Why I Will Be Made A Fool

This past Sunday, after house church, Rachel and Harry and I got to head out to my friend Mark’s house in Wimberley for fireworks and fun. It was the first time that I have had a chance to see Mark’s shop. Mark is a woodworker by trade and an extremely good one. But he wasn’t born with a natural knack. He decided one day, about 15 years ago, to apprentice himself out to one of the greatest woodworkers in Texas at the time. He asked the man to teach him everything he knew. The man agreed.

A month in and Mark was beginning to regret his choice. All that the man had allowed Mark to do was sand wood. Every day that Mark came into the shop he watched this man saw and mold and shape wood into some of the most beautiful pieces he had ever seen. But all the man would allow Mark to do was sand wood. Every day. For days and weeks and then some.

There were many days when Mark wanted to quit. And when I see the work that Mark is doing now, I’m glad he didn’t. But not as glad as Mark is.

While we were out on Sunday, Mark introduced me to a guy who has become his apprentice. They showed me a desk that they were working on. I asked the man what Mark had him doing. “Sanding, mostly,” he said.

We are a people unwilling to sit still and shut up long enough to listen and learn. As a result, we miss out on wisdom. We don’t like the idea of things taking time or effort, so we often avoid the things that do. We don’t like the idea of failure, so we pursue those areas only where we are sure we can succeed.

In college, I was a mostly A, sometimes B student. Until I took a class from a man named Tony Ash. Dr. Ash gave me my first (and, as it turned out, only) C. As a result, I avoided taking classes from him for the next two years. During those two years he hounded me to take another class. Finally, I complained that he had given me a C and that I couldn’t risk another. His response was to turn red and almost shout, “Did you come to college to make good grades or to learn something?” He didn’t convince me.

But in the time since I have often wished that I had spent more time in college learning something and less time trying to get a good grade. This is why they say that undergraduates know “just enough to be dangerous”. That has certainly been true of me. Much of why I read so much and so often is because I’ve been unable to go to seminary and yet continue to see how much I have to learn.

Throughout the Bible the people of God are asked whether they are willing to do what it takes to gain wisdom, and we are assured that wisdom is found by sitting at the feet of Jesus. It is found in humility and in patience and in obedience and trust.

But we are raised to desire and to be driven, to want what our neighbor’s got and to go get it. We are raised on envy and ambition, the two things that James tells us are the enemy of wisdom.

The world teaches us to be “know-it-alls”, to never doubt ourselves, to never show weakness. Just think about the classically touchy subjects of religion and politics. Both have become about choosing a side and never backing down. We aren’t out to humbly submit, but to win. We don’t want to gain wisdom, we just want to be on the “right” side of the debate. As a result, we learn to be crafty and savvy and shrewd, but we never learn to be wise.

It’s been said that “The wise man questions the wisdom of others as he questions his own, the foolish man, as it is different from his own.” We are taught to never question ourselves and to always question others and so, we are not wise.

Jesus invites us to have less confidence in ourselves and more confidence in him. He invites us into a posture of humility and patience and obedience and trust.

In the David Foster Wallace novel Infinite Jest there is a section in which a longtime AA member named Gene talks with a rookie member named Gately who chafes at the idea of being given steps to follow as if he were a small child. They go back and forth in frustration, one certain of the good of the 12 Steps, the other trained to be skeptical. A paraphrase of Gene's final thoughts goes as follows: 

He told Gately to just imagine he’s holding a box of Betty Crocker Cake Mix, which represents the 12 Steps. The box had directions on the side any eight-year-old could read, all Gately had to do was for once shut up and follow the directions.  It didn’t matter whether Gately believed a cake would result, or whether he understood the baking-chemistry of how a cake would result: if he just followed the directions and had sense enough to get help from slightly more experienced bakers if he got confused somehow, a cake would result. (pg. 467)

This makes sense to someone desperate enough to join AA, but it makes less sense to too many of us. We’re not alcoholics. We’re not sick. We can take care of ourselves.

But Jesus states that “it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” It’s our unwillingness to follow “doctor’s orders” that is keeping us sick. It is our insistence on our wellness that keeps us from getting well. We want Jesus to heal us, but we’re like a patient who won’t listen to his doctor. “Eat right. Exercise. Stop smoking.” Listen and live. Ignore at your own risk. But I’m smarter than my doctor, so I don’t listen.

The same is true when it comes to following Jesus. We try to think our way around obedience. “He couldn’t have really meant ‘turn the other cheek’ or ‘love your enemies’ or ‘speak the truth’” And nowhere do we “outsmart” God more than at the cross.

1 Corinthians 1:18 says that the cross is “foolishness to those who are perishing.” It reminds me of a line from the recently released Iron Man 2, in which the villain states that “If you can make God bleed, then people will cease to believe in Him.”

On the cross, man made God bleed. But we don’t want to believe it. We preach the strength of God, not the weakness, even though it is in weakness that God’s strength is revealed.

Are we strong enough to be weak? Are we humble enough to be wise?

Proverbs 19:20 admonishes us to “listen to advice and accept instruction and in the end you will be wise.”

Is it too late for us to set aside our skepticism? Can we sit still and shut up long enough to learn? Will we submit, be humble, trust, and obey?

Matthew 18:2-4 says we must become like children in order to enter the Kingdom. This is not saying that we must become as innocent as children, but as humble and trusting and obedient.

1 Corinthians 3:18 states that a man “should become a ‘fool’ so that he can become wise.”

Can we embrace that kind of foolishness? Are we desperate enough in our own sickness to try anything Jesus commands? Are we ready to stop trying to outthink Jesus and, instead, simply obey him? Is it possible that he meant the things he said and that, if we obeyed we’d get well?

I say we give it a try; that we stop trying to make Christ’s teachings agree with our lives and start making our lives agree with his teaching. The church that I pastor claims as part of its mission "to be Jesus to people”, but we must recognize that that begins by bringing ourselves to Jesus. By sitting at his feet and humbly learning to walk in his way.