“Piled High”
18 inches of snow piled on the handrail of this bridge in Tahquamenon Falls State Park in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

There is a vernacular proverb in a land where the English govern much but dwell little—“There are three dangers—the horns of an ox, the heels of a horse, and the tongue of an Englishman.”

In this pamphlet Carlyle implied that the God of the Bible was incredible, and said that ‘a man’s “religion” consists not of the many things he is in doubt of and tries to believe, but of the few he is assured of, and has no need of effort for believing.’ Accordingly the ‘modern man’s religion’ was such as might have been expected of pigs, “if the inestimable talent of Literature should, in these swift days of progress, be extended to the brute creation, so that swine (I mean four-footed swine) could communicate to us on paper what they thought of the Universe.” Whereupon he gave a humorous sketch of Pig Philosophy, such as Swift might have written but no other man of letters on record, full of fun, yet making one feel uncomfortably how much we modern men resemble swine.

Ask yourself about “Liberty,” for example; what you do really mean by it, what in any just and rational soul is that Divine quality of liberty? That a good man be “free,” as we call it, be permitted to unfold himself in works of goodness and nobleness, is surely a blessing to him, immense and indispensable;—to him and to those about him. But that a bad man be “free,”—permitted to unfold himself in his particular way, is contrariwise the fatallest curse you could inflict on him; curse and nothing else, to him and all his neighbours. Him the very Heavens call upon you to persuade, to urge, induce, compel, into something of well-doing; if you absolutely cannot, if he will continue in ill-doing,—then for him (I can assure you, though you will be shocked to hear it), the one “blessing” left is the speediest gallows you can lead him to. Speediest, that at least his ill-doing may cease quàm primùm.

Certainly, by any ballot-box, Jesus Christ goes just as far as Judas Iscariot; and with reason, according to the New Gospels, Talmuds and Dismal Sciences of these days. Judas looks him in the face; asks proudly, "Am not I as good as thou? Better, perhaps!" slapping his breeches-pocket, in which is audible the cheerful jingle of thirty pieces of silver.

I say, it is the everlasting privilege of the foolish to be governed by the wise; to be guided in the right path by those who know it better than they. This is the first “right of man;” compared with which all other rights are as nothing,—mere superfluities, corollaries which will follow of their own accord out of this; if they be not contradictions to this, and less than nothing! To the wise it is not a privilege; far other indeed. Doubtless, as bringing preservation to their country, it implies preservation of themselves withal; but intrinsically, it is the harshest duty a wise man, if he be indeed wise, has laid to his hand. A duty which he would fain enough shirk; which accordingly, in these sad times of doubt and cowardly sloth, he has long everywhere been endeavouring to reduce to its minimum, and has in fact in most cases nearly escaped altogether. It is an ungoverned world; a world which we flatter ourselves will henceforth need no governing. On the dust of our heroic ancestors we too sit ballot-boxing, saying to one another, It is well, it is well! By inheritance of their noble struggles, we have been permitted to sit slothful so long. By noble toil, not by shallow laughter and vain talk, they made this English Existence from a savage forest into an arable inhabitable field for us; and we, idly dreaming it would grow spontaneous crops forever,—find it now in a too questionable state; peremptorily requiring real labour and agriculture again. Real “agriculture” is not pleasant; much pleasanter to reap and winnow (with ballot-box or otherwise) than to plough!

So much emphasis has been placed on reason and intellect in our modern world that people who have various mental and intellectual challenges are considered almost subhuman. Some Protestant churches will not even allow people with these kinds of challenges to be admitted to their membership, thereby putting IQ as a condition of communion with Christ. But as Fr. Jordan Bajis has said, “One’s ability to use his mind and faculties is not the requirement of faith. The orientation of one’s heart and trust is the requirement.”

