the message of the cross makes no sense as there stands no logical reasoning behind a God coming to die for mistakes He didn’t make for a people who haven’t made any either.

And that’s all well and fine but the truth is that we all get far more wrong than we believe we get right and that mostly only because we love the comfort we feel in thinking that we know what we’re doing as it leads us always right back to the place in which we contend that we can make no mistakes and thus Jesus didn’t need to die and thus God’s not alive, the Bible’s a lie, Heaven’s not there, hell doesn’t exist and we’ve thus nothing to worry about expect death and taxes.

Easy to see both how and why we’re all so overwhelmed with peace and joy and hope and happiness these days.

We’re all just living to die and doing all we can to remain convinced that it makes sense to experience the best part first.

Proving perfectly that we’re just wise fools.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold