Faith Matters - Foolishness
The DVD drama series was very well written, acted, and directed. It fact, it was among the very best drama I had seen in some time. As I was reflecting on what I had been enjoying, I was hectored by a distinct discomfort. In several of the episodes, a clergyman was featured in part of the story, sometimes a larger role, sometimes lesser. But what became clearer to me upon reflection was that the writers were having their say about the Christian church and its clergy.
In virtually all cases, the clergy was male, older, a bit overweight, in clergy haberdashery, and serving a small, passive congregation. Furthermore, the clergyman was never presented in any role that we would particularly admire or choose to emulate. In one case, the clergyman was a spy. In the other cases, he may have been well-meaning and not a criminal, but he was hopelessly out-of-touch with the facts of life in the world around him. The series clergy were living in their own little world. That world was hopelessly beside the point for what really mattered in the stories. It some cases, they were silly. In other cases, they were clueless. In all cases they were superfluous.
The realization made me wince. We have all seen or heard similar accounts. The church, religion in general, is an easy target. Once again the church was taking some licks. Organized religion, if not the faith it represents, was made to look foolish.
The writers were playing it for laughs, or something more sinister. They put a vaudeville of stereotypes on parade. While I would not deny that some elements were plausible, it appeared to me to be a cheap shot. Popular culture has done us few favors. When it attempts to portray religious faith in a sympathetic vein, it typically ends up with sentimental drivel or a magical, mystery tour of new age fantasies. When it is less than sympathetic, we are portrayed as rogues, duplicitous con artists or clueless, dumber-than-dirt folks without a prayer of convincing a cynical world. We are fodder for entertainment and vilification alike. All of that notwithstanding, I don't look to the popular culture to preach the Gospel that has been entrusted to us.
I would love to believe that this terrible disconnect between the Gospel to which we lay claim and the way in which an unbelieving world sees us is the fault of the sinister, demon-infested board rooms and back rooms of the media decision-makers. Some of that is surely true. But I cannot rationalize it all that easily. My discomfort with the series got me pondering the church's culpability in the poor public persona from which we suffer.
If St. Paul is to be believed, appearing foolish in the eyes of the world is an honorable estate. To lay claim to a vocation as a "fool for Christ" is a high calling indeed. If I were ever accused of being such a fool I doubt that enough evidence could ever be produced to convict me. There are not that many of us worthy to be judged such a fool. Generally we meet them as Saints and martyrs, giving their lives away in holy abandon. But our foolishness in the eyes of the world, I am afraid, is too often for the wrong reasons. We have squandered our foolishness on that which is unworthy of that calling, the worst kind of prodigality.
Writer Frederick Buechner says that there are two kinds of fools. We can either be fools for Christ or we can be damned fools. Too often the world sees in us the latter and not the former. Too often we are known by a false gospel of success, denominational competition, hoarded financial resources, timidity in the face of injustice, Gospel words substituting for Gospel deeds, exclusion, bigotry, closed minds, closed doors, closed hearts, and naiveté about what people really need. In terms of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that is indeed foolishness, but it is not that to which St. Paul challenges us. It is not the holy and wise foolishness that is likely to bring an unbelieving world within earshot of the Gospel we desire it to hear.
For the sake of Christ, we could be known as the people who give it all away, as those for whom no one is taken to be lost forever, as those whose hospitality is spontaneous and unrelenting, as those whose arms encompass all the children of earth, as those who measure ministry not by what they have but by what they share, as those to whom no human is a stranger, as those to whom the only enemy is injustice and its sinful cohorts, as those indifferent to class, status, race, and gender and as those willing to lose everything in order to gain Christ. Sometimes that is who we are; often it is not. In the eyes of the world, we will appear foolish no matter what we do.
Cheap shot notwithstanding, the series writers had the effect of stirring within me a desire to ponder holy foolishness. I called to mind the company of those who are a living mystery, who touch and handle things unseen, whose lives can only be explained because of their passion for God. In my imagination I entertained for a time those wonderfully wise fools who have carried our faith family on their shoulders through the ages. And in that moment, I wanted to make my foolishness matter. Even at a safe distance, I hope I never lose sight of them.
You just never know when those who are trying to make you look foolish might be offering you a blessing in disguise.
God’s peace.
Chuck Johns