{"id":19876,"date":"2021-02-26T09:39:12","date_gmt":"2021-02-26T14:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19876"},"modified":"2021-02-26T09:39:12","modified_gmt":"2021-02-26T14:39:12","slug":"becoming-wise-fools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19876","title":{"rendered":"Becoming Wise Fools"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UfnSvq2tKSs\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n<p>Those who will lead into the future will have some hard-won wisdom. We might call them the \u201choly fools.\u201d By the holy fool I mean what the Bible and mythic literature have always presented as the \u201csavior.\u201d They are persons who are happily, but not na\u00efvely, innocent of everything the rest of us take for granted. They alone can trust and live the new work of God because they are not protecting the past by control (conservatives) or reacting against the past by fixing (liberals). Both of these groups are too invested in their own understanding to let go and let God do something new on earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to the pattern, the wise fools are\nalways formed in the testing ground of exile when the customary and familiar\nare taken away and they must go deeper and much higher for wisdom. As a result,\nthey no longer fit or belong among their own. Yet paradoxically, they alone can\npoint the way to the \u201cpromised land\u201d or the \u201cnew Jerusalem.\u201d Conventional\nwisdom is inadequate, even if widely held by good people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I believe that there are two necessary paths\nenabling us to move toward wisdom: a radical journey inward and a radical\njourney outward. For far too long we\u2019ve confined people to a sort of security\nzone, a safe \u201clukewarm\u201d midpoint, which the Bible warns us against, as to the\nLaodiceans (Revelation 3:15\u201216). We\u2019ve called them neither to a radical path\ninward, in other words, to contemplation, nor to a radical path outward, that\nis, to commitment on the social issues of their time. We prefer to stay in a\nsecure middle position, probably because these two great teachers, the inner\nand the outer way, both cause pain. Failure and falling short are the best\nteachers; success has virtually nothing to teach us on the spiritual path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is Paul,\none of the \u201choly fools\u201d of our Christian faith, isolated but enthralled by a\nvision of universal Gospel, who can say, \u201cMake no mistake about it: if you\nthink you\u2019re wise, in the ordinary sense of the word, then you must learn to be\na fool before you can really be wise\u201d (1 Corinthians 3:18). The holy fool is\nthe last stage of the wisdom journey. It is the individual who knows their\ndignity and therefore does not have to polish or protect it. It is the man or\nwoman who has true authority and does not have to defend it or anyone else\u2019s\nauthority. It is the child of God who has met the One who watches over sparrows\nand fashions galaxies, and therefore can comfortably be a child of God.\n&nbsp;They and they alone can be trusted to proclaim the Reign of God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt; Those who will lead into the future will have some hard-won wisdom. We might call them the \u201choly fools.\u201d By the holy fool I mean what the Bible and mythic literature have always presented as the \u201csavior.\u201d They are persons who are happily, but not na\u00efvely, innocent of everything the rest of us take [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19876"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19876"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19877,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19876\/revisions\/19877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}