Lego Church Preview- Part 2

For many years now I have been a fan of Michael Card’s music.  Specifically, I have enjoyed the lyrical depth he brings to his songs.  One of the first Card songs I ever heard was “God’s Own Fool.”  This song is a powerful reflection on the truth of 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5 . . . the very verses we will be looking at together this Sunday in week #2 of our series “Lego Church:  Built to be Together” at Wildwood Community Church.  In case you are not aware of this song, here are the lyrics (and there is a Youtube video below with the full song in case you want to listen):

Seems I’ve imagined Him all of my life
As the wisest of all of mankind
But if God’s Holy wisdom is foolish to men
He must have seemed out of His mind

For even His family said He was mad
And the priests said a demon’s to blame
But God in the form of this angry young man
Could not have seemed perfectly sane

Chorus
When we in our foolishness thought we were wise
He played the fool and He opened our eyes
When we in our weakness believed we were strong
He became helpless to show we were wrong
And so we follow God’s own fool
For only the foolish can tell-
Believe the unbelievable
And come be a fool as well

So come lose your life for a carpenter’s son
For a man who died for a dream
And you’ll have the faith His first followers had
And you’ll feel the weight of the beam
So surrender the hunger to say you must know
Have the courage to say I believe
For the power of paradox opens your eyes
And blinds those who say they can see

Chorus

So we follow God’s own Fool
For only the foolish can tell
Believe the unbelievable,
And come be a fool as well

1 Corinthians 1 (and this song) play on very human definitions of the words “wise” and “fool.”  To say that humans are “wise” and God is a “fool,” of course, is total nonsense.  God is all wise, and humans do so many foolish things (if you need further proof just watch TV sometime . . . or let me tell you my life story)!  Saying God is a fool and humans are wise is shocking and surprising . . . but that is the point.

Many times, we want God to be the God we “think He ought to be.”  Under this model, theology is not a process of discovery of how God has revealed Himself in Scripture, but a process of self-reflection, drawing a picture of God from our own imagination.  In other words, forget what the Scripture says, we want to make God be a Xerox copy of our imaginations.  In reality, God is a copy of no one.    One of the sad realities of human philosophies is that we try to think of life as we think it should be, and when the Bible (or Jesus) does not match up, we call it “foolish” or “outdated.”  The collective “wisdom” of man does not confine the perfect plan of God, no matter what we call it.

The flip of the terms wise/fool in this passage causes us to look deeper at the other-worldness . . . the supernaturalness of our salvation.  I can’t wait to look at this passage together on Sunday morning in our 9:30 and 10:50 services.

In preparation for this Sunday, you can do four things:

1. Pray that God would open your eyes to see His truth from 1 Corinthians 1 as we study it.
2. Read 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5 before Sunday morning.
3. Email me pictures of you or your family with Lego creations you have built (I will use a few each Sunday in the series as intros to our big idea — that we were built to be together.)
4. Bring a cross made out of Legos to donate.  We will have a station in the Gathering Hall where you can drop these creations off.  The Legos you use to make the cross will be donated.  At the end of the series, we will gather up all the Legos collected and give them to children without a lot of toys.

Check out this video looking ahead to Sunday –