The Wisdom of Fools

“But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong.”
I Corinthians 1:27

After having endured four arduous months of “church-speak” from a young—but ambitiously hungry—new Christian friend, I realized his religiosity-lingo cycle wasn’t waning. Something needed to be done quickly. At our next preplanned Starbucks’ Bible study session I looked at him affectionately and inquired, “you are a man hungry for wisdom, are you not?” Immediately he nodded his head in agreement; he was as passionate for the Word as he was for church-speak vocabulary. “Well,” I said, “Solomon is inarguably the wisest man to ever have lived, would you agree?” Since the daily reading of Proverbs was part of his pre-assigned devotional study, I knew his response would be an emphatic “of course.” Having set the bait, it was time to draw in the net. “And yet,” I mused, “Solomon talked about the birds, the trees, the bees and the butterflies.” Waiting for the sheer commonality of these items to sink in, I finished with a final question: “So how could the inarguably wisest man in the history of this planet talk about things as simple as the birds, the trees, the bees and the butterflies and still be considered the wisest man to have ever lived?” By the look on his face it was clear that hadn’t really thought about my particular query so I answered the question quickly:

“Because Solomon could tie the birds, the trees, the bees and the butterflies into unbelievably complex and intricate spiritual and existential truth.”

At that moment he began to understand his lack of true Biblical understanding and thankfully his lingo began to radically shift as he searched for ways to describe his new faith in far more simplistic but objective terms. As Christians, we often recoil back into “church-speak” when disusing a difficult spiritual principals with a non-believer. Yet Jesus summed up the many intricacies and complexities of the Kingdom of Heaven into the simplistic metaphor of a “seed,” and the sin-filled nature of the religious leaders into “whitewashed tombs.” It was Aristotle that asserted, “Metaphor is a sign of genius.” Based on Aristotle’s criteria, God is then proved to have far surpassing genius than Shakespeare, Cicero, Dante or any other world and historically renown author or playwright as His prophetic books contain some of the most elaborate and intricate metaphors ever put to papyrus (read from Isaiah to Malachi to get the picture).

But instead of merely using words to communicate His message, God, as The Creator, wrote His metaphors into His creation itself. And here we can see just how wise Solomon was. Solomon, in his wisdom, had uncovered how God had designed the physical world metaphorically. Like a scientist, Solomon observed the pre-fashioned metaphoric realities of creation and then recorded his observations based on the objective truth of the element itself. Solomon didn’t metaphorically liken a “worthless man’s” words to a “scorching fire” (Prov 16:27) The scorching fire was designed to resemble a worthless man’s words, and a consuming entity (Prov 30:16), and a host of the other declarations the Bible uses to speak of this particular element. When the Bible speaks of “windblown chaff” the two elements, wind and chaff, were created with a specific metaphorical purpose inherently planted in the elements themselves. It is not that Solomon fashioned metaphoric descriptors to unlike elements, as Aristotle would claim, but instead he understood the elements as God had always intended them to be discovered metaphorically.

“For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”
Romans 1:20

At the moment one can argue that this hypothesis is nothing but complete conjecture, so I will take this last statement directly back to the Biblical Worldview. The passage at the beginning of this article states that “...God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.” So what are the foolish things of the world? Ask yourself that question from the framework of the wise. So then who are the wise? In our day, it is the scientists, the microbiologists, the psychologists, the sociologists – those in the high-sciences that are the observers of the world, having reduced its elements down to its distillate subatomic particles. They are the experts at classifying and categorizing everything down its lowest base form – and in the process disregarding all its intended divine symbolism. So who would this highly learned and consummate cohort call the world’s fools? The poet, the musician, the romantic author, and the playwright. Those of the arts have their heads in the clouds, while those in the sciences are planted firmly on earth. And what do the poet, the musician, author and playwright use as their predominant form of literary art?

The metaphor.

Science is wise and the arts are foolish because science breaks down an object or organism to its atomic level through reductionism, classifying each finding separately but scientifically, where the poet, musician and author sees the element as a simplistic metaphorical picture and as a whole. In other words, when the romantic is judged through the reductionistic lens of the scientist, the foolish things of the world become “the birds, the trees, the bees and the butterflies.”

But here is the critical difference between the poet, musician, author and artist, and The Creator. For the former predominantly uses the metaphor to ascribe personality to the emotional. “My love is like a red, red rose,” and the like use the metaphor and simile to describe happiness, joy and a host of other emotions. But it is God the Creator who uses the metaphors of existence to describe His Kingdom and the true and intended nature of existence itself. The Daniel Project will, in the coming months, discuss many of these existence metaphors, for their significance goes far deeper than just evangelism – Solomon proved it. But it is your assignment, as a purveyor of the Biblical Worldview, to speak that worldview, not just through apologetics… but through the wisdom of fools. If we are going to make a difference in this culture with the truth of the Biblical Worldview, then we must be able to present that worldview in a language the rest of the world can embrace before it is transformed by it.

If you think this metaphoric ideal is this too simplistic for the deep theological mindset or conversely, secular scientific academia, I will give you a realm of highly-skilled, high-academic science that not only practices this technique, it must utilize it continually to be effective: The field of medicine. Though your doctor understands the intricate reductionistic inner-workings of your organs, each affixed with a complex multi-syllable five-dollar term, when your doctor describes any illness or complication to you as the patient, what language does he or she utilize? The metaphor. Medicine, in other words, doesn’t use the “foolish things of the world” to shame – it uses them to heal and to comfort. We, as the ambassadors of the true, “zoe” abundant and eternal life medicine of the Biblical Worldview should be doing this all the more. Learn the wisdom of fools, understand God’s existential metaphors, and you will not just shame the wise, you’ll revive and transform them.