Foolishness

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 Alien talk 00:00, no date 2005 (UTC) an original article

{{trying to make sense}}

Foolishness is ... like a boy who think he knows everything and as he grow older he find more things to learn and as he grow into matured adulthood, he still find more things to learn, and when he reached sixty he thought of himself when he was a boy who know so much but really he admits he only know so little in fact. That's being really foolish thinking <when he was back then a boy> he said "I KnoW!" and but now he admitted to himself! " i don't really know lah !" -" God, is there God ?"

    • Most people do NOT want to admit that life is more than just making money and collecting wealth, it must have a purpose and an ultimate aim, but what is it, they think they know so much about it, but really they don't until they grow old and about to die! So, what's foolishness? It's really a choice between thinking temporarily for now, and thinking in terms of life's with eternity in view!


Contents

[edit] WHY some very clever people label believers as religious fanatics?

The fool said to himself, "there is no god'"..well philosophy without God at the core of knowledge is spiritual darkness..

thinking how clever they are..they became foolish in their own hearts (see Romans chapter One)


[edit] Jesus said

  • Jesus said, " What shall it profit a man if he gain the world <riches> and lose his own soul <eternal soul> ? quoted from Mark 8:36

[edit] Remember God in the day of your Youth

Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;

2 While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain:

3 In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened,

4 And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low;

5 Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:

6 Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.

7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

8 Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity.

9 And moreover, because the preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs.

10 The preacher sought to find out acceptable words: and that which was written was upright, even words of truth.

11 The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd.

12 And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

14 For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

Eccl 12:1-14 (KJV) - written originally by the Wise King Solomon & found in the Bible

goto see reality.

[edit] A story: failures and defeats in our lives

I buckled my seat belt and breathed a sigh of relief just as the plane prepared to taxi out of the gate. Finally, a little peace and quiet. In the middle of a long trip overseas, I was ready to unwind. "So where are you from, back in the United States?" I turned to meet the man beside me, an animated New Zealander looking for conversation with someone who spoke English with an American accent. In minutes he sketched out his life, and I forgot I needed a nap. I soon realized my seat mate could qualify as the poster child of the secular man. Well educated. Great job. Utterly confident. Sincerely convinced he could do life his way. He believed in God, he assured me, but he reserved the right to define the parameters of that concept. God was an influence in his life but a noninterfering one and disconnected from anything associated with guilt or shame. God was something of a cross between The Force and the Pillsbury Dough Boy. I suggested tactfully that perhaps he'd picked up that last part in one of those pop psychology seminars his company sent him to on the West Coast. His eyebrows furrowed, but he smiled. I took off in a more deliberate direction. "Remember how the actual story goes—I mean the one in the Bible? God allowed His Son to die on a cross between two thieves so that He could bring you and me back into a relationship with Him." He admitted being stumped by that part of the story. He just couldn't see the point. In the cross, he meant. I took his statement as my cue and launched into a fairly elaborate explanation of how each of us needs Christ. I used the "s" word—sin. Then I came up with every poetic nuance for sin that I knew. Without Christ's death on the cross, I said, we are estranged, cut off, alienated, outside the loop, separated. We are, in short, lost. I will never forget his response. "I don't care how you put it. Any notion of God being separate from me is pretty repulsive. Telling me that I'm lost is an insult." "Oh," I said. And then I took another gulp of airplane coffee and wondered where on earth God wanted me to go with this conversation.

Hope or Horror?

What I encountered that day is the modern challenge in sharing Christ with people who are educated by media and culture to believe they are beyond the reach of guilt and shame and sin. By what means does the cross of Christ become attractive to individuals who feel insulted when someone suggests they need Him? I think it helps to acknowledge, first, the utter paradox of it all. Christians see the cross as the ultimate expression of hope. For us, it means victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. We easily forget that Christ's death is the most graphic of all pictures of humiliation and loss, of weakness before one's enemies. The first response—and the most human—is to flinch in its presence. The suffering Savior is truly, as Isaiah said, "like one from whom men hide their faces" (Is. 53:3). In his book The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey notes that other world religions are known for their brightly painted images and gilded statues. At the center of Christianity, however, rests a cross—simple, stark, and solitary. "What possessed Christians," ponders Yancey, "to seize upon this execution device as a symbol for faith? Why not do everything within our power to squelch the memory of the scandalous injustice? ... Why make it the centerpiece of the faith?" Of all the symbols of hope and triumph, the cross is, indeed, the most ironic. It's understandable how someone just considering Christ is taken aback by the cross. Its message confronts our most cherished notions of success and self-assurance. It always has; it always will. The Apostle Paul said it simply: "The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing" (1 Cor. 1:18). It helps me to be reminded of how fundamentally offensive the cross is and how it symbolizes everything in life we most want to avoid—weakness, defeat, betrayal, powerlessness. I've seen the cross as a symbol of hope and victory for so long that I tend to forget the stark reality it embodies. And then I am surprised when some passenger next to me flinches in the face of it all.

