“For the Jews ask for signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. Yet to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, because God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

There’s a great Proverb in the collection of wisdom bearing that name that goes like this: “Even a fool is considered wise when he is silent.” The point is that what comes out of our mouths (digitally or verbally) is going to be used by others to assess our intelligence and character. As followers of Jesus who have been called to share our faith, though, talking is sort of part of the gig. In bearing witness to the Gospel, we wind up saying a lot of things that make us sound pretty dumb to the culture around us. Let’s talk about why it’s so worth it to share anyway.

For centuries Christians have been mocked and derided as being ignorant and foolish. The exact nature of our ignorance and foolishness have varied depending on the particular culture from which the criticism came. In the past, we’ve been mocked as fools for believing in one, single God. We’ve been mocked as weak for considering things like humility to be virtuous.

In more modern generations, we’ve been derided and mocked for our positions on a number of scientific fronts. When you combine this with an overall lack of trust in the church (some of which is worldview-driven and unfair; some of which has been well-earned on our part), you have the makings of a potent cocktail of criticism. If you have been following Jesus long and you haven’t had a secularist deride you for being evil or stupid, you’re probably not doing something right.

And the thing is, Jesus was really honest about the fact that this was all going to be the case. “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. However, because I have chosen you out of it, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep your word.” (John 15:19-20)

And again: “Look, I’m sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves. Beware of them, because they will hand you over to local courts and flog you in their synagogues. You will even be brought before governors and kings because of me, to bear witness to them and to the Gentiles.” (Matthew 10:16-18)

He even went so far as to promise that those of His followers who find themselves in a place of persecution are blessed; that is, they are able to experience a kind of heavenly happiness and contentment and joy. “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. You are blessed when they insult you and persecute you and falsely say every kind of evil against you because of me. Be glad and rejoice, because your reward is great in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:10-12)

Paul was pretty clear on this fact as well. Consider some of his words to Timothy: “But you have followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, and endurance, along with the persecutions and sufferings that came to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured – and yet the Lord rescued me from them all. In fact, all who want to live a godly live in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” (2 Timothy 3:10-12)

Peter contributed his own two cents to this picture: “Dear friends, don’t be surprised when the fiery ordeal comes among you to test you, as if something unusual were happening to you. Instead, rejoice as you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may also rejoice with great joy when his glory is revealed. If you are ridiculed for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.” (1 Peter 4:12-14)

And all of that is just a sampling of the promises of persecution we find in the New Testament for those who endeavor to follow Christ. Here toward the beginning of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian believers we find a partial explanation of why this is the case. It is because the ways of Jesus don’t make any sense in the heart and mind of the world. This is the case whether we are talking about the majority part of the world that is differently religious or the much, much smaller part of the world that is determinedly secular.

The religious part wants a particular set of signs in order to buy what Jesus is selling. Yet as Jesus Himself told those religious skeptics who sought further proof of His identity, they had received all the signs they were going to get. If their incorrigible skepticism wasn’t willing to accept what was already right in front of their faces, more signs weren’t going to matter. They just didn’t want to believe. They were guilty of the sin of unbelief.

The secular part wants “wisdom.” They want proof and evidence. Yet as Paul makes clear at the beginning of his letter to the Roman church, there’s proof and evidence aplenty. All you have to do is look around with an intent to actually see what is rather than looking around with your philosophical eyes covered by your worldview blinders. God has made His existence and nature abundantly clear in the natural world. If you aren’t willing to see what is, further proof and evidence won’t move the needle for you. You just don’t want to believe.

And yet, God is wiser and stronger than any human wisdom or strength. In fact, as Paul puts it, God’s foolishness is wiser than our best wisdom. His weakness is stronger than our strongest strength. The ways of God that seem utterly silly to us are wiser than the ways we have constructed for ourselves. When He says to do something a certain way it’s because He knows that’s the best way to do it. When He gives commands governing how He wants us to behave, it’s because He knows those commands, if followed, will lead to our flourishing more surely than the alternatives.

I heard a fantastic example of this the other day while listening to one of the several podcasts I regularly consume. This one happened to be the Focus on the Family flagship podcast. The host and Focus President, Jim Daly, was interviewing a guy about how to talk to your kids about sex in ways that are healthy and helpful and biblically sound. The guy works with an organization that has him going all over the country giving presentations about abstinence to kids in schools both private and public. In one particular setting, some of the kids were pushing back a bit on Christianity’s moral restriction of sexual activity to marriage as being too narrow and limiting to be realistic. They were restrictive and regressive. They were part of an older world that we had moved beyond today.

In response, he challenged them to think for a second about what would be the culture-wide result if everybody held strictly to the idea that sex was for marriage and only for marriage (and marriage was understood biblically to be a covenantal relationship between a man and a woman). They could ignore all of the other moral commands in the Scriptures, but if everybody kept just this one idea, what would happen. Well, pornography would disappear entirely. So would sexual abuse and exploitation. Sex trafficking would vanish. No longer would kids be kidnapped off the streets or groomed into becoming sex slaves. Parents wouldn’t have to fear that anymore.

Women would be able to walk around in areas both familiar and unfamiliar without having to worry about being raped or abused. Incest would cease to be a problem. Sexually transmitted diseases and infections would be a thing of the past. The AIDS epidemic would have never happened. Imagine just how many lives would have saved because of that. Imagine how many children in various African nations where HIV and AIDS have been so bad wouldn’t be orphans. Teenage pregnancies wouldn’t happen anymore. A great many of the cases of transgenderism especially where it manifests as a social contagion would cease.

Families would be made stronger. Children would never be deprived of a mother or father short a parent dying early. The number of instances of child abuse would go down. Movies and books and TV shows would be far cleaner and safer generally to watch. There would be far fewer children in the foster case system. The various social problems that result from a lack of an active and involved dad in a kid’s life would dry up. I suspect if we thought about it longer, we could come up with several more things that would change for the better. In short, we would experience a total transformation of our culture and society for the good. And all of this would be the case whether everyone was following Jesus or not.

And this would all be from our collectively putting just one command in the Scriptures into practice. Just one. One for which we are often mocked and derided as out of touch, Puritan busybodies who care more about monitoring what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms than we do about starving children around the world (which is an utterly ridiculous critique when you consider that nearly all of the programs designed to help alleviate childhood hunger exist because Christians started them, but our ideological enemies will grasp at whatever straws they can find no matter how weak they are in order to paint us as a problem). We may seem like fools to the world, but the foolishness of God really is wiser than human wisdom. And when we live by that foolishness our lives tend to go a lot better. More than that, we tend to make the lives of the people around us a lot better too.

Christian, keep living out the love of Christ in ways that are meaningful and practical. You may be mocked for it, but that’s okay. You’ll be standing on firm ground. You’ll be making kingdom deposits that will pay dividends for eternity. Keep up the good work.