Which fools do you suffer gladly?
Do you even know?
Holy Scripture has a lot to say about fools, and also cautions calling someone a fool. What characterises a fool is someone without knowledge acting as if he does have that knowledge. The fool suffers from a surfeit of pride and too little sense of the truth. He often suffers much as a result. We hear that the fool and his money are soon parted: the fool invests his money in a project circumnavigating Switzerland, but he doesn't know that he is giving his money to thieves and crooks. Of course, this could happen innocently to any one of us, but the fool pridefully insists that he knows best and loses his money as a result.
Knowledge makes a difference between fool and wise, but which knowledge is best? Science has much to tell us about the physical world but it cannot tell us about the world that is not physical. If we rule out the existence of God to begin with then we will never find Him no matter how hard we look. Humility is a prerequisite here.
Fools are the object of ridicule. They are laughed at and mocked. The compassionate feel sorry for them and seek to help. But then the compassionate risk becoming fools themselves.
[PAUSE]
The Christian is supposed to become a fool for Christ. We are to be prepared to be mocked and hated for our Faith. We are to be seen as ignorant because we believe in God. Look at how daily we are laughed at because people think God doesn't really exist! These people think that we are fools because we don't know and they do. They judge us fools because they have superior knowledge.
The danger for the Christian is to look for truth apart from God. The world says that Love is an emotion, but we know that God is Love. If we accept the world's understanding of Love then belief in God is reduced to simply feeling nice. As a result, to love someone is to make them feel nice. The moment you make them sad, or offend them, or make them feel guilty, then the world says you are not living them. If we believe that this is what God wants, then we have to conclude that St Paul hates the Corinthians by making them sorry when he rebukes them for tolerating someone living an immoral life.
The moment a church allows the world to tell it what Good and Evil are, it becomes foolish. It is blind to its ignorance and insists on preaching ignorance.
We know that to love someone is to desire their perfection in God and to hate someone is to will their eternal imperfection and separation from God. It is because we love someone that we do not want them to be foolish. Foolishness is an imperfection - it is taking comfort in a truth that is not God. Our duty as Christians is never to be satisfied with our ignorance of God and to let our neighbour share in our search for the Truth that God is. If the world thinks we're foolish for seeking knowledge of God, let it! Let the world deride or pity! We will glory in the Truth of Christ.
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