"I hope you will put up with me in a little foolishness. Yes, please put up with me!"

 

Strange way for the Apostle Paul to preface what he is about to follow with, something that seems to have been lost on scholars for centuries, and may explain why it is mostly lost on us today.

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What Paul shares in the 3 verses that follow, likely due to Christians, especially male leadership,  not understanding that the foolishness Paul was asking  us to put up with, was anything but foolishness. 

 

The leaders who received Paul's letter, no doubt men, may not have been able to actually fathom the critical need for them, and likewise all of the church, to understand what Paul was saying. Especially for the dire consequences that would occur if they did not.

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At some point in church history, though, church leadership chose to follow a path of actual foolishness, because they simply decided that what Paul characterized as foolishness actually was. 

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Let the foolishness begin. Or not.