I think that all of us can agree that we have done some pretty foolish things in our lives. I can remember in my own life doing things in secret, hoping that nobody, including God, would ever find out. Now thinking that I can hide something from God – now that’s foolish.
As human beings we are capable of doing many foolish things that concern God. May the following three examples show us just how foolish we can sometimes be.
Can Jesus be a great moral teacher but not God
In one of the greatest apologetics quotes ever shared, C. S. Lewis once remarked:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice.
“Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”1
Are the momentary pleasures of sin worth it?
We all know that sin can be pleasurable but in the big picture it can also be catastrophic. I implore you, that the next time you think about the pleasures of sin that you also think about the costs. Thomas Watson once famously said: “What fools are they who, for a drop of pleasure, drink a sea of wrath.”2 My friends sin is cosmic treason against God and the momentary pleasures it brings are not worth having to live with the knowledge that it brings great reproach to our infinitely holy God. I think that Moses understood the tradeoff so well. (Hebrews 11:24-26) are verses we would all do well to memorize: “By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward.”
Can there be anything more foolish than to deny the existence of God
I once believed that God didn’t exist. Now looking back on my life, I realize just how foolish I was. R. C. Sproul summed up well my condition as follows: “As the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, so the denial of God is the height of foolishness.”3
How I thank Jesus for one day opening my foolish and blind eyes to help me see that only a fool says in their heart that there is no God.
1 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1952), p. 52
2 Thomas Watson Quotes (gracegems.org)
3 Quote by R.C. Sproul: “As the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, …” (goodreads.com)