A Crack in the Door
I didn't have to wonder too long where to go with this conversation. I listened to my fellow traveler's New Zealand accent while he described the challenges of being the human-resource director for a growing company. This man has the world by the tail, I thought to myself. Then he began to talk about his family. This was his second marriage but a pretty good one. He was happy with his young son. He and his wife shared many interests. "That's wonderful," I replied. And then I happened to add, "How long were you married the first time?" With that question his expression turned wistful, and he began to stare out the window. He took a minute before he responded. "I was married 14 years," he said, "and I guess I will always love that woman." As the tale unfolded, I heard the heart of a man defeated after scores of attempts to make it work with a woman he loved. They loved passionately—but they also fought like cats and dogs. They separated and got back together, again and again, yet it always dissolved into the same bitter battles. He couldn't live with her, and he couldn't live without her. "I knew the last time I walked out the door that I would never be back," he said. "It killed me to leave, but I couldn't make it work." I sat quietly for a few minutes, absorbing what the loss of that dream must have meant to a man so used to getting what he wanted. Finally, I stuck my head through the crack in the door he had just opened. "This is the place, I think, where the death and resurrection of Christ—where the cross—start to make real sense." "What do you mean?" "I mean that all of us have these places in our lives where for all our best efforts, we are defeated. We can't make it work no matter how hard we try. We need someone who's bigger than we are. We need someone who has been there—and come back from it." "Oh," he said. And for the first time, he was really listening.

Shared Stories
Gaining a hearing is, perhaps, the greatest challenge in relating the gospel to anyone. It's easy to talk—and certainly the message itself is not difficult to understand—but the moments when someone actually listens as though it might be meant for him ... ah, that is a mystery worth exploring. A mystery at the heart of the cross itself. With my successful friend in the seat beside me, I could talk all day about life and faith and Christ. And it would be interesting information. But he did not really engage with my message until his failure, his defeat, was out in the open. And what an awkward moment that can be in a social setting. Suddenly, the conversation descends two levels, and you can almost hear your ears pop. It's tempting to skip to easier, safer topics far from this talk of failure or weakness or sin. But if you do, you may miss your best opportunity to allow someone to connect his point of need with the cross of Christ. I find that in order to remain at ease—to not flinch—when someone's failure or sin slips into the open, I have to keep returning to the cross myself. When I let the cross speak to me about the frailty and failure and sin in my own life, and someone suddenly lays his on the table, I recognize it for what it is—a variation of my own story, of all our stories. There is almost instant recognition—Oh yeah, I know what this man is talking about—and it's easier to take the plunge. This theme of failure and insufficiency is the common ground we share with each other—Christian and nonChristian alike. And that ground we always hold in common. Only the Christian knows and experiences the rest of the story—that God supernaturally redeems and transforms his life. Our connecting point is the awareness of our need as it's expressed in the language of defeat and sin—and mirrored in each person's real story. If we want someone to feel safe enough to share his secret shame and hidden vulnerabilities—and thereby acknowledge his need of Christ—then we need to stay quietly conscious of our own.

The Moment of Hearing
I once spent hours commuting to classes with a single woman who practically yawned in my face whenever I voiced any of the basic truths of Christianity. One day I happened to mention a difference of opinion between my husband and me, one we could not seem to resolve. As soon as the words slipped from my mouth, I wanted to grab them back. What was I doing, admitting to this woman that my "ministerial" husband and I were (at least in this matter) butting heads rather than meeting minds? Instantly, she pursued the issue. "So what do you and Stacy do with that?" she asked. I wasn't sure what to say. "Well ... this is where it's different for Christians." "What do you mean?" "I mean that it's not just the two of us left to iron this out. There is really someone else present in the relationship—and that's God. And while we are hamstrung on how to come together on this issue, we know He can bring us to a place that is probably different from what either of us has conceived so far." Months later, my commuter friend joined an Alpha group, the British answer to exploring basic Christianity in the ‘90s. I had coffee with her toward the end of that time, and she showed me a new purchase—her first Bible. "This marks for me the beginning of a relationship with Christ," she said. Then she told me when she first began to listen to what I was saying about Christ. It was in the tale of my marital impasse! The idea that there could be someone else present in a relationship, that two people just aren't enough to overcome a real problem, intrigued her. "I wanted to know who He was," she said simply. Irony of ironies, I thought to myself. Who would ever believe that the stuff you are hesitant to share—since it speaks so clearly of your failure—would constitute the moment when someone really hears the message as though it might apply to her?

Only the Cross

Fanny Crosby began one of her famous hymns with these words: "Jesus, keep me near the cross, there a precious fountain." Staying near the cross means staying aware of our own need of the saving work of Christ. Our failure and sin and shame are made of the same cloth as the man or woman who does not yet know God. The wonder of the cross is that it cuts through to this place we hold in common, a profoundly human place, stripped of all illusion and pretense. The cross speaks to the raw stuff of our lives. We will know pure triumph one day—but we also know the loss and defeat and emptiness that dog our steps now and would control our very lives—except for the reality of Jesus Christ. Paul said, "May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Gal. 6:14). The cross is the most powerful reality of our faith—and the most challenging to communicate. Jesus, keep us near the cross, to all that it embodies, so that the possibility of hope and triumph makes sense to someone who would yawn in our faces. Keep us near the cross because only the cross can adequately touch the real stuff of failure and defeat and sin that haunts us all.


About the author:

Paula Rinehart is a writer and counselor. She and her husband, Stacy, serve on the staff of The Navigators. She enjoys reading, bicycling through small towns in North Carolina with Stacy, and reflecting on life over a cup of coffee with friends who like to laugh but also think seriously. [to top]

[edit] On Your Own:

Fools For Jesus

1. Read 1 Cor. 1:18–25. Summarize what Paul is saying here.

2. What convinced you to accept the "foolishness" of the gospel?

3. In 1:26–2:5, Paul describes how he conducts himself in light of the world's wisdom and the cross's apparent foolishness. What insights do you find in these verses that will help you as you speak of the cross to skeptical




Epistle to Corinthians goto I

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