I was having pizza last night with those who are accounted wise: there was a person talking about a book lauch with the author, and a discussion about protesting aluminium smelters, and if World War III is starting in Russia. Or if it is the Islamic state. And then someone said “but the intelligent question everything and have doubt, the morons are confident”. And another said “that explains religion”.

I live in a university town. It teaches you, quite rapidly, that certification does not correlate with skill, and status does correlate with wisdom. I know many learned fools: some of them are my friends. Whom I should pray for more.

Wisdom does not show itself in qualifications but right choices made under stress, in clear eyes, assessing people without distortion, and in gracious words and acts. You judge people not by their erudition or scholarship, but by how they influence those around you.

This the ancients knew. They respected wisdom: we still refer not merely to Aristotle and Plato, but to the neo Stoics such as Aurelius, and the medieval scholars who followed. As we should: for wisdom does not come with an expiry date.

But the Gospel is more powerful, and Paul preached it plain.

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 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. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

(1 Corinthians 1:17-31 ESV)

Ir ia not as if our leaders and elite are particularly wise or insightful at the moment. They are not: the progressives in particular are blinded, which could be their use, for we all need examples of what not to do. It is that Christ’s death and resurrection offends us. It takes an idea that life is a game, and with enough wisdom points we can gain enough power to do good and earn salvation.

It subverts the noble despair of the stoic, saying life is fleeting and an illusion, and the correct response is to disengage. As if we can. God kicked in the door of the materialist hut, thinking of death as a final sleep and that there was no other life, and pulled someone out of the grave, offending all the naturalists and those who consider that the laws of nature are written for ever.

And even the wise do not what to contemplate what it means to be in front of a living God, who is righteous. When they turn to reformed discussions, they see merely a low self-esteem, forgetting that self-esteem is merely another word for pride, and that there is no association between self-esteem and right living, let alone wisdom.

But that is not the worry of this time. It is that the twits who run this world are not merely offended by Christ, but by wisdom. Because white male privilege.

As if that matters. Go back to the text. We were not chosen by Christ because we are the great and good. We were not chosen because we are the oppressed and despised either: that would be a misreading that will lead to liberation theology and damning another generation of children. Instead Christ chose the ordinary to shame the wise. It is the way that we live that allows one to judge.

The Photog and I talked after the pizza. About how the terms around professional privilege had been raised, and how professionals had a pass on their behaviour. Which I am aware of and blind to. For in the end, the boy who was raised on the wrong side of the tracks is still there, who grew up avoiding both the gangs and the police, who remained good not because of moral virtue but from a deep awareness that his family would do what they could, but rescuing was not within their power.

The wise are supposed to judge rightly. And the congregation of believers, by the very way they live, should be bringing them to a realization that they have an error in their assumptions. In correcting this, they find Christ, not a stumbling block or foolishness, but live and salvation. But if we live as this world, we cannot shame, and if the wise disavow shame they are damned: the misery these people have in this life is readily apparent, as instead of building they mystery and spirituality that they say they possess, they make their lives hell on this earth.

Do not be that: my fear in the church is we can be like that.