Even before Christ, we see prototypes of the fool for Christ—as far back as Old Testament times when several prophets of God adopted outlandish and even shocking behaviors in order to reveal His judgments. We see, for example, Isaiah walking naked for several years while he predicted Israel’s captivity in Egypt (Is. 20:2–4); Ezekiel lying on his side for 390 days and eating bread baked over human dung (Ezek. 4:9–12); and Hosea marrying a harlot and buying her back from harlotry when she was unfaithful to him (Hos. 1:2; 3:1–2). It was St. Paul who first used the term “fools for Christ” in one of his epistles to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 4:10), pointing out that Christian doctrine and the Christian manner of life are foolish in the eyes of the world. In time, a number of Christian ascetics adopted the term and feigned foolishness or insanity in part to demonstrate the foolishness of the world about them, just as the prophets of old had done. These people feigned foolishness (mental illnesses) but in actuality were perfectly rational and in full command of all their senses. They adopted their behaviors in order to reject the status quo and cares of this world; to communicate (often in riddles or parables) great spiritual truths in admittedly sometimes outlandish ways (the equivalent of a slap in the face, which society often needs); and also to avoid the temptation of pride by allowing themselves to be humiliated, mocked, and sometimes even physically abused because of their seemingly absurd behavior.

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We all are called to be fools for Christ’s sake—perhaps not in the extreme of those who bear the title “fool for Christ,” yet we must maintain a holiness and purity of heart that would appear to be foolish in the eyes of the world about us. It is foolish to swim against the current of society, but we are called to do so. It is foolish to forgive and pray for those who abuse us, yet that is our task. It is foolish to stand for ancient truths when the contemporary world tells us they are outmoded or even evil; yet, as with Christ, we must maintain that which is “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8). It is foolish to feed and clothe the poor and outcast who can do nothing for us in return, especially when we ourselves have barely enough to sustain us; yet that is our calling. For we are called to be “fools for Christ” in multiple ways every day—even when not called specifically to outlandish behavior, our behavior is nonetheless outlandish to the world that surrounds us.

[St. Andrew of Constantinople (870–936)] was talking with his disciple Epiphanius when he received a vision in which a demon came and attempted to trap Epiphanius. But the demon would not approach Andrew and instead cried out, “You are my greatest enemy in all of Constantinople!” Rather than driving the demon immediately away, Andrew let him speak. “I feel,” said the demon, “that the time is coming when my work here will be complete. When that time comes, men will be worse than I am now and children more skilled in wickedness than those who are grown. At that time I shall take my rest and do nothing more to tempt mankind, for they will do my will of themselves.”

Andrew then asked the demon what sins gave his kind the most satisfaction, and the demon replied, “Idolatry, slander, evil against one’s neighbor, sodomy, drunkenness, and love of money. These,” he said, “give us the most joy.” Andrew then asked the demon how his kind react when someone who had served them repents and turns away from their evil works. “It is hard to bear,” replied the demon. “We do all we can to bring him back. And many who have denied us and turned to God have come back to us!” At that, Andrew breathed on the demon, and he disappeared.

For no man, and for no body or biggest multitude of men, has Nature favour, if they part company with her facts and her. Excellent stump-orator; eloquent parliamentary dead-dog, making motions, passing bills; reported in the Morning Newspapers, and reputed the “best speaker going”? From the Universe of Fact he has turned himself away; he is gone into partnership with the Universe of Phantasm; finds it profitablest to deal in forged-notes, while the foolish shopkeepers will accept them. Nature for such a man, and for Nations that follow such, has her patibulary forks, and prisons of death everlasting:—dost thou doubt it? Unhappy mortal, Nature otherwise were herself a Chaos and no Cosmos. Nature was not made by an Impostor; not she, I think, rife as they are!—In fact, by money or otherwise, to the uttermost fraction of a calculable and incalculable value, we have, each one of us, to settle the exact balance in the abovesaid Savings-bank, or official register kept by Nature: Creditor by the quantity of veracities we have done, Debtor by the quantity of falsities and errors; there is not, by any conceivable device, the faintest hope of escape from that issue for one of us, nor for all of us.