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Fools for Christ

I re-read my 1/22 entry and it occurred to me, "I really am quite a fanatic. Anybody stumbling across this blog for the first time would think I'm a nut-case." You know, I guess I'm at a point in my life where I'm OK with that. My mom has been a crazy woman for Christ…
By Seth Barnes

I re-read my 1/22 entry and it occurred to me, "I really am quite a fanatic. Anybody stumbling across this blog for the first time would think I'm a nut-case."

You know, I guess I'm at a point in my life where I'm OK with that. My mom has been a crazy woman for Christ for a long time. As a teenager and for a number of years, I afforded myself the luxury of not joining her in her craziness.

But not only is the Scripture clear about what it means to be sold-out, I simply can't disregard the evidence I bump into all the time – this stuff is real. And what really pushes me over the edge is the aggressive attack of a ruthless enemy.

You may not recognize it in your own life. You may say to yourself – "Hey, bad stuff happens to everyone." Goodness knows I've rationalized the intrusion of evil into my life. We can't see the degree to which we are products of our empirical "just-the-facts-ma'am" culture.

Two days ago our World Race team was scared out of its wits by a witch casting spells in a rural village. It's great to read their blogs and see their empirical world view colliding with spiritual reality.

It's one thing if I'm kind of rolling along in my life with nothing in particular going wrong, but if you say you believe in a personal God and a personal evil, and if random painful things begin to pile up in strange ways, you have to connect the dots. And at some point you have to get off the fence and start acting in sometimes foolish ways. I like what Jim Elliott said, "I'm a fool for Christ, whose fool are you?"

At the end of our lives, we are stripped of our dignity. We're back in diapers, our teeth fall out, we drool. Like it or not, the lot of a fool becomes our destiny.

The writer of Ecclesiastes has, as the Aussies say, "sussed it out" – the really foolish thing is to live our lives with our head in the spiritual sand. Paul put it this way: "If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a 'fool' so that he may become wise."*  

Let me suggest that you can ride the fence only so long. Maybe it's time to get off the fence.

*1 Corinthians 3:18

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