Holy Fools: Part One

Notes on advantage-seeking, renunciation, and Christianity

[Writer’s note: I’m not Christian anymore—at least not the kind I used to be—but I was for a long time, so, this piece is mostly intended as insider baseball for those still a part of a Protestant Christian tradition and community]

August 2025 update: Part Two of this series can be found here.

“And what is worst of all is to advocate Christianity, not because it is true, but because it might be beneficial.” —T.S. Eliot

A recent NPR podcast episode had a fascinating subject: a badminton game, during the 2012 Summer Olympics, where both teams were competing – but competing to lose, not to win. It was a Chinese team versus a South Korean team, and the winner of this match would have to play a different, very strong Chinese team, whereas the loser would play a significantly easier Danish team. So the objective was clear: in order to ascend furthest in the tournament, the winning strategy was to lose this immediate game.

They hit the shuttlecock out of bounds, hit it below or into the net, faulted on purpose, tripped over their own shoelaces – all kinds of schticks, just to lose. Both teams eventually were disqualified from the Olympics in disgrace, with the commissioner saying, “It was sad that they were committing suicide in that tournament.”

The podcast hosts wrestled with a variety of different questions as they described the game. “It’s like they invented a new sport that’s the opposite of badminton – it’s like a photo-negative of badminton,” one commentator says.

One such question: is it unethical to not try in sports? One of the commentators, a former ethics columnist for the New York Times, had this to say: “One of the interesting things about sports is that we see adults playing these million-dollar games, but they’re the same games that a 6 or 7 year old would play. So to a 7-year-old you’d say, just play hard, play as hard as you can, it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, you don’t have to succeed, it’s the trying that matters – so when you see people at the highest level not trying, it sort of wrecks the entire idea of why you play sports at all.”

Another commentator argued that overarching strategy can warrant tactical “losses” in the short-run. He said, “Is the definition of ethics in sports to win without cheating? Yes. Does that mean to win every point? No, not necessarily. In baseball there’s the intentional walk. In football a team will take a safety instead of punting and letting the other team score a touchdown. So this is a calculation where a point here or there isn’t as important as the whole game.”

Then they discussed the possibility of what it could look like to lose, intentionally, in sports and also in life, like the badminton team tried to lose intentionally. One commentator said, “I don’t think it works – sports only work one way. It’d be like going to your wife and saying, okay, you love me – prove it, by hating me.”

A couple preliminary points are striking.

First, it’s apparently good advice to tell the 7-year-old that winning doesn’t matter and trying hard is what counts. But is it possible to try hard without caring about the outcome? In a sense, of course yes, it’s possible – but your every move is to influence a win. That’s the point of trying – you’re trying at winning. And by telling the child to try the hardest, you’re teaching them that whatever the game, they should be competitive – they ought to try their hardest to compete. Trying at a process geared towards winning is still, in my book, basically the same as trying to win. Why this matters will become apparent.

Second, it’s a curious question to ask where else in life might we want to take a loss to advance the bigger picture’s strategy. The trouble with life, unlike a tournament, is that it’s not usually clear what actions advance a given outcome. We might think we know how to achieve some goal, but do we really know? So we avoid losing whenever possible, even in the off-chance it may be potentially advantageous to us in some grander and more strategic sense (like in the badminton game).

Third, isn’t it interesting that the hosts didn’t have a clear way to think about what it mean to lose in sports? “Sports only goes one way,” they said – the “everyone trying to win” way. If everyone isn’t trying to win, it doesn’t work. If only one team is trying to win, while the other team is trying to lose (or is apathetic about winning), the competition is quite simply over – the aggressor team wins, and the apathetic team loses.

But let’s ask the same question about life – what would it look like if we tried to lose, instead of win?

Even asking the question likely evokes a strong aversive response. Even if we accept the metaphor that life’s a game (which, parts are, parts aren’t, in my opinion), what does it even mean to try to lose instead of win? And more pressingly, why should one lose instead of win? Winning comes with good things; losing comes with bad things. What’s the point of losing?

For those without any religious impulse, I don’t have much to offer here. But for those interested (or at least open to) spiritual wisdom on the subject, it’s worth considering what various spiritual voices have to say. As economist Tyler Cowen frequently says, “The important thinkers of the future will be religious thinkers” – so perhaps there’s wisdom for the non-religious as well.

