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Crazy Christians

By Phillip Ross

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 06Jun2009 Word count: 893 Viewed: 382 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

If the church were just another autonomous gathering of people with common interests, that would be one thing. But because the church is the moral linchpin of the greater society the defilement of the church produces the moral decline and eventual destruction of the greater society. This is the issue that has faced humanity since Adam and Eve left the Garden. When God told Adam that he would "surely die" (Genesis 2:17) in the day that he ate of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, he had this death in mind. He didn't mean that Adam would die before the sun set that particular day. Rather, He meant that human society would inescapably collapse from the moral rot that would ensue from the disobedience and/or disregard of God's Word.

"Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, 'He catches the wise in their craftiness,' and again, 'The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile'" (1 Corinthians 3:18-20). Again the King James Version is instructive. It translates "aiōn" as "world" rather than "age." "If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world...." This is the primary theme of First Corinthians so far, "Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" (1 Corinthians 1:20).

What appears to people to be the wise thing to do is foolishness compared to the truth of Christ. This has a very wide application in our lives, but for the most part we ignore it. We have been trained by the world, by the values of secular humanism through our public education, through the secular values and practices of the media and the workplace. That training has taught us to ignore the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit when that testimony is not in conformity with the values and practices of secular humanism. And Christians are not immune from the pervasiveness of secular humanism in contemporary society. It is virtually everywhere in contemporary culture. Yet, not quite everywhere. For a few people in a few churches cling to the truth that worldly wisdom, secular ideas and ways of doing things, are utterly foolish in the light of Christ. It's not a popular position, even in most churches.

Oh, Christians agree with such an idea when they're at church. When we see it in Scripture we do not deny God's truth. Yet, when we walk out the doors of the church, we are confronted by the common values and practices of secular humanism that categorically and comprehensively deny the validity and applicability of Scripture. Nowhere do we see the wisdom of Jesus Christ lived out in the world! Another way to say it is, everywhere we see the wisdom of the world and the implementation of science and technology without any reference to Christ. Everywhere we see the domination of nature and the apparent success of market forces through the application of the values and practices of secular humanism. The experience and history of the modern world teach that the world has made foolish the wisdom of Christ.

The result is that Christians live out schizophrenic lives, believing one way in church and another way outside of church. No matter how faithful we are, no matter how much we believe Scripture and trust Christ, we are bombarded by the opposite teaching because of the pervasiveness of secular humanism in the contemporary world. We cannot escape it.

To seriously challenge the common wisdom and values of secular humanism makes life difficult because people react negatively when their most basic beliefs are contradicted or suggested (or shown) to be false. Trust me, I know! The more you try to systematically and comprehensively apply the wisdom of Christ in the world, the more people will think that you are crazy, and the more successful you are in this effort, the more angry they will get.

I often hear people joke about themselves being thought of as a little odd or crazy in the sense that eccentricities are increasingly tolerated because of the recent emphasis on cultural diversity. You'd think that the diversity police would like people who don't conform to the current cultural standards. And they do, to an extent. They will tolerate every kind of social nonconformity, except conformity to Jesus Christ. And the more serious you are in that effort, the less people are willing to tolerate you, and the less funny (or cute) the joke becomes. Nonetheless, Paul said that "the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men" (1 Corinthians 1:20).

Paul has been contrasting wisdom and foolishness. Sometimes he uses the same word to mean both the real wisdom of Christ and the false wisdom of the world. The contrasts are laid out several different ways to insure that we don't misunderstand what he is saying. In 1 Corinthians 3:18 he urges his listeners to become foolish in the eyes of the world by proclaiming and acting upon the wisdom of Christ. Earlier he admonished his listeners to abandon the foolishness of the world. But the point is clear -- God's wisdom and the world's wisdom are not the same.

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