What a fool believes

Thoughts on being a fool

If you grew up when I did, in the late 70s, you know the song “What a Fool Believes,” written by the super-duo Michael McDonald (best known for this song) and Kenny Loggins (Danger Zone, I’m Alright), and recorded by the Doobie Brothers. I can summon the song in my head instantly, and when it plays on the radio, my hand instinctively reaches for the volume knob.

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The song is about a woman who consents to meet a guy she knew from her past, and he believes they had a relationship, while to her, he just barely registered on her memory. “She had a place in his life / He never made her think twice / As he rises to her apology / Anybody else would surely know / He’s watching her go.” She will not return, as much as he wants to believe it.

But what a fool believes, he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away
What seems to be
Is always better than nothing
Than nothing at all

From Wikipedia, “What a Fool Believes” was nearly not released, as producer Ted Templeman (also known for Van Halen and Van Morrison) couldn’t get a version he liked. It’s funny how musicians can’t see the forest for the trees when they’re looking for some sound or theme and keep missing. Record executives told Templeman he was nuts to recommend discarding the song; they were right, and it became McDonald’s biggest hit.

Some songs just hit because they have a good hook, and musically they click in people’s heads. Other songs also have some really good lyrics (Hotel California) to go with the hook. As I’ve aged, I’ve come to appreciate the musical genius of John Paul Jones and Robert Plant in Led Zeppelin. I mean, weaving Tolkien into so many songs, exquisitely arranged and produced, with incredible instrumentals and perfect pitch—as a teenager I just heard The Immigrant Song and didn’t like the vibe (that song is about visiting Iceland, of all places).

Also as I age, I realize the magic of the world fades. Hooking into Tolkien, this is a major theme of all of his Lord of the Rings books. The world ages, and the power of those ancient things that powered it fades, until it’s just a myth. I suppose if there really were elves, and somehow one got a meeting with a modern fantasy author, he’d get to hear how the impact of elves in literature is now so passé, and though reading Tolkien had so much influence on the writer’s art, it’s simply not profitable to pen stories about elves anymore.

The elf would be sad to hear that his entire race has been reduced to a theme on myths, barely registering on the scale of truth. But real elves (Tolkien’s elves at least) live forever, so he might leave with the hope that one day, people will turn back to the elves, to the beauty and power that was lost. He’d be like the man in “What a Fool Believes,” thinking that the impact elves had on men was more than just a way to tell good stories in fiction, while in reality that’s all it ever was. Men will not return to the elves, even if there are elves in real life.

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Knowing how many long hours, days, years, Tolkien spent writing the LOTR series, focusing on his prodigious linguistic skills, inventing a world, whole languages, poetry, song, a creation story, mythology, heroes, artifacts, and villains, robs the books of magic and reduces them to a man’s opus, his love, and his toil. Many authors spend years toiling over a story, and once it is ready to publish, the book (if it becomes more than a box of rejection letters, or worse—no responses at all) ends up in airport gift shops, a single flight read, left in the seat pocket for the cleaning crew to retrieve. It then enters the cycle of moving from the bargain bin at used book stores, the ones who sell copies with the cover torn off—returned to the publisher for credit as “unsold”—to insomniac readers, then back to the bargain bin. Years of toil reduced to a side hustle. No magic there.

Those who “make it” in life are endued with some special talent, or more likely, have some talent and a whole lot of hard work developing it. We call those who make it “special.” We also call those who have tried very hard but haven’t made it using the same term. There is something to be said for having a good team, or good breeding, or good parents. Nepo babies really are a thing, in fields you would never expect, like mortuaries. Begin “special” is a collaboration, not just a word bestowed on children to make them feel like they’re loved, when in fact they are setting their sights on an unreachable goal. Then again, a combination of good luck, hard work, and some talent can go very far.

Kurt Warner was cut from the Green Bay Packers as a training camp walk-on in 1994, after going undrafted from Northern Iowa. He went from college quarterback to stocking shelves at the Hy-Vee grocery store for $5.50 an hour. Not taking his eyes off the NFL dream, Warner spent three season playing arena football for the Iowa Barnstormers before being picked up by the St. Louis Rams, who sent him to their European franchise, the Amsterdam Admirals of the doomed World League of American Football. Before the season opener in 1999, starting QB Trent Green tore his ACL, and Warner got the job. When fate hands a chance, it’s all about execution. Kurt Warner turned his into earning the MVP award at Super Bowl XXXIV, where the Rams beat the Tennessee Titans at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

As I have aged, I realize, like everything else under the sun, once you learn more about a thing, the less magical it becomes. Kurt Warner’s story is indeed special, but without Isaac Bruce at wide receiver, catching the winning 73-yard touchdown in that game, Marshall Faulk at running back (who won the NFL Offensive Player of the Year award), and Hall of Fame-bound Orlando Pace at left tackle, protecting his blind side, there wouldn’t be a whole lot of “special” as an overcomer story—at least not in 1999. In 2002, the Rams would lose to the team that dominated the next two decades, the New England Patriots, helmed by the power duo of Tom Brady as quarterback and Bill Belichick as head coach. That turned out to be a love affair made in hell. As in football, or anything else, learning how the sausage is made ruins the “special,” but in its own way, it is the “special.”

Every high school quarterback has visions of being the next Kurt Warner or Tom Brady. Most of those visions stay as dreams. I’m sure people called Warner a fool for pursuing an NFL dream when he should have been developing a career plan in another field. For me, it was never football, but it was the closest thing to football for Americans, and that’s God.