So:

Consider this thought from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian, pastor, and martyr at the hands of the Nazi regime. From a sermon Bonhoeffer preached on December 17, 1933 in London on Luke 1:46-55:

“In eight days we will celebrate Christmas, for once really as the festival really as the festival of Jesus Christ in our world. Before that, there is something we must clear up, something very important in our lives. We need to make clear to ourselves how, from now on, in the light of the manger, we are going to think about what is high and what is low in human life. Not that any of us are powerful persons, even if we would perhaps like to be and don’t like to have that said to us. There are never more than a few very powerful people. But there are many people with small amounts of power, petty power, who put it into play wherever they can and whose one thought is: keep climbing higher! God, however, thinks differently, namely, keep climbing down lower, down among the lowly and the inconspicuous, in self-forgetfulness, in not seeking to be looked at or well regarded or as the highest. If we go this way, there we will meet God himself. Each of us lives among persons who are the so-called higher-ups and others who are the so-called lowly. Each of us knows someone who is lower in the order of things than we ourselves. Might this Christmas help us learn to see this point in a radically different way, to rethink it entirely, to know that if we want to find the way to God, we have to go, not up to the heights, but really down to the depths among the least of all, and that every life that only wants to stay up high will come to a fearful end?”

If you’re like me, and if you take it seriously, you reject this thought outright upon first hearing it. What does it mean to go “down to the depths among the least of all”? Why is it that “every life that only wants to stay up high will come to a fearful end”?

But now consider the Puritan prayer “The Valley of Vision”:

Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly,
Thou has brought me to the valley of vision,
where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights;
hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold
Thy glory.

Let me learn by paradox
that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
that to have nothing is to possess all,
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
that to give is to receive,
that the valley is the place of vision.

Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells,
deepest wells,
and the deeper the wells the brighter
Thy stars shine;

Let me find Thy light in my darkness,
Thy life in my death,
Thy joy in my sorrow,
Thy grace in my sin,
Thy riches in my poverty
Thy glory in my valley.

Okay, interesting.

Now consider the words of Jesus in Luke 6:

20 Looking at his disciples, he said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
22 Blessed are you when people hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you
and reject your name as evil,
because of the Son of Man.

23 “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

24 “But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
25 Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
26 Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

This paradox that Bonhoeffer, the Puritans, and Jesus himself speak of is, to put it plainly, pretty much everywhere throughout the Bible. (I won’t belabor it here—others have perfectly good taxonomies—but consider Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey instead of war horse, washing his disciples feet as a servant, socializing and teaching among sex workers and “sinners” as opposed to elite religious and political leaders, etc.).

Now consider the conversion of one follower of Jesus, St. Francis of Assisi, as told by G.K. Chesterton:

“It may be suspected that in that black cell or cave Francis passed the blackest hours of his life. By nature he was the sort of man who has that vanity which is the opposite of pride; that vanity which is very near to humility. He never despised his fellow creatures and therefore he never despised the opinion of his fellow creatures; including the admiration of his fellow creatures. All that part of his human nature had suffered the heaviest and most crushing blows. It is possible that after his humiliating return from his frustrated military campaign he was called a coward. It is certain that after his quarrel with his father about the bales of cloth he was called a thief. And even those who had sympathised most with him, the priest whose church he had restored, the bishop whose blessing he had received, had evidently treated him with an almost humorous amiability which left only too clear the ultimate conclusion of the matter. He had made a fool of himself. Any man who has been young, who has ridden horses or thought himself ready for a fight, who has fancied himself as a troubadour and accepted the conventions of comradeship, will appreciate the ponderous and crushing weight of that simple phrase. The conversion of St. Francis, like the conversion of St. Paul, involved his being in some sense flung suddenly from a horse; but in a sense it was an even worse fall; for it was a war-horse. Anyhow, there was not a rag of him left that was not ridiculous. Everybody knew that at the best he had made a fool of himself. It was a solid objective fact, like the stones in the road, that he had made a fool of himself. He saw himself as an object, very small and distinct like a fly walking on a clear window pane; and it was unmistakably a fool. And as he stared at the word “fool” written in luminous letters before him, the word itself began to shine and change.

