Power of Fools
The blog Square No More hosts a monthly syncroblog - where a variety of blogs interact on a single topic. This month's topic was "Holy Fool". Julie Clawson's Blog had a great post about the fool. I am going to quote heavily from her blog here:
"...they are really missing the whole point - that of justice and how we interact with the Other as being more basic and central than any theory of knowledge. And it is that emphasis on interaction with the Other that has me proudly accepting the label of fool.
Faith is not about knowledge - what we know or how we know it, it is about following in the footsteps of a fool. Jesus was a fool in the eyes of the world. He has been accredited with ushering in an upside-down kingdom - where the first shall be last and the last shall be first. He cared for those whom society cast aside, he instructed us to love our enemies, he called the underdogs blessed. By anyone’s standards he was a fool. And he called us to follow him. As many have stated recently, this isn’t about affirming a secret set of knowledge but about entering into a way of life. It is about following the fool, being content in mystery, affirm the power of paradox, and turning the world upside-down."
I think this gets the point of my frustration with many of the internal church battles. We are trying to focus on apologetics, or evangelism, or fighting about worship styles or even carpeting. All of these battles focus on the internal problems of the church. Those are important. We need to be a healthy church, but focusing on internal problems of the church to become healthy often is like focusing on sales numbers when the real problem is that you don't have a product to sell yet. The church at its heart should be about the other. And that doesn't make sense. We have to focus on the other, even if that appears foolish, even if that is foolish. Because Christ didn't want his own power, he didn't want to build the church, he wanted to point to the Father.
"...they are really missing the whole point - that of justice and how we interact with the Other as being more basic and central than any theory of knowledge. And it is that emphasis on interaction with the Other that has me proudly accepting the label of fool.
Faith is not about knowledge - what we know or how we know it, it is about following in the footsteps of a fool. Jesus was a fool in the eyes of the world. He has been accredited with ushering in an upside-down kingdom - where the first shall be last and the last shall be first. He cared for those whom society cast aside, he instructed us to love our enemies, he called the underdogs blessed. By anyone’s standards he was a fool. And he called us to follow him. As many have stated recently, this isn’t about affirming a secret set of knowledge but about entering into a way of life. It is about following the fool, being content in mystery, affirm the power of paradox, and turning the world upside-down."
I think this gets the point of my frustration with many of the internal church battles. We are trying to focus on apologetics, or evangelism, or fighting about worship styles or even carpeting. All of these battles focus on the internal problems of the church. Those are important. We need to be a healthy church, but focusing on internal problems of the church to become healthy often is like focusing on sales numbers when the real problem is that you don't have a product to sell yet. The church at its heart should be about the other. And that doesn't make sense. We have to focus on the other, even if that appears foolish, even if that is foolish. Because Christ didn't want his own power, he didn't want to build the church, he wanted to point to the Father.
posted by Adam Shields at
6:34 AM
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