We Think We're So Smart

God's wisdom does not come by the application of man's wisdom--far from it. In fact, God states explicitly that he will destroy the wisdom of the "wise" (those men who esteem themselves wise according to the wisdom of this world or are so esteemed by others) and the cleverness of the "clever." And we are a clever people, aren't we? We just love the well-turned phrase, the snappy retort, the elegent insight. We feast on irony.

But what does our cleverness profit us? What becomes of the man wise according to this age? What of the intellectual [and here I have to insert a recommendation that anyone who has not already read Paul Johnson's book Intellectuals needs to run right out and acquire a copy; it frightens me that people are crowing about the "return" of intellectualism to this nation's seats of power when the track record of intellectuals in power is truly scary] and the academic elite? What of the clever debater? God has bypassed them all. He does not communicate his message through those who have figured it all out for themselves and condescend to explain it to the rest of us. Instead, God spoke through a rag-tag group of common fishermen and social marginals. And when he did include an intellectual he first literally knocked said intellectual off his high horse and then schooled him for fourteen years before setting him loose on the world.

"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, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that he may nullify the things that are.." It's an upside-down, inside-out, backwards way of doing things. Precisely not the way of this world.

Why? "So that no man may boast before God."

"Hey, God, I'm pretty hot stuff. Me, I've got it all figured out. I know the score. Lucky for you I'm around, right?"

Wrong.