None of us have all the truth. We can learn from others. For some silly Christian to come along and pretend he is more spiritual than all of us because he only listens to Scripture is not a sign of being really spiritual and holy – it is an indication of carnality and arrogance. Refusing to love God with your mind is not something to be proud about. Nor is refusing to learn from others. 

Sadly there are many Christians who believe that it is somehow virtuous and spiritual to NOT use their minds. They delight in anti-intellectualism, and they look down on those who are learned and well-read. They seem to think the more brainless you are, the more God approves of you.
And they will latch onto some verses to try to make their case. A number of such texts will be ripped out of context and misused from Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians – including the one under consideration here. The verse itself says this: “For the wisdom of this world is folly with God.” And the context (verses 18-23) must be considered as well:
Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,”  and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.
In the opening chapters of this letter Paul deals with various problems in the Corinthian church, including divisions. Often he speaks of worldly wisdom and earthly knowledge. In 1 Cor. 1:18 for example he quotes from Isaiah 29:14: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
He goes on to speak about “the foolishness of the gospel” (verses 21-25). In chapter two he contrasts the wisdom of the Spirit with the wisdom of the world. And in 1 Cor. 8:1 he speaks about how knowledge puffs up. So one might think Paul is fully disparaging knowledge, learning, wisdom, the use of the mind, and so on.
But clearly this is not the case. Throughout Scripture – including in the writings of Paul – the use of the mind, the role of reason, and the place of intellect are all held up and encouraged. Simply consider the greatest commandment Jesus ever gave to us: the one about loving God with our mind and the rest of our being.
That alone should dispel this foolish notion of thinking we can please God by being brainless wonders. But I have written about this often, and offered plenty of biblical texts to back this up. The most recent piece on this is found here: billmuehlenberg.com/2022/10/31/not-to-think-is-a-sin/
But what about the passages listed above? Is Paul contradicting himself? Not at all. When Paul and others speak negatively of the ‘wisdom of the world’ they do NOT mean all knowledge and understanding of all people who happen to live on planet earth. The Greek word for world – kosmos – is used in various ways in the New Testament.
It often can just refer to the earth that we live on. But when used like it is here in a negative light, it refers to the evil, ungodly world system. It refers to the wisdom of those who shake their fists at God and are wise in their own eyes. So the context usually makes it clear how we are to understand the term.
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Worship is not us performing for God, but a reenactment of God’s work for us. Everything about the eternal worship into which Isaiah and John enter is initiated by God, provided for by God, and shaped by his covenant relationship with his people. God is the primary actor. All of the actions of the worshipers are in response to God’s work and actually a reenactment of God’s covenantal work.

One of the oldest hymns still sung today is what has come to be called the Gloria Patri: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”
This ancient hymn captures three eras of worship: as it was in the beginning—the worship of Old Testament Israel, as it is now—the worship of New Testament Christianity, and worship in the world without end—the worship of heaven. In one sense separating worship into these three eras emphasizes their discontinuity; yet while there are certainly discontinuities between the worship of Israel and the NT church, for example, there are also important continuities, and where we find an emphasis on the continuity is in that little phrase, “and ever shall be.”
Yet Christians have long wrestled with the continuities and discontinuities of worship, and confusion in this area has often led to problems with theology and practice of worship. The solution is found in our focus in this essay: worship in the world without end. Understanding properly how worship as it was in the beginning and worship as it is now relate to worship in the world without end helps us to recognize what shall ever be, the center of true worship and, consequently, the purpose of what we do as we gather for worship now.
Heavenly Reality
Scripture presents us with two extended descriptions of the worship of the world without end that provide the foundation for our discussion, notably one set in the context of worship in the Old Testament and the other set in the context of worship in the New Testament. In both cases, these descriptions of heavenly worship were presented during a time of problems with earthly worship, revealing the fact that problems with our worship now are corrected when we bring our worship into proper relationship with the worship of the world without end.
Isaiah 6:1–13
This was true for the nation of Israel; during Solomon’s reign and especially following the divided kingdom, God’s people forsook the pure worship of God and began first to fall into syncretistic worship, and eventually full blow idolatry. Even noble kings in the southern kingdom, such as Uzziah, approached worship presumptuously and not according to God’s explicit command by entering into the sanctuary though he had no right to do so.
It is no coincidence that the death of Uzziah is the very context for the prophet Isaiah’s vision of heavenly worship in Isaiah 6. In a way, this was God reminding Isaiah of the true reality upon which pure earthly worship was supposed to be based. God called Isaiah up into the heavenly temple itself, where he “saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up” (v. 1). Surrounding God were seraphim singing the Trisagion  hymn (“thrice holy”),
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;The whole earth is full of his glory!
The sight of God in all of his holiness and splendor caused Isaiah to recognize his own sin and unworthiness to draw near to the presence of God in his temple, what Uzziah should have known before entering the earthly temple as he did. Thus, Isaiah confessed his sin before the Lord: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (v. 5)!
Yet God did not simply expel Isaiah from the temple due to his impurity; rather, God provided means of atonement. One of the seraphim took a burning coal from the altar and placed it on Isaiah’s lips, proclaiming, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
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God sovereignly directs events according to his eternal and infallible plan, so that any evil that occurs—including human sin—does so only because it serves some greater good purpose. Arguably the two most striking biblical illustrations of this principle come from the story of Joseph (Gen. 45:7–8; 50:20) and the crucifixion of Jesus (Acts 4:27–28). It turns out that divine predestination is consistent with nearly every greater-good theodicy. After all, if God can have morally sufficient reasons for permitting an evil, then he can have morally sufficient reasons for ordaining that same evil.

This is a tough question to answer in a short space, not least because it ties together two complex and controversial topics! Let’s begin with some basic definitions. The problem of evil refers to the challenge of reconciling the reality of evil with the existence of an all-good, all-powerful God. If God is all-good, presumably he would want to prevent all evil. If God is all-powerful, presumably he would be able to prevent all evil. How then can God and evil co-exist?
As many Christian philosophers have pointed out, the apparent logical conflict can be resolved once we recognize that God could have morally sufficient reasons for permitting an evil; for example, if permitting that evil were necessary to accomplish some greater good. Thus, there is no inherent conflict between the existence of an all-good, all-powerful God and the existence of evil. This insight points us in the direction of a greater-good theodicy: a more detailed explanation of why God permits various evils within the world, whether natural evils (such as diseases and earthquakes) or moral evils (such as murders and rapes). Christian thinkers have developed and defended a variety of greater-good theodicies, but it’s enough for our purposes here to recognize that such theodicies exist and many of them are complementary (i.e., they can be combined to address a wide range of different evils).
So what does predestination have to do with it? The term predestination refers primarily to the idea that God, by some means, predetermines the final destinies of his creatures—either eternal salvation or eternal damnation. However, the term can also be used in a broader sense for the idea that God sovereignly directs everything that takes place in his creation. (As chapter 3 of the Westminster Confession puts it, “God, from all eternity, did […] ordain whatsoever comes to pass.”)
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