A Fool's Wisdom

A Reflection on the Second Reading for February 23rd, 2020: Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

1 Corinthians 3

16 Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?  17 If any one destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and that temple you are.  18 Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.  19 For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, "He catches the wise in their craftiness,"  20 and again, "The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile."  21 So let no one boast of men. For all things are yours,  22 whether Paul or Apol'los or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours;  23 and you are Christ's; and Christ is God's. 

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​The wisdom of the world is folly. Hard not to agree with that. All I have to do is open Twitter to know that’s the case. Or see the latest Tik Tok craze (yes I’m hip enough to know what Tik Tok is, but not hip enough to be more than a spectator). Was it only two years ago our teens were eating Tide pods or swallowing entire spoonfuls of cinnamon? Or worse yet, shouting their abortion over Snapchat?

The world has lost the plot. We care about a person if we see them as a cause, but not if we feel they aren’t worthy. We abort our young and euthanize our disabled and sick. We allow our capitalist culture to commodify the human person and then are surprised when our teens become darkly apt conveyers of their brand at the sacrifice of their mental health. Five minutes of fame has the dark underbelly of the endless gossip cycle – who doesn’t love spilling the tea?

​I reject the notion that progress is always good and wise. There are always elements of good in the progress we’re achieving, but what are we accepting in the name of progress? There’s no finer example than women’s liberation, which I am obviously firmly in favour of, which was gained at the cost of so much of our humanity. As a woman I can only “succeed” if I’m willing to emulate the 1950s version of my male counterparts. We saw Michelle Williams, an exceedingly talented actress, remind us of the cold hard facts that to be successful, she’d felt called to make the choice to sacrifice her child(ren) at the altar of fame. What kind of world do we live in where all of our education has taught us that any career that is derailed by something so simple as the birth of a child is a career soaked in sexism. Let’s face it, that’s the wisdom of the world at work; and to call this the greatest wisdom is patently folly. 

As a woman, it’s exhausting being told that I’m a fool for believing what the Scriptures teach me, that the body is a temple of God, and that destroying that temple is against God’s plan. That said, I’m willing to be called a fool for the sake of the Gospel. Because at the end of the day, who cares about being called a fool when that’s where God’s wisdom truly is?




​Stephanie Potter

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash

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