Marilu Thomas,
Antony DeMello told this story about fear. “This gentleman knocks on his son’s door. "James," he says, "wake up!" James answers, "I don’t want to get up, Papa." The father shouts, "Get up, you have to go to school." James says, "I don’t want to go to school." "Why not?" asks the father. "Three reasons," says James. “First, because it’s so dull; second, the kids tease me; and third, I hate school.” And the father says, "Well, I am going to give you three reasons why you must go to school. First, because it is your duty; second, because you are forty-five years old, and third, because you are the principal." Even principals are afraid! Children don’t believe adults can be afraid but we just hide our fears.
The word fear is in the Bible 385 times. (KJV) I take this to mean that to fear is to be human. It’s hard-wired into the part of your brain that keeps you safe. One of the fears I have had for most of my life is the fear of looking stupid. FOLS? I haven’t met anyone yet who has escaped it. It’s so widespread that The Journal of Intelligence published a study called “What is stupid?” in the hopes of saving us from what it called, “engaging in amazing, breathtaking acts of stupidity.” We’re not talking IQ—in fact, the researchers specify that the higher your IQ, the greater your propensity to engage in stupidity. 90% of the participants surveyed agreed on three different behaviors that were labeled ‘stupid’ or contribute to what they called, “the imbalance theory of foolishness”:
Overconfidence- You thought you could, but you couldn’t. For instance, thinking you can jump over obstacles like cars on a skateboard, remodeling your bathroom by yourself after watching HGTV, or deciding you could be a day trader despite your credit history.
Absent-mindedness- You weren’t paying attention when you did it. Locking your keys in your car, forgetting your child at the babysitter’s, missing an appointment, forgetting to check your gas tank, not paying a bill.
Lack of control- You know you shouldn’t, but you did. Stocking up on wine the day before you were going to quit, hitting ‘play next’ after 11pm, saying ‘yes’ when you wanted to say ‘no’, again.
Are you afraid of doing something stupid—or at least doing something other people would think of as stupid? This is why we like shows like Breaking Bad or Succession or any reality show or TikTok or murder shows because we think to ourselves, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you!” We comfort ourselves saying, “Well, at least I didn’t do that! I’m not that stupid!”
But guess what. Because of the effects of sin on the world, what Fleming Rutledge calls the X-Factor and Stutz calls Part X, we are almost daily or hourly the person doing the stupid thing that hurts someone else. My forté is the “Lack of Control” category. For instance, I share something with you that is not mine to share in order to ‘hotwire’ friendship or connection. Of course, I am guilty of “Overconfidence” and overestimating my abilities-- like maybe thinking I can preach on this topic today. The one that gets me right in the heart, however, is the “Absent-minded Forgetting,” especially forgetting anything about my kids or missing an appointment which ends in a shame spiral of feeling stupid. I didn’t think this was a that of a big problem for me until one of my relatives called herself stupid and I said, “You are NOT stupid!” to which she replied, “You say it to yourself all the time.” Ugh- yes- true.
Why are we afraid of looking stupid? It’s the ‘Middle School feeling’ all over again. The lonely-at-lunch feeling. We take it as a sign that we are not like the “other kids,” who look like extremely competent, confident adults. We force our ‘outsides’ to look coolly adult, while our ‘insides’ are struggling to keep up, keep it all together, keep life from falling down around us.
The Athenians in the first Century AD were just like us. They were the pinnacle of Western intellectualism. They didn’t want to look like they didn’t know all about the gods that there was to know. We hear in the reading in Acts 17 that the Athenians built a statue to a just-in-case-god so they wouldn’t look stupid if they missed one. When the Stoics and Epicureans hear St. Paul preach the Good News, many proclaim him a ‘moron,’ but St. Paul is meets them where they are. “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” What would St. Paul see as the ‘objects of our worship’ if he walked around in our lives? Appearances? Confidence? Intelligence? Self-sufficiency? Pride? What would our statues be?
And what about the ‘unknown god’ that Paul proclaims?
When I meet with people who are wondering about faith, most say that when they hear sermons or scripture or listened to their youth leader, they did not feel included. They watch people around them worshipping a God that they feel is unknown to them. How do you get to know this God? Why do other people seem to know God and I don’t? What am I missing? Am I not good enough?
On the Areopagus, which is an open-air outcropping of rock below the Acropolis, St. Paul gave us the Christian faith in a nutshell. Don’t miss this one. It is addressed to you. It has your name all over it. You are included. “The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.”
First of all--God doesn’t need the human race to run errands for him, as if he couldn’t take care of himself. Whatever you’ve been told you need to do for God so that he will love you, think again. It is his pleasure to love you as his creature. He gave you life and breath and all things. No divine errand running necessary to be created or loved. You live at the pleasure of the Creator.
Paul goes on, “…they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being.” Our eyes cannot see that we are swimming in the Spirit of God. Like the fish joke you may know. Two young fish are swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the heck is water?” If you are looking for God, He has already found you. In Him you live and move and have your being.
Paul finishes his sermon by telling the Athenians that God has overlooked the “times of human ignorance”, all your stupidity has been forgiven, and He made a promise to all people of his presence by raising the anointed Savior from the dead. At this point, Paul was laughed off the rock. Raised from the dead was just too far. Changing their minds and hearts to know and trust God seemed a stupidity. Robert Capon wrote, “It’s the faith of losers as opposed to the knowing of winners. It’s about trust in the ‘absent God’—in the Mystery of the Incarnate Lord who hides in the least, the lowest, and who’s the one person who matters.” This is what the Athenians missed and, in our ignorance, we do, too. What is faith? To trust that his message of love and grace is for you.
If you’re afraid of doing something stupid like trusting Christ, look around you and see how many people are being stupid with you. This is the foolishness of the Cross. It looks foolish to believe that God could care for you so much that He would come to us in human form to prove his love by dying on the cross to be raised again. Foolish but life-saving. Foolish but at the center of the gravity of life. Faith is trust in a person’s word and you have His word that it was for grace alone and not for your ability to pay him back or satisfy any behavior standard to earn love. Give it up. You can look foolish here. We can do it together. It will save your life.
I would like to close with a quote from Sarah Condon in her book Churchy (p. 162) because it is just too good to leave out.
It is worth noting that the Devil will impute horrible things to those we love and to us. In moments of deep pain and sin, he will lean in and whisper, “Not good enough. Will never measure up. Needs more work.” This line of thought will get into your bones and impute only desperate loneliness. The imputation of Jesus Christ speaks a word over us that says, “righteous, beloved, and forgiven.” We are made holy through his holiness, and we cannot let evil tell us otherwise. I cannot pray these words from Martin Luther enough:
So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: “I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also!”
Amen
