The Love of God Is Folly

The Love of God Is Folly.  Well worth acquiring, though it may require a double effort to catch the meaning, is the traditional Pascale (e.g., Easter) greeting in France: “L'amour de Dieu est folie!” The love of God is folly. Wait a second, is that a good saying or a bad saying?

Were French people ridiculing the death and resurrection of Christ? No, they were not; they were celebrating the unpredictable, unthinkable path of redemption that Christ accomplished. So unpredictable, so unthinkable was the death of Jesus to deliver humankind from the grip of death that most people dismissed his great love as foolishness and absurdity. Sacrificial substitution seems nonsensical at first and unsophisticated to natural man. Surely, God would not die; how ludicrous! Yet, God’s so-called folie is man’s unlooked-for hope.

The world insists that nothing comes for nothing, that there is no such thing as free lunch; that you get what you pay for. To be fair, in this dog-eat-dog world such a conclusion is usually accurate. To believe otherwise would be foolish, they say. But Jesus didn’t come from this world. He came to this world, but he comes from heaven. This world is upside-down. The only right side-up part about this world is that God created it and loves us, despite our sin.

When Jesus arrived, humanity concluded since he seemed so backward that he deserved death, though it was we who were backward all along. When Jesus healed, humanity concluded that he must be in league with the devil. When Jesus spoke, humanity concluded that he must be a lunatic. When Jesus died, humanity concluded that he must be cursed by God. When Jesus rose again, just as he predicted, and “he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me [Paul]” (1 Cor. 15:5-8), humanity concluded that it was a hoax. If the love of God is foolishness, then count me a fool!

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, famously hated Christianity. Worse than folly, he labeled it a “psychological crutch,” a childhood neurosis and wish projection into the sky. But, as my Christology professor in seminary retorted, “If Christianity is a crutch, then give me two.” All that and more is wrapped up in the saying, L'amour de Dieu est folie! The love of God is folly. “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe” (1 Cor. 1:21).