We have so much around us in creation that reveals God’s attributes: goodness, power, wisdom. Yet, he also has revealed himself and his love to his people in historical narrative, poetry, prophecy, letters, and the Sacraments. God’s communication is multifaceted and provides a wonderful depth and beauty as we use all of God’s revelation to know him.

Blazing sunrises, gentle moonlit nights, lush forest paths, rocky arid beauty, bird song, leaf-fall, thunderous ocean waves, cascading waterfalls, gurgling mountain streams—these glorious beauties are the songs of nature. Each of these songs declares a theme, a message from God the King. He calls us to learn of him from nature and his Word. God has created a symphony for us: let’s listen.
God the Composer
A composer is a person who writes music. It is his vision and foresight—his message—that is written down on paper for others to communicate. The composer is in control of what fundamentally must be played and how it should be played. Will this line be loud or soft? Will it be played forcefully or delicately? Will the music communicate joy, sorrow, anxiety, or strength?
God is a composer, too. He created the glorious, amazing, and beautiful world around us to communicate something about himself. The rhythm of the seasons, sounds of nature, colors, and smells are all part of his composition. Just as a composer communicates through his music, God communicates to us through his creation and Word. They both reveal something about him.
1. God Communicates Through His Creation
So what does creation say to you about God? Psalm 19 speaks of the creation being a witness to God’s glory: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Ps. 19:1). And Job 38 stresses God’s power, wisdom, design, and care of his creation. The book of Romans declares,

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” (Rom. 1:19-20)

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Evangelicals need a Biblical theology of foolishness for our generation that will at once “shame the wise” and declare the truth and promise of the gospel. How should that look for Protestant believers in the twenty-first century? Whatever it looks like, it must embrace the foolishness of the cross to affirm that our faith does not “rest not on human wisdom,” as Paul put it to the Corinthians, “but on the power of God.”

The Power of the Cross to Shame the Wise
The Los Angeles Dodgers recently hosted at their ballpark the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an organization that claims to “raise drag awareness” and increase “understanding of gay spirituality.” This has caused controversy since the men in the organization are flamboyantly anti-Catholic, dress as nuns, and incorporate blasphemy into their “performances.” The Dodgers invited the group to participate in “Pride Night,” but before it took place they disinvited the Sisters in response to online anger on the part of Christian groups and others. The disinvitation prompted what was evidently an even bigger backlash on social media from defenders of the Sisters, which prompted the Dodgers to re-invite the group, and then publicly bestow upon them a “Community Hero Award.”
The Dodgers have reconfirmed it is possible to be craven and sanctimonious at the same time.
Drag Queens are not the only means of challenging moral and social norms in society, or, of problematizing heteronormative bourgeois values, as I would have said had I paid better attention during drag queen story hour. What the left has known and said for quite some time–at least since the 1960s—is that just about any kind of clownishness will do. The clown is a caricature, an exaggeration. His method is to distort some facet of reality to the point of absurdity. Big noses, red lips, oversized feet, effeminate men—does not really matter what is exaggerated. What matters is that you, the viewer, are entertained or captivated or distracted. Playing the fool means not fitting in, usually in a spectacular way.
But clowning is about more than mocking the clown. Foolishness can be a means of persuasion, too. In this case, the real joke is not on the fools, but on the people laughing at them. An effective clown prompts you to ponder the world in a different light, imagine another way, maybe even another world, and to come to see your own position as more strange or arbitrary or absurd than you previously thought. Court jesters, parodists, and drag queens have known this as long as they have been around. Embracing one’s own foolishness in the eyes of the majority is a powerful, and potentially revolutionary tool.
This is where Evangelical Christians have something to learn from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Foolishness delivers a message to the ones who laugh; it is a tool of persuasion wielded by outliers in society. After generations of occupying one kind of moral majority or another, Evangelicals have forgotten how to embrace and defend the “foolishness” of our own faith. We have spent the past few decades trying to appease the scoffers. The result is that our resolve to stand for truth is weakened in a world hostile to us. We need to recover the art of godly foolishness, an ancient and venerable means of speaking truth, and one that will inoculate us against the inevitable disdain of the world.
Revolutionary Potential of the Fool
In the 1960s, the radical left incorporated clownishness into its repertoire as a matter of course. Reading about it is quite refreshing, honestly, given how humorless and dour so much of the left can often be. Marx was never known for his knock-knock jokes. In recent years, the left’s resentment toward humor has been on full display. The banning of The Babylon Bee from Twitter for mocking left-wing pieties should have been a Babylon Bee gag, not an actual news story.
There was a period, however, during which this was not the case. In 1968, for instance, the left-wing radicals who called themselves Yippies nominated a 150-pound pig named “Pigasus the Immortal” to run for President against Richard Nixon. They were arrested at the campaign launch in Chicago, and charged with bringing livestock into the city. When asked why they nominated a pig for the presidency, one of them explained it was “because if we can’t have him in the White House, we can at least have him for breakfast.” This is fine political satire, suggesting that the potential bacon value of your candidate outweighs the policy value of your opponent. Surely there were a few Republicans that gave a chuckle at the time, even if they deplored the Yippies.
The 1960s and 70s superstar Marxist intellectual and father of the New Left, Herbert Marcuse was completely onboard with this kind of clownishness. Marcuse explained in his jargony though wildly popular writing (every academic’s dream) how all the goofiness amounted to oppositional political action. For instance, he wrote in 1969 that “in some sectors of the opposition the radical protest tends to become antinomian, anarchistic, and even non-political. Here is another reason why the rebellion often takes on the weird and clownish forms which get on the nerves of the Establishment.” This comes from his Essay on Liberation, a title more ironic than “Pigasus the Immortal.”
Marcuse understood the revolutionary potential of the fool, who, by the way, does not have to be as offensive as the drag queen nuns of L.A. to be effective; I suspect that not all drag story hour readers are twerking in the library. They do not have to in order to achieve their goal, which is, according to the nonprofit “Drag Story Hour,” that kids “see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where everyone can be their authentic selves.” This group started in 2015 in San Francisco to shepherd this “global phenomenon” into the next generation; it understands that the defiance of gender restrictions opens the door for imagining a new world. Deconstruct to reconstruct.
It is important here not to get tempted by the pablum of “authentic selves” into thinking this is innocuous. It sounds innocuous, but there is a difference between innocuous and vacuous. The first is unthreatening, by definition, whereas the second is empty and therefore fillable with whatever one wants to fill it with. Vacuous social justice cliches are the Trojan Horses of the movement. Inside the call to “imagine a world” is the moral sanction to deconstruct the world as it is. Inside the phrase “authentic selves” dwells the doctrine of human sovereignty over human nature. This is the logic of utopia: you deconstruct the “structures of power” as they exist, and in the vacuum install a new king. Or drag queen.
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Like the Prodigal’s father, our Father felt great compassion on us, and with our True older Brother, welcomed us back into the home at His own expense (Luke 15:20). And that expense would cost our compassionate Father the ultimate expense, the life of His one and only Son in crucifixion (Romans 5:6-8) in order to make us alive together with Him in His resurrection (Ephesians 2:4-5) and to bring us back to the Father we had sinned against totally clean; wholly forgiven (1 Peter 3:18).

