I wish I was smarter, and I am willing to bet that you wish you were as well. However, scripture is clear that there is a difference between being intelligent according to this world and being wise in the eyes of God. One leads to righteousness, spiritual maturity, and usefulness in God’s kingdom. The other leads to an inflated ego and eventual destruction. Scripture says, “For the wisdom of this world is folly with God.” Godly wisdom is to be sought after, while earthly wisdom is never to be trusted.

If you find yourself lacking in the necessary wisdom, the Bible has much to say about it. God’s word reveals that wisdom is found in scripture (2 Timothy 3:15). There is wisdom to be found in Godly counsel (Proverbs 11:14 & 24:6). If you are lacking wisdom James tells us to pray and ask God for it (James 1:5). Wisdom is withheld from the proud and given to the humble (Proverbs 11:2).

Another Path to Wisdom

But God tells us another way to gain wisdom. In 1 Corinthians 3:18, the apostle Paul writes, “Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.” Wait a minute, did God really just tell us that to be wise we must become a fool? He sure did. But don’t run off making terrible decisions just yet.

When God tells us to become a fool, He is speaking of becoming a fool to the wisdom of the world. The world would tell us it is foolish to trust and obey the Lord. The world would tell us it is insane to believe that God created this earth a mere few thousand years ago with His words. The world would tell us that to put all our hope in a “man” who came to this earth only to be killed on a cross is idiotic.

Embrace Foolishness

God says not only to embrace such truths but to display our “foolish” belief to all around us. Let’s face it, God’s ways do not always make sense to our intellect. He used trumpets to fall the walls of Jericho. He told Gideon to shrink his army from 32,000 to 300 before going into battle. He used an ox goad in the hand of Shamgar to defeat 600 Philistines. A jawbone from a donkey in the hand of Samson to defeat an entire army, and just a few loaves and fish to feed thousands of people.

1 Corinthians 1:25 says that the foolishness of God is wiser than man and the weakness of God stronger than man. God was at His most “foolish” and very “weakest” according to our limited perspective at the cross where He hung suffering and dying, but the reality was this was infinitely wiser and stronger than anything man could do. It was at the time when you and I would see God’s plan to be a complete and utter failure that He did what could easily be argued as the most miraculous, powerful, and brilliant act the Lord has ever undertaken.

An Undesirable Path

The problem is we live in an age with perhaps the strongest aversion to being seen as fools in the eyes of others. We want everyone to think highly of us. We would hate to even consider someone looking down at us.

To be a faithful Christian, obedient to God’s word, truly wise in the eyes of God, you are going to have to become a fool. You are going to have to embrace it. You’ll have to seek it. You are going to have to open your mouth and declare the gospel. And if you are really good at it, people will think you are dumb. They will think you are wrong. Will you be ashamed of believing what the Bible teaches when the world calls you a fool?

God says in Proverbs 2:2 to pursue wisdom and in 1 Corinthians 3, He tells us how to do it. If you wish to be wise in the eyes of God, you must become a fool in the eyes of the world. It seems like a fair trade to me. After all, God as Jesus Christ became a man for your sake. God, the perfect, sinless, holy, powerful, creator of the universe humbled himself and became sin on the cross for your sake. Are you willing to be a fool for Him? The funny thing is that doing so turns out to be the wisest thing you could ever do.

The Apostle Paul was a very colorful man in Christian ministry. He made tents for a living but wrote Scripture & raised the dead in his spare time. He figuratively stormed the gates of hell and literally paid a visit to heaven (before his life was even over!). He planted churches, plotted missions, and pioneered a movement. He’s remembered 2,000 years later and spoken of all over the world. Aside of Christ, few men are as spiritually vibrant as Paul was.

This wasn’t always the case, however. Paul (formerly named “Saul”), used to be a far uglier man. He spent much of his young life huddled in and around Jerusalem. Feeding his intellect & ego on Judaism, he developed into a Pharisee. Growing fat with pride, he persecuted the church and took nourishment by consuming the spiritual life of others. At last, having become fully encased in dead religion, his life came to an end (that particular phase of it anyway).

RADICAL REFORMATION

At the age of 30, Paul underwent a fundamental change that he describes as “metamorphosis” (taken from the original Greek word “metamorphousthe” found in Romans 12:2). Metamorphosis is the inevitable process by which a butterfly proves itself to be more than an ordinary worm. Like a caterpillar, Saul had to become a new creature entirely. His mind, his lifestyle, his future, and even his name needed to change. Saul couldn’t become the Apostle that God ordained him to be until his old life as a Pharisee was fully terminated.

Christians are one of the few creatures on earth that have the capacity to “morph” like a caterpillar does. The change seen in the Apostle Paul is proof enough. The unfortunate difference between caterpillars and Christians, however, is that caterpillars don’t need to be coaxed into the cocoon. Christians on the other hand, usually always do.

RADICALLY RESISTANT

Anticipating this reluctance, Paul (as a newborn ‘butterfly’), wrote a letter to his “caterpillar kinfolk” in Rome. In that letter, he “beseeches” them to surrender their bodies to the only process that will, in fact, convert them from the low-life drudgery of religion, into a “new creature” altogether. As Paul saw it, there were countless Christians still crawling around like larva when they could’ve been flying by now.  

Of all those born into God’s kingdom, few will ever reach full maturity 

With that in mind, let’s note a few similarities between what we find in the animal kingdom, and what we know of God’s kingdom:  

1: Caterpillars never think of flying, they concentrate mostly on eating. Worried about little more than basic survival, their short time on earth is marked by a repeating pattern of eat and rest, eat and rest. Their life is dominated by their appetite. For caterpillars it’s just a phase, but for many Christians, it’s their entire lifespan. Perhaps this is what Paul had in mind when he lamented to the Philippians, “Their god is their belly”.

2: Out of every 100 butterfly eggs, only 1 (maybe 2) will ever fulfill their destiny. The rest will do the same thing day after day, until the enemy swallows them up. They’ll never reproduce. They’ll never go where they could’ve gone. And, perhaps most tragic of all, they’ll never know what it’s like to fly. As Scripture predicts, “Many will depart from the faith”. In other words, for every lovely butterfly you see there are 98 others who never made it.

3: Metamorphosis is the ultimate test of one’s trust in their Creator. With no idea of what comes after chrysalis (the cocoon stage), caterpillars instinctively wrap themselves into a homemade coffin to die anyway. They don’t question God’s plan, they don’t weigh the ‘pro’s & con’s’ of it, and they certainly don’t rebel against their Lord. Instead, they intuitively make their shell and die, as if they were eager to do so. Christian’s treat metamorphosis like it’s the end of their life, but caterpillars rely upon the truth: “This is a trustworthy saying: If we die, we will also live” (II Tim.2:11).   

RADICALLY RARE

These are but a few general comparisons between caterpillars and Christians. But the truth is hard to miss: Of all those born into God’s kingdom, very few will ever reach full maturity.

There are countless Christians crawling around like larva when they could’ve been flying by now

For fear of metamorphosis, most believers will opt to crawl through life, and then die with a mouthful of milkweed. Few Christians will ever put on the new colors offered by Christ (Ro.13:14), taste the sweetness of spiritual nectar (Ps.34:8), or rise above the worldliness of their contemporaries (Col.3:1).

DEAR CATERPILLAR, God has offered you a kaleidoscopic life! A fresh start, full of wonder and opportunity, far beyond your present imagination! “I beseech you therefore, by the mercies of God”, embrace metamorphosis!