Gospel Foolishness

Christianity has a weird way of accomplishing its mission. It is pretty baffling and, indeed, “foolishness” (1 Cor. 1:21). He who breathes everything into existence has this great masterplan to save His creation by… the Kerygma?

Faith comes through hearing. (Romans 10:17)

It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. (1 Cor. 1:21)

If St. Paul teaches us anything it’s that just through saying the message of the Kerygma, “there is an announcement of a news that is realized every time that it is proclaimed. And what does it realize? Salvation.” (Kiko Arguello) Simply in the proclamation of the Gospel, there is power: a vibration along the wavelength of the spirit of those who hear, in which “it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Rom 8:16). Somehow, this is the center of God’s masterplan. That’s probably not how a lot of us would draw it up. We can react as the Apostles did: “Your plan to save the world is what now?”

In the heat of the moment, that certainly feels like foolishness. It is the same feeling of praying with someone for healing (or anything else): naked reliance that Someone else is at work. But often it can just feel like pure nakedness and nothing else. Perhaps this is an application of “lose your life to save it”. We must lose ourselves to the loving proclamation of Jesus as Lord. We must expose ourselves, risking rejection and rely not on our words of wisdom, but just on the proclamation itself.

When I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling; and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (1 Cor. 2:1-5)