Bible
Study: Romans 1, 16 to 25. And Luke 11, 37 to 41.
One word I
noticed occurs both in our first reading this morning and the Gospel passage is
“FOOLS.” Definitely, no human being likes to be addressed as a fool so why did
both St. Paul and Jesus Christ use such a harsh word? Why would such a terminology
even appear in a book as holy as the Bible? Let us hear from them directly.
Romans 1, 20
to 25 states: “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature,
namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things
that have been made. So they are without excuse; for although they knew God
they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in
their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. CLAIMING TO BE WISE,
THEY BECAME FOOLS, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images
resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them
up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonouring of their
bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie
and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator…”
In other words,
according to St. Paul, a fool is a person who REFUSES TO ACKNOWLEDGE AND
WORSHIP GOD, a person who considers himself too knowledgeable and too sensible
to believe that God exists since no one has seen God face to face, a person who
attacks the moral law forgetting that his body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, a
person who disobeys the commandments of God which are self-evident even in
nature.
In this
regard, there are indeed so many foolish people in our world today. They are so
foolish that they do not even know they are been foolish. There is no space for
God in their hearts, they worship money, they indulge in sexual impurity and
are not even ashamed to display it even to the extent of now advocating for un-natural
unions between humans and animals and people of the same gender, they worship
and respect man more than they respect God. The bible is now set aside for
human legislations as many countries have now passed into law the very things
which were considered taboos not very long ago. This is the whole essence of
foolishness.
On the
other hand, according to Jesus Christ, there are some of us who claim to be
wise in the sense that we believe in God and make efforts to worship him every
Sunday or even everyday but in actual sense, we are not even better than those
St. Paul is talking about.
Luke 11, 39
to 40 states: And the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside
of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of extortion and
wickedness. You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also?”
That is to
say, for Jesus Christ, a fool can also be defined as a person who BELIEVES IN
GOD, YET WORSHIPS HIM WITH EYE-SERVICE. As such, it would be better not to
worship God at all than to allow your worship become reduced to mere
externalities, pleasing people rather than God, displaying goodness in public, whereas
in secret, the heart is far away from God. This also is foolishness because God
is not and cannot be deceived.
Now, it is
time for an examination of conscience. Am I in anyway a fool? Have I been
foolish in the past? What are those areas of my life that needs to change?
Let us
Pray:
Lord
Jesus, you are wisdom itself, teach me how to drop every form of foolishness
that has so far kept me away from you. Amen.
Good morning.
Be Happy. Live Positive. Have Faith. It is well with you..
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