I've seen a bad habit in my kids that I'm endeavoring to correct: The idea that if you say no to something they want, you must not have understood the request. For the youngest, that often takes the form of the reply "But I want...." But it's the idea that no one could possibly have a different opinion or view from them; instead, any disagreement is necessarily a case of misunderstanding.
In this passage from 1 Corinthians, Paul sets up something that Christians often use in much the same way:
18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
20 Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
Paul sets up the idea that of course Christianity doesn't make sense to non-believers – God set it up that way. Of course it's logically inconsistent – you're not God. If you were God, it would all make sense. The only way through is to accept that you're not God and therefore embrace the logical inconsistencies. If it doesn't make sense to you, it's because you haven't heard the Gospel and embraced it!
Some complex realities are most easily understood as two contradictory concepts held in tension. Consider, for example, the dual nature of light, as both a wave and a particle. Waves and particles are normally two different concepts, but quantum mechanics tells us that at very small levels, the distinction breaks down; photons are both waves and particles, and to a certain extent so are electrons. Christians would like to say that faith works like this – you have to hold Biblical beliefs "in tension" with scientific ones and somehow they'll both turn out to be true.
In some cases, the ideas can be in tension, precisely because at least one of them is untestable. If you take on faith that while events are random on the whole, but individual random events are decided by a sky-fairy... well, that's not testable. What's testable is randomness on the whole.
Many Christians use this passage as an excuse to wave away conflicts, especially conflicts between the tenets of a Bronze Age religion and modern science. Six-day creation and the fossil record are not concepts to "hold in tension": if one is true, the other is necessarily false. Neither is the idea of an omnipotent judge who has power in the real world and the lack of divine justice we see in day-to-day life.
Nor, I would argue, is the idea that God is loving and the idea that God is jealous and wrathful. (Though neither is testable, I think.) Good Friday is the epitome of this contradiction: God so loved the world that he sent his son to suffer and die, not because his son deserved it, but because we did. On the surface, a beautiful story of determined love that will do what it takes to save the beloved. But a layer deeper, a story of a deity so affixed to arbitrary and impossible norms that it requires a blood sacrifice. In another view, an adaptation from that Bronze Age deity who requires blood sacrifice to a more "modern" deity who requires prayers as offering.
There are moments I long to curl back up under the warm blanket of a divinity so determined to love me that he would go to any lengths to enable a relationship. But logic just doesn't lead me there. Far from seeing that as proof that God is ineffable and beyond my comprehension, I see that as an indication that there is probably no such deity – no matter how much I want there to be. And being outside the bubble, you start to see the disturbing undertones of the story.
Supernaturalism, including Christianity, rests on underpinnings of intellectual laziness. We may be genetically primed to believe in supernatural explanations, but science and reason give us tools to bypass these biases. History is an ongoing story of rising above our instincts to learn more and better. Here, too, we should not succumb to the lazy explanation that "God's foolishness is higher than our wisdom."
Hail Satan! Amen.