The line between wisdom and foolishness is very thin. Indeed one man’s wisdom is very often another man’s folly.
Isaac Asimov is popularly remembered as one of the great writers of science fiction. But he was much more than that. He was a professor of biochemistry, and held a doctorate degree in philosophy. Much of his writing was non-fiction, popular science books such as Guide to Science, Understanding Physics, and Asimov’s Chronology of Science and Discovery.
He was also an atheist. He felt that to believe in God there must be undeniable physical evidence. He once wrote, “I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.”
It seems odd that a person of such brilliance could not accept the fact that there are things in the world beyond human understanding.
A contemporary of Asimov, Antony Flew was also an atheist who demanded evidence that could be analyzed as a pre-requisite to belief. He was one of the leading atheist thinkers of the 20thcentury. But in 2004 Flew announced that he had changed his mind. It was not due to a miracle or a vision but rather he believed that the evidence from science and philosophy now pointed to the existence of God. He said, “I have followed the argument where it has led me. And it has led me to accept the existence of a self-existent, immutable, immaterial, omnipotent and omniscient Being.”
Wisdom invites the simple and those without understanding to the banquet of eternal life. But how can the unwise comprehend what is offered to them?
In a like manner Jesus offers Himself as food for eternal life and is confronted with ignorance. His invitation is understandable only in the light of Divine Wisdom. The unwise quarrel among themselves, “How can He give us His flesh to eat?” Within the world of foolishness this is a perfectly understandable objection.
But God’s Wisdom, incarnate in Jesus Christ, does not even acknowledge the objection. Instead He stresses all the more sternly “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life within you.”
We are offered eternal life, whoever refuses this offer will not be raised on the last day. The only explanation offered to this great mystery is that as the Son lives through the Father “so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.”
There have been many men who are counted wise that cannot accept the incomprehensibility of the Trinity. We are all confronted with the challenge of accepting ultimate life only through the power of this mystery. God’s love has never been withheld from the unwise or short sighted. But rather than working with us to reach a gradual understanding, God confronts us at the outset with an absolute truth.
We must watch carefully, that we live “not as foolish persons, but as wise.”
Pax Vobiscum