“See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is… be filled with the Spirit.”
MULLAH NASRUDIN is the mythical brunt of every Middle Eastern joke. He is the most foolish wise man and the wisest of fools. One day Mullah was reading a book of wise sayings, and to his horror he read that any man whose beard exceeds one grip of his hand is a fool. Hesitantly, Mullah grasped his own beard and found it was, alas, two grips long! He called his wife to quickly bring the shears, but after turning the house upside down, she said they’d been lost. No matter, he told her, and took a knife to cut the tell-tale hairs. But the knife was dull and only pained him as he uselessly sawed away. Then he noticed the candle by which he was reading his volume and held out his beard to it, just to singe it a little. Now, the Mullah hadn’t washed in a few days and his beard was quite oily, and the fire caught fiercely, burning every hair on his head. Now, did the Mullah shout at his wife for losing the scissors, or for letting the knife get dull? No. Still smoldering, he picked up his pen, and in the margin of the book next to the warning that began his misadventure, he wrote: “Experimentally proved to be true.”
Have you ever done anything foolish? Have you ever launched out into an adventure, experienced a thrill, faced a new temptation boldly and fallen completely on your nose? Cutting corners, bending rules, ignoring safety warnings, damning the torpedoes can get you into trouble. Is it ever worth it? The difference between a hero and a fool may sometimes be a matter of viewpoint, and into the gap between a wise man and a coward may only fit a saying, like “Discretion is the better part of valor.”
We may seem to be fools in our efforts, but we’re only real fools if the goal was foolishly chosen or the means to gain it made with a bad motive or an evil heart. If we venture nothing and risk nothing in life, for any treasure yet undiscovered or unclaimed, we die a thousand deaths and brood in the dim safety of our living rooms over the lives we never tried to live. It’s the difference between a video war game and a real commando. Can anyone learn to play football online?
Scriptures admonish us not to be fools, and fools by God’s definition are those who count themselves wise to disbelieve all we trust regarding God. No one wrote so much about wise men and fools than King Solomon. Yet Solomon in all his wisdom despaired in his old age that all his kingdom-building efforts and treasures gained might be inherited by a fool. “I hated all my labor in which I had toiled under the sun, because I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool?” Eccl 2:18-19 It was the wisest thing he said at that time, for in fact he left his country to a son who split the people in half, never to unite again.
‘The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God,”’ reads Psalm 53. Yet the world today counts us fools for believing in a Being we can’t see, hear or touch, a Person who we claim created the universe by speaking it into existence. We can’t prove any of it to them. We’re like children, trusting a fable, ignoring science, teaching our children these fairy tales. So we hold our tongues in the public sector, for “Even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace; When he shuts his lips, he is considered perceptive.” Prov 17:28 In our silence we think we’ll pass for wise people.
Jesus warned us of calling our brother a fool, yet we may judge for ourselves what is wise and what is foolish, in ourselves and in others, so we might avoid real foolishness. What is real foolishness in God’s sight? St. Paul spoke as a fool to the church in Corinth, where he also said, ‘Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, "He catches the wise in their own craftiness"; and again, "The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile." Therefore let no one boast in men.’ 1 Cor 3:18-21 And to Titus, he wrote, “We ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.” Titus 3:3 Solomon again put it very well by saying repeatedly, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, But fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Prov 1:7
There is a figure in the renowned fresco of the Sistine Chapel showing a man who has just learned he is going to hell. He sits, naked, curled up, head in hand, his eyes staring forward but unseeing, as he realizes his terrible error in failing to see this day coming, an accounting for his life, the retribution God would bring on him for never submitting and never believing and never bending his knee. As a boy I used to study that face in a book in our family library. You may know it: it’s amazing for its look of abject horror: the fool who has just read the invoice of his life. This kind of fool is no one to laugh at. A fool like that is not funny at all.
St. Paul, perhaps the wisest man of his age, didn’t trouble himself if men thought him a fool. He knew for a certainty that Jesus is God’s own Son and would bring him to an eternal banquet if he fought a good fight and finished his race. So his idea of a fool is accurate and incidentally also not amusing. “Walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.” There are many brands of Christianity today, and for some reason most of them look at the others as foolish, or faithless, or false. They lose precious time and give up real treasure, cutting the Body of Christ into pieces through suspicion and an evil eye. I’ve spent days and nights with every type of Christian pastor and I’ve come to the conclusion that the only dangerous Christian is the one who can’t allow for any of the others’ valid claims; who believes himself to be the standard of all truth, doctrine and practice, the apple of God’s eye. Now, that’s foolish. And it’s not funny, either.
