A Fool In 2006

It is not uncommon for me to be called a fool.

Considering who read this blog, it is probable this descriptive term has been used by a few of you to describe me on one or two occasions. It is even more probable that I deserved it.

Still, one of my commitments for 2006 is that I can be an even greater fool. In fact, I will go so far as to say that being a fool is going to be one of my primary goals this year.

Now, there are a few definitions of fool. The real fool is the person whom God identifies as a fool… who, lacking a genuine fear of God lacks wisdom and does foolish things. A “foolbearer” (a word which I have shamelessly stolen along with several of these ideas from Os Guinness) is foolish in the eyes of the world, but not in God’s eyes.

The term, as I am using it, comes from one of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. However, the idea is a lot older. King David once danced with abandon as the Ark was brought into Jerusalem. His wife thought he was a fool. Jeremiah put a wooden yoke around his neck and became a laughing stock to an entire generation. Ezekiel was to eat excrement in public… I even thought that sounded foolish.

There are several reasons that I think it is important for me to be a foolbearer this year.

If I am serious about discipleship, I should understand that being a foolbearer is the price I am going to pay. Bonhoeffer wrote his famous statement in 1937, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” C. S. Lewis wrote in The Great Divorce, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.”

That would seem to be the difference between heaven and hell.

If I am going to do His will, I better get used to people thinking me foolish.

Thinking of which, being a foolbearer is God’s plan for how we are to respond to hurt. Nothing was more revolutionary, or more “foolish”, in Christ’s teaching than his idea that we should respond to personal injury with love… “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” Rather than playing the victim, as it seems like we so often do anymore in public ministry, I am called to respond with Christ’s love to those who mean me harm.

I remember that back in the late sixties and early seventies I was rather proud of being part of a counter-culture. Unfortunately, my “counter-culture” became the dominant culture… and didn’t do too well when it achieved that goal! If I would like to remain faithful to some of my youthful ideals, I need to admit that being a foolbearer is the only way that I will really run against the current dominant culture.

In the end, “foolbearing” is just faithfulness to the Message. Faithfulness to Him. Austin Farrer, the Oxford philosopher wrote, “If Jesus is willing to be in us and to let us show Him to the world, it is a small thing that we should endure being fools for Christ’s sake…”

A small thing, but a hard goal in 2006 for someone like myself.