Foolish ones

“You foolish ones, did not He who made the outside make the inside also?”  Luke 11:40

Foolish ones – Ever bite into an apple and discover that it is rotten on the inside?  Ever look at it and see a wormhole?  What do you do next?  Spit it out, of course.  It might have looked great from the outside, but inside it was diseased.

We all know this passage.  Jesus speaks to the Pharisees.  He says, “You have cleaned the outside but not the inside.”  We nod in agreement.  That’s right, we need inside cleansing.  What good is it to look healthy on the outside if we are diseased on the inside? 

But there is a little bit of culture that we need to understand hidden in this opening word.  The Greek is aphornes.  Fools!  But what Jesus has in mind is not “Stupid!” or “Idiot!”  Jesus is drawing from the Old Testament word for “fool”.  That kind of fool was not dumb.  He was unwise.  That means he was immoral.  He was someone who opposed God.  Not stupid but rather antagonistic to God. 

There are a lot of very intelligent and clever fools around.  They collect facts, skills, commendations, prestige and power.  But they are not what God calls “wise”.  They live on their own terms.  They are the real fools of life because in the end their lives will amount to nothing.  It is not success that matters.  It’s surrender. 

So Jesus looks at the display of power and prestige that accompanies the “important” men of his day and he sees that they are prideful and conceited on the inside.  They are fools.  They haven’t learned the first thing about God’s intention for living.

We, the affluent, the powerful, the notable, walk a very thin line.  It is so easy to begin to think, “Look at all that God has done for me.  I am blessed.  I am important.”  That last little step is so subtle – and so diseased.  Everything is good about the apple except that one tiny worm hole.  The mistake of the fool begins on the inside.  And only an inside treatment can fix it.