Foolishness (Paperback)

ABOUT FOOLISHNESS - By Gary Villamor It was suggested in the 1960's that God was dead, or at least, that the Bible was no longer relevant. Even though I hadn't been raised in the church, this was disappointing to me: I was in my twenties, I was recently married and I had just become a father when I heard the news. Over the next couple of years I read the ideas of perhaps two dozen different philosophers and investigated the religions of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, looking for the truth. Nothing satisfied my thirst, and quite frankly, I was becoming frustrated: It occurred to me that perhaps no one had the truth - perhaps no one actually knew how the world happened to be here, why we are here, and whether or not there is any reason to believe that our lives continue beyond the grave. Is this all there is? I wondered. It seemed crazy to me that nobody knew the answers to these questions - utterly foolish! One day I picked up the Bible to read, however, and even though I didn't understand a great deal of what I was reading, it was evident to me that this was not philosophy, nor was it religion in the same vain as those other faiths I had looked into earlier. Needless to say, when I got to the New Testament I was stunned to read about the person called Jesus of Nazareth. His claims to be the Son of God, to be the "bread of life, and to be "the way and the truth and the life," were so outrageous, and yet, so absolutely believable, that I looked forward every day to a time when I could read the story again. Almost fifty years have passed, but I find the story no less fascinating and trustworthy today than I found it to be the first time through. Whereas the worlds great religions all tell us how we might find God, the Bible tells us the lengths God has gone through to find and care for us. It's a huge difference! Many people in our society today think of the Bible as foolishness - mythology at best, but perhaps nothing more than superstition or Pablum. Interestingly, many people living in the first century A.D. also considered the wisdom of God to be foolishness, preferring to trust in their own wisdom. Walking by faith is challenging, so I understand why people are hesitant to put their trust in a God they cannot see. That's why I wrote Foolishness - to help people see God. Here's the thing, Jesus "is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being" (Heb. 1:3). In other words, if we've seen Jesus we've seen exactly what God is like. Foolishness, therefore, helps us to fix our eyes on Jesus (Heb. 12:2). By watching the man and his ministry, Jesus creates an intimacy with us - We can actually find ourselves on the pages of the Bible - it comes to life for us. Baptism and the Lord's Table become windows for us, through which we see ourselves as a part of God's plan. Finally, the church begins to make sense, despite its flaws, and we find ourselves busily waiting for the Lord's return.