We used to be told in the nursery that if a man were to bore a hole through the centre of the earth and climb continually down and down, there would come a moment at the centre when he would seem to be climbing up and up. I do not know whether this is true. The reason I do not know whether it is true is that I never happened to bore a hole through the centre of the earth, still less to crawl through it. If I do not know what this reversal or inversion feels like, it is because I have never been there. And this also is an allegory. It is certain that the writer, it is even possible that the reader, is an ordinary person who has never been there. We cannot follow St. Francis to that final spiritual overturn in which complete humiliation becomes complete holiness or happiness, because we have never been there. I for one do not profess to follow it any further than that first breaking down of the romantic barricades of boyish vanity, which I have suggested in the last paragraph. And even that paragraph, of course, is merely conjectural, an individual guess at what he may have felt; but he may have felt something quite different. But whatever else it was, it was so far analogous to the story of the man making a tunnel through the earth that it did mean a man going down and down until at some mysterious moment he begins to go up and up. We have never gone up like that because we have never gone down like that; we are obviously incapable of saying that it does not happen; and the more candidly and calmly we read human history, and especially the history of the wisest men, the more we shall come to the conclusion that it does happen. Of the intrinsic internal essence of the experience, I make no pretence of writing at all. But the external effect of it, for the purpose of this narrative, may be expressed by saying that when Francis came forth from his cave of vision, he was wearing the same word “fool” as a feather in his cap; as a crest or even a crown. He would go on being a fool; he would become more and more of a fool; he would be the court fool of the King of Paradise.”

So there’s something going on with St. Francis of Assisi’s conversion to Christianity that, according to Chesterton, involves the paradoxical inversion we looked at earlier. It has something to do with appearing foolish in the eyes of other people, something to do with embracing humiliation and shame over honor and prestige. It has something to do with this notion of “foolishness.”

This line of thinking is what’s led theologians to describe God’s “kingdom” (or “sphere of control”) as an “upside-down” kingdom. Status is inverted in God’s kingdom; descent is ascent, and ascent is descent. The same way the badminton team created a “photo-negative” of badminton, the kingdom of God, in some ways, is a photo-negative of our usual power plays and status games.

So there’s one answer to the question of why to “lose” instead of “win”: it seems that God’s kingdom is upside-down, in some sense. So it would make a least some epidermal sense that operating from that spirit, rather than our default spirit, would look a little different.

Furthermore, is it not true that following many of the teachings of Jesus—his actual teachings—would lead to losing as opposed to winning?

Consider the words of philosopher Soren Kierkegaard:

“The matter is quite simple. The bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”

A strong condemnation by a preeminent philosopher. But what exactly is he referring to? What in the New Testament would make one say “my whole life will be ruined”?

Forgiveness

“There can be no power without cruelty,” Petr Chelcicky wrote. “If power forgives, it prepares its own destruction, because none will fear it when they see that it uses love and not the force before which one trembles.”

This speaks to the dominance system often at play in nature, in politics, and in other zero-sum competitive environments, to the ability to control others by fear.

If Chelcicky is right, this rules out forgiveness from a winner’s playbook. But what to make of Jesus’ statement in Matthew 18: “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother who sins against me? Up to seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not just seven times, but seventy-seven times!’”

The imperative to forgive is directly opposed to the ability to preserve power: thus, wisely (by the world’s standards), we avoid forgiveness in competitive contexts, lest we fail to “make an example” of our counterparty or we “encourage similar behavior” from other competitors.

Let’s note that these objections aren’t wrong, per se – that’s the nature of the game – yet obedience to Jesus’ teaching here would disadvantage us (possibly even cause us to lose). In other words, they’d make us foolish – and thus they’re not to be followed.

Generosity

In a capitalistic society, it goes without saying that capital is of utmost value.

And as Mexican telecom billionaire Carlos Slim says, “Wealth is like an orchard. You have to share the fruit, not the orchard.”

Slim means that the outcome of the assets producing the wealth can be given away, but the assets themselves must remain intact and in your own possession.

But what of Jesus’ teaching in Luke 12: “‘Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’”

The early church seems to have gotten the message, per Acts 2:44-45:

“And all the believers were together and held all things in common. They sold their property and possessions and distributed the money to those according to their needs.”

