To Be a Fool

“Then David came dancing before the Lord with abandon, girt with a linen ephod” (2 Samuel 6:14).

To be a fool for the Lord. On the surface, this can simply mean to not be afraid to be silly before the Lord, to go to Him without a care, and to do (good) crazy things for love of Him. It is a joyous thing. But it also means to keep being a fool for Him even in the midst of suffering, when times are difficult, when loving Him is hard.

Our God can be a difficult God to get along with, as He often asks for much more than He will give, on this side of Heaven. He often asks us to give up worldly comfort, financial stability, lucrative or influential positions. He sometimes takes loved ones from us before their old age – babies and children, lovers, friends. He takes good health from us, most often in small and inconvenient ways, but sometimes through disease, cancer, or terminal illness. Sometimes He even strips us of honor, our good names, reputations. All of this from a God who loves us!

In the course of loving God, He lays us bare and strips us naked. And it is like this – naked as we burst forth from our mothers’ wombs – that we approach the Lord as David did and can truly be a fool for Him. It is fool-hardy to love a God who only demands and rarely gives. It is fool-hardy to love a God who demands no less than the entirety of your life.

Of course, it is also fool-hardy for God to love His creation so much that He would become like them. God is a fool for loving His creation even though they continually turn away from Him and worship other gods. God is foolish to love His people so much that He would allow them to spit on Him and scourge Him, tear the clothes from His limbs, and crucify Him.

It is fool-hardy for God to love His people so much that He would die for them, though they are the ones who crucify Him. It is fool-hardy for God to die for His people, a people who do not want Him but who need Him. And so God strips Himself bare and comes before us naked, letting everything of Himself fall away so that He might give His people the treasure of Heaven.

Eternal joy, even eternity, can seem so distant and so little when compared to the struggles of this mortal life. Sometimes the reward of Heaven at the end of the suffering of this life can seem like too little, too late. But eternity is not just a place, it is a state of being – a new way of being human. It only makes sense that we would have to shed away every ounce of our beings, of what we know to be human, before being able to attain Heaven. Even still, trading all we know for the promise of something we cannot fathom? It is a hard sell, for sure. But this is what it is to be a fool. To love when all is being ripped away, to trust when you cannot see, to hope for something greater than here and now.

I will love when my children are screaming at Mass and we have to leave before Communion (the one true taste of Heaven we are given during our earthly tenure). I will love when we are jobless and subsisting off of government assistance. I will love when family members die unexpectedly. I will love when I am laughed at and when I suffer reproach, especially at the hands of those I love and respect. I will love though my health begins to fail. I will love though God can sometimes seem stubborn and crotchety. I will be the fool.

“So faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13).