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.