The Fool

Theologians sometimes are like the little girl who protested, “Yes I do know how to spell “Mississippi, I just don’t know when to stop.” Many theologians know how to spell out some of the deep secrets of life but they just don’t know when to stop. Consequently, very few people are willing to wade through the massive material that flows out of their keen minds. There is the sad story about one theologian who had been working for months in his University “ivory tower” developing a new insight. He regarded it as the most original and creative idea of his thirty-year career and wanted to express it with the greatest possible precision. Each day he would write out a number of drafts and each night he would burn them because he was not completely satisfied with the words he had chosen. Finally, there came the day when the cry “Eureka!” was heard coming from his ivory tower. At long last he had come up with…