Combine this teaching with Jesus conversation with the rich young ruler (who, note, is not only rich but also a ruler – someone in command in government, someone with the state’s backing):

“21 Jesus said to him, “If you want to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” But when the young man heard this statement, he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property.”

Notice how both the early church and the rich young ruler had property – they had assets, of the real estate asset class: yet the early church “sold the orchard” while the rich young ruler couldn’t bring himself to do so (for without financial assets what power do you really have, even in a pre-capitalistic economy like that of the Roman empire?). Radical generosity involves “selling the orchard,” but can a more foolish move be imagined in a capitalistic society?

For the most part the vast majority of the world since time immemorial is born without resources to begin with – if you’re not impoverished, then to what end is it to return to poverty, to before assets and capital were accumulated, before the safety and comfort provided by wealth, back to the vulnerability of lack? It’s sheer foolishness by usual standards.

Enemy-Love

Consider the case of one indigenous population faced with the mortal threat of Spanish colonialists from the book Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea by Mark Kurlansky:

“In 1542 de las Casas claimed to have seen the indigenous population of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola reduced from three million to two hundred survivors. The reason, he said, that this extermination was possible was that ‘of all the infinite universes of humanity, these people are the most guileless, the most devoid of wickedness and duplicity, the most obedient and faithful to their native masters and to the Spanish Christians whom they serve… Yet into this sheepfold, into the land of meek outcasts there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts…’”

In the face of “ravening wild beasts,” how does one interpret and express Jesus’ teaching about loving one’s enemies in Matthew 5?

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor’ and ‘Hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Do not even tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Recall the Olympics commissioner bemoaning the “suicide” of the competitors in the badminton tournament. Is there a more suicidal approach than loving one’s enemies in a competitive context? It’s utter foolishness to expect to love one’s enemies in the midst of a competition, whether mortal (as in this case) or merely a game with stakes.

Anti-prestige: good in secret

Philanthropy and generosity are both constructive ways of making the world a better place, while coincidentally also tending to anoint one’s own personal or family name with prestige. Establishing oneself as a pillar of the community, building up institutions through the profit you’ve gained over the years – these things feel like fairly unalloyed goods (unless, by modern ethics, the means of attaining the profit were suspicious or unethical, like the Sackler family).

But what of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6: “So when you give to the needy, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. Truly I tell you, they already have their full reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

What does Jesus have against prestige, anyway? Who cares if one achieves a higher status in the community based on their generosity – why does that make them a hypocrite? Couldn’t it simply be a win/win – a win for the recipient of the generosity, and a win for the giver?

But there’s something in “practicing one’s righteousness before men to be seen by them” (a line from Jesus earlier in the passage) that Jesus critiques and warns against, something about raising one’s status by virtue. Doing good in secret seems relatively foolish when put in this light. But the foolish path is the path Jesus prescribes.

Anti-prestige: descent, not ascent

It’s virtually impossible to become and stay a leader – whether informally through influence and audience, or formally through power and position – without some degree of respect and prestige being offered to you.

Steven Pinker offers the following definition of status:

“Status is the public knowledge that you possess assets that would allow you to help others if you wished to. The assets may include beauty, irreplaceable talent or expertise, the ear and trust of powerful people, and especially wealth. Status-worthy assets tend to be fungible. Wealth can bring connections and vice versa. Beauty can be parlayed into wealth (through gifts or marriage), can attract the attention of important people, or can draw more suitors than the beautiful one can handle. Asset-holders, then, are not just seen as holders of their assets. They exude an aura or charisma that makes people want to be in their graces. It’s always handy to have people want to be in your graces, so status itself is worth craving.”

So what does one make of Jesus’ condemnation of the scribes and Pharisees – religious leaders of the time, who had both influence/following and institutional power/position – in Matthew 23: “The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So practice and observe everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach… All their deeds are done for men to see. They broaden their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels. They love the places of honor at banquets, the chief seats in the synagogues, the greetings in the marketplaces, and the title of ‘Rabbi’ by which they are addressed. But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth your father, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

There’s that paradox again, that inversion of usual status games, this time directly tied to the Pharisees and scribes love of the sensation and experience of prestige. Jesus simultaneously dismantles their authority (“don’t call anyone Rabbi/father/instructor”) while critiquing the forms in which their love of status manifests itself (“they love the places of honor at banquets…”).