One of the questions I have often been asked as a pastor is why God allowed sin and misery into the world. If He is all-knowing and all-wise and even has the ability and power to do all He pleases, then why did it please Him to create a world that would nose-dive so fantastically into the turmoil and futility we experience because of sin? Couldn’t He have done it differently? Wasn’t there a better way? 
These are essential questions that require careful answers. Thankfully, many careful answers have been given throughout church history, which we should borrow from when answering this question. For instance, many have said that God created the world, knowing full well what would happen in it because the story of sin and redemption manifested His glory more excellently than a world without a fall. Think about it this way, in a world without sin, human beings and all of creation could never get to know God in all of His fullness. While sin would not be present on a sterilized earth, there would be aspects of God that we could never understand, such as His mercy, justice, grace, forgiveness, and compassion. Without sin, there is no reason for God to be merciful. Without rebellion, there is no need for grace. This means, at least in part, that God allowed the world to fall into sin and misery so that He could showcase the fullness of His being to lost and lonely sinners, which brings Him unimaginable glory. 
Understanding this, and while I am fully aware that there is more to say in matters of theodicy, we can be grateful to God for our sins. Because my sin put me in a position of need that only God could meet. My sin created a disease that only God could heal. And while we ought never to sin so that grace may abound, my sin introduced me to a savior who has offered me abounding grace that now causes me to hate my sin and pursue Him. Thus, even in the wretchedness of sin, even in our mortification of sin and hatred of sin, there are peculiar comforts and joys available to those who know the compassions of God. 
And that is what I would like to talk about today. If you are new, we are in a little series on the attributes of God, talking about who God is, what He is like, and how we may know Him. Today, we look at His compassion towards sinners. 
God Is Compassionate by Nature
God is compassionate by nature. He does not decide to become compassionate when a situation arises. He is compassionate as a fundamental quality of His being and person. For instance, Paul says that He is the “Father of compassion” and the “God of all comforts” (2 Corinthians 1:3). This requires that He doesn’t just possess these things as if they were commodities, but He is these things in all fullness and perfection. His compassions exist on a level of robust density and purity that they are beyond our ability to comprehend or even withstand without the aid of a mediator. For instance, when the God of perfect compassions passed in front of Moses, letting all His goodness be on display (Exodus 33:19; 34:6), he needed to be hidden in the face of a rock and covered with the Lord’s own hand in order to live and tell the tale. God is so unimaginably good that even His goodness threatens our unmediated flesh. He is merciful and gracious (Psalm 86:15), slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (Psalm 103:8), but His holiness and justice require that we repent and return to Him because He is compassionate (Psalm 116:5; 119:156; Joel 2:13)
God Is Compassionate to All People
While God’s most extraordinary and intimate affections are reserved for His children, the Lord is kind and compassionate to all people (Psalm 145:8-9). Think about it this way, everyone on earth has sinned and is in rebellion against God (Romans 3:23). And since the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), God would be perfectly just and righteous to eliminate the entire human race without so much as batting an eyelash. So, the fact that billions of people loathe God every single day, either in heinous acts of rebellion or in failing to thank Him for every stolen breath of His mercy, has allowed them to live on in morbid ingratitude.
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