I grew up a non-believer in God. Oh, my family is Jewish, and my mother held to her Jewishness tightly. But I don’t know how close her relationship with God was, as she never really talked about it. I went to Hebrew school, and later to Hillel Academy, a private parochial school, in my elementary years. I was Bar Mitzvah’d in the Orthodox Jewish tradition. And after that, it was just celebrating the high holidays and Passover. Faith was in the doing of these Jewish things to remind us of our heritage.

I didn’t believe.

In 1999, I came to believe. I’ve written of my testimony before, of the supernatural vision given to me by God that changed my life. That vision remains special, and even should I know how it came to be in my mind, it will be special. I mean, it was between 1:30 and 2:00 a.m. I had been awake for many hours, flying in from Denver on the red-eye. I left Denver early because I was sick. I decided, against my own nature, to go to a two-bit talent show to see a young employee’s band play. Anyone could argue that I was, sick, tired, and susceptible to delusions.

Anyone could argue that I didn’t have a real vision from God, that my life was a lonely mess, and I was looking for something—anything—to connect to. Anyone could argue that my desire to find God was rooted in me, not some outside deity and faith. Anyone could see that I became a fool.

In my own mind, I thought I was a fool. I had, for years, been trained to refute arguments for Jesus Christ, “Jews for Jesus” and all that. I had been told that the New Testament was a document used by those who hated Jews to justify efforts at genocide. I had been told that many Christians not only didn’t understand Jews, but blamed Jews for the ills of the word. Be skeptical of anything Christian, because they want to “convert” the Jews so there will be no more Jews. That’s what I thought.

What a fool believes, he sees.

I finally came to believe, and it was a process, over months, and I was miserable through all of it. Like C.S. Lewis, I had arrived at the apex of misery. “That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. I finally gave in and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

A friend told me that I was indeed a fool for believing a Bible that asserts the universe was made in seven days. A Bible that says the world was covered with a global flood after 40 days and 40 nights of rain, and before that, it “had not rained upon the earth.” How could plants grow with no rain? How could the earth form before the sun and the moon? How could the order of things in God’s creation from the book of Genesis match our plain observations?

I don’t know. What I do know is that I once was blind, and now I see. The things I see aren’t the answers to Genesis, or any of the miracles described in the Bible. I believe those things happened and were described as best they could be by the writers, though there’s always something lost in translation—first by the inspiration of God to the writer, and even in first-person accounts, by the observation powers of the witness. The other translation issues are your traditional language problems, especially when removed by a dozen or more centuries since the original was penned. We are not even sure of the original language some of the books of the New Testament were first written in.

What I see is not in the words of the written text, though those words act as a lens for faith. I see through the words, and the words activate my faith, which is from God (the Holy Spirit). Believe me, there’s a whole problem of “how the sausage is made” in religion, too. All ministries have an underside that the outsiders don’t often see. When they do see it, for the unbeliever, it just cements their understanding that religion is another thing subject to all human failings, and faith has nothing to do with it. For the believer, it raises questions as to the divine, even in the face of miracles, signs and wonders.

Here’s what I know about “special.”

Of the people who helped me find my faith in Christ, a good number of them are no longer believers. A person who shared with me that they don’t just believe, they “know” Christ is real told me they don’t know it anymore, or even believe it. When pressed, the answer was “more information yields different conclusions.” My first pastor turned in his credentials and now preaches some kind of self-powered new age gnosticism. I am sure his books sell a lot better than if he wrote about scriptural exegesis. What I don’t know is how those people’s interactions with me, which were more than just casual acquaintances on my part, may have influenced their decision to walk away from faith in God.

I just shared what I believe is a heavy burden on my own soul. At one point after becoming a Christian, I walked away from behaving as one. I went truly after a carnal, even hedonistic, life. While doing this, I stopped going to church, stopped giving, yet never affirmatively rejected my faith. In fact, to anyone who asked, I told them I believed. I talked about God and Christ, while at the same time living for myself. I am sure this damaged my witness to others, but I don’t know the extent of it.

It would be nice to learn that, like the man in “What a Fool Believes,” the people I thought I had a close relationship with were merely small distractions, barely memorable, in theirs. That their decision to abandon their faith was made without my help. I don’t know the answer, but I do know that if it was me, the God of the Bible is merciful enough, and His grace is sufficient, to forgive me fully and completely.

There’s a bigger question and a big “but.” One of my favorite bible teachers has a saying that whatever we say after the word “but” is what we really believe. For example, if I say “I know God can heal all diseases, but I have had this sickness for a long time and have learned to live with it,” I really believe that I won’t be healed. If I say “I know I had a vision from God, but I really don’t know if it was God,” that means I am just following religion, and my belief is shallow.

My “but” is that I have dreamt and believed that I have a special place in God’s kingdom, because to God, as the Bible says, we all all special, in our gifts, talents, abilities, and the level of our faith. If I am special to God in the way my dreams and visions say, then why have I not found that place? I am special, “but” look at all the people who have walked away without fulfilling their place in God’s kingdom. Will that be me?

It is God, or it is nothing. Call me a fool, and it is to God’s glory. Call me impervious to reason, and it is to God’s call I answer. Call me delirious, and let me find my joy in it. I never want to damage someone else’s faith again through my own actions or words. Doing life this way, as a fool, is not special. It won’t earn me the accolades I thought I wanted (and if it does, let them be for Christ, not me).

You know, the answer is right here before me all the time. I will be a fool.

What seems to be / Is always better than nothing / Than nothing at all