Some Christians speak in tongues. It sounds odd if you don’t, but don’t call it foolish. What do we know? Others fear our liturgy and call it religion, a bad word to them. Forgive them, and be certain that you haven’t reduced this worship to mere formality in your heart. Some thump Bibles, talk with drawls, speak of revival, or give Satan a tongue lashing. All right. He deserves it.
Thursday evening my friend, Pastor Gaylord Enns, spoke to a gathering of Christians from all over our state here in Chico. He retold an event in 1954 in Argentina where an American evangelist, Tommy Hicks, went to pray, teach and ask God to heal people. He gained access to the Argentine President, Juan Peron, seeking permission to use a large stadium. The president asked him if God really heals today, and then showed him a disfiguring eczema condition on his face that kept Peron from public appearances. Hicks held his hand, prayed, and the eczema faded completely. He got his stadium. And the Argentine Revival began, changing the course of that nation’s history. Hundreds of thousands gave their lives to Christ, and the power of that event, 56 years ago, is still changing that country today.
But two years earlier, in 1952, Tommy Hicks held a small revival in California’s Porterville, a little town south of Visalia. There Hicks stood before the crowd in a tent meeting and called a young boy forward. He told the people a major move of God was coming to California, but that he wouldn’t live to see it, neither would most of the folks gathered there. “But this boy will live to see it.” Gaylord researched that prophecy, and found that Daniel Riles, at that time 12 years old, now a man of 70, still lived in Porterville. He drove to meet him, to speak to him about his memory of that, and found that several other words of similar vision had been spoke over his life, and he lived to see the day of God’s transformation for California. Thursday Gaylord then told us, “He’s here with us tonight, and I’d like you to meet Danny Riles.” And we saw a small, white haired man, who’d never married and worked with his hands all his life, and waited and prayed for Christ to be glorified in this state.
Now, the world would call the man a fool. His simple faith in the word of a wild itinerate preacher, and the promise of God doing something glorious during his lifetime might seem silly and even sad. Who could know that? But I would fail you as your minister were I not to tell you that in this simple man’s eyes I saw the years of pain, of dashed hopes, of fallen heroes, of false starts, and yet an unshakable certainty that what was spoken over him by Tommy Hicks will come to pass. Gaylord’s prayer, and our prayer, was that this transformation would to begin with those who circled him three nights ago and honored his faith and testimony.
Fools and wise men: what do we know? Singing hymns and making melody in your heart may mark you out a fool in this world, hoping for God’s appearing, praying for miracles, giving to missions far away, believing God hears and cares about your prayers—what makes life worth living, what makes any life worthy of praise is seeing the unseen and knowing that which can’t be proven. We gather around an altar, gaze on a wooden crucifix, take a little bread on our tongue, a sip of wine and say we’ve eaten the Body and Blood of the world’s Savior. How foolish are we? How gullible could we be to engage in such useless endeavors?
Then the sky rolls back revealing heaven’s angels. Trumpets ring out, and bowls of God’s judgment flow down in blood and in fire. Michelangelo’s poor fool grasps his face and one eye stares unblinking at his own foolish life. What defines a fool? What makes us wise? A few of us fools meet here on Wednesday nights to pray. Some of you may have thought of joining us. It could be dangerous. We might hear from God. Look out.
Believing the greatest and highest ideals for our world, that love triumphs and mercy is greater than might builds schools and hospitals and watches people recover their health: is this wisdom or foolishness? Believing the promises of an ancient collection of books whose words have literally forged our civilization, that have never yet been wrong, that precisely described the appearance and mission of Jesus Christ hundreds of years before He came, and again describe His return: is this wisdom or foolishness?
The best that modern wisdom can offer is that everything is an accident and your life counts for nothing, no one benefits and everyone dies only to cease their existence. Therefore rejoice, for nothing you do matters at all. Personally, I’d rather be a fool. I’d rather be sitting with Danny Riles as the last days match the visions of St. John and with the world on fire sit and write in the margins of the Bible in Revelation chapter 22: “Experimentally proven to be True.”
PFH+