When I was a child, I had a traumatic experience. My sisters sang frequently for churches, and I was added to the trio. It was my solo debut and I was five or six. I looked out into the crowd at our church, sang one note and ran off the stage in tears right to my mother who was standing in the choir behind us. I froze up.
For weeks, my little friends picked on me and made fun of me. I was ashamed. I had made a fool of myself. That event scarred me in such a way that I refused to sing in front of people for a decade.
Nobody likes to make a fool of themselves. And yet, there is a certain degree of foolishness that is required for us to really be followers of Christ, isn't there? I mean think about it, God becoming a man, dying on a cross because He believed He was fact in the flesh, and much more. Still more, we are called to lives our lives drastically different in response to this.
I read a really cool quote this morning. Madeleine L'Engle wrote, "We try to be too reasonable about what we believe. What I believe is not reasonable at all. In fact, it's hilariously impossible. Possible things aren't worth much. These crazy impossible things keep us going." The Apostle Paul echoed this same sentiment when he wrote to the Corinthian church, "but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong," (1 Cor. 1:27) You see God's economy is opposite of our own. So how should we as the church function as a result?
I have been thinking about this today, how much emphasis do we place on conformity. Mark Batterson says often we measure spiritual maturity by how well we can get others to look and talk like us. But when you look at the church, at least as God designed it, we should use our diversity to make us stronger since we all have different gifts and functions. Perhaps we are missing out on some really awesome impact we could be having on the world around us.
Of course the other extreme is being so different we needless draw attention to ourselves. I think the balance is that we live and talk and act so differently that we draw attention to God! Are we willing to make fools of ourselves for God? If we are wrong, what do we lose? We help people, love each other, etc. But if we are right, and they are wrong. . . now who's the fool? I'll take my chances.