To be fair, anyone who’s held a place of honor knows it feels good, and how it feels special, and how it feels like you’re special. Recognizing that is basically table stakes to understand what’s going on here.

But there’s something about it – the elevation, the transcendence over others, the ascent – that Jesus critiques. He points in the opposite direction, and says to walk that way, not the way of ascent.

The continuum of martyrdom

“What the age needs is not a genius — it has had geniuses enough, but a martyr, who in order to teach men to obey would himself be obedient unto death,” says Kierkegaard. Martyrs are a unique case of “foolishness” – to believe something so strongly, so ardently, that you’re willing to give your life for it. Martyrs need not come only in the religious variety of course – contra traditional wisdom on the subject, fallen soldiers and fallen saints have much in common, not least of which is a commitment to a higher ideal for which they’re willing to sacrifice their lives for.

The continuum toward the ultimate martyrdom might be conceived of as consisting of ever-increasing miniature martyrdoms – or, if the word martyrdom feels inappropriate or too much, perhaps we could call them “meaningful sacrifices.” Nobody is immune from offering sacrifices to their god—often foisted upon them by necessity amidst a competitive system (whether economic, or within a given industry, or elsewhere).

I suspect that self-disadvantaging meaningful sacrifices in competitive contexts unlock possibilities for the game that would normally be impossible by self-interested actors acting rationally (or as-rationally-as-possible, given what we know about behavioral economics). But I’ll revisit that in another essay.

But to recap: in various ways, we see a trend toward Jesus teaching his followers to bear a cost, to disadvantage oneself competitively for the sake of fidelity to Christ’s commands, foolish as they may appear and reckless as the outcome may be. It’s something like the foolishness St. Francis of Assisi experienced—going down through the earth until you start going up, going down in humiliation until you begin going up in holiness. It’s the pattern of “kenosis,” of self-emptying on behalf of others.

This may strike you as odd. Our ambitious culture (almost a meta-culture in and of itself) has a totalizing ideology of success. I’m not talking about the “hustle porn” genre of Instagram and LinkedIn posts advocating waking up earlier, skipping coffee to save money for early retirement, and working yourself into the grave (though that’s a subspecies of this, to be sure).

What I mean is that most people, most of the time, have an impulse to filter whether something is a good idea or a bad idea through the qualifying step of, “Will this help me or not?” What’s in it for me? What’s the gain, the profit, the thing I’m getting by doing fill-in-the-blank. We’re ultimately selfish creatures, and recognizing and harnessing this has been the gift of capitalism – to redirect our desire to better our lives into efforts to help others (but not beyond the point of revenue dropping below costs, of course, except in the yesteryear of venture-subsidized tech).

Fin

Forgiveness, generosity, enemy-love, doing good in secret, consciously eschewing prestige—I suspect from each of these could be teased a positive sense in which they’re loving and a negative sense in which they’re anti-selfishness. (Maybe I’ll try in a different essay).

The intention here isn’t to say, “Go forth and be foolish.” Not necessarily. I’m not a masochist, and as it is I barely live up to my much-lower standards than the ones painted by Jesus across the Gospels. But I thought this was worth writing to deepen the sense in which these teachings are *strange*—like, profoundly strange, and profoundly stranger than most Christians (especially in America) are willing to usually entertain.

I’ve noticed the Rationalist community, Effective Altruism community, and other adjacent communities are much more comfortable thinking in terms of status games, power conversions, etc. So I’m writing essentially to mix some of that perspective with some of Jesus’ teachings—to show how compatible some of the thinking is, and to use that compatibility to point out, “Hey, look how odd this is. Look at how disadvantaging the Gospels teachings really point people toward.” And, to say quietly too, “And look how far most modern followers are from the origin on these subjects.”

I’m sure there’s plenty I’m missing here. But as a preliminary start, it’s interesting to consider that perhaps in a world seeking to hyper-optimize us (and teach us to hyper-optimize ourselves), that maybe there’s some room for a little foolishness, for a little self-disadvantaging—a type of foolishness that could make the world a better place (and make us better people, too).

Read the next essay in this series here.