Follies
They were especially popular in 18th and 19th century England. Rich aristocrats erected them to display their wealth. The idea was: “If I can spend all this money on a pointless building, then I must be extravagantly wealthy and you should be impressed.”

Faringdon Folly is a perfect example. It is a 100-foot square tower crowned with a decorative octagonal battlement. Because of the height of the tower, the builder, Lord Berner, placed a warning sign at the bottom urging those who wished to commit suicide to do so at their own risk. (Lord Berner was an odd and eccentric man. He was elected to the House of Lords, but rarely attended – he found the Parliamentary process too boring for words. “I did go once,” he said, “but a bishop stole my umbrella, and I never went again.”)

Berner said about his Folly, “The great point of this tower is that it will be entirely useless.” It did serve one purpose however: it boosted Lord Berner’s vanity – the main goal of a Folly.

Most Follies were towers, obelisks, or memorials, but occasionally someone built a “sham ruin.” For example, the first Earl of Hardwicke built his Folly at Wimpole Hall to resemble a ruined castle. It is an impressive structure: the castle wall stretches over two hundred feet, and the Gothic tower is four-stories high. But it’s a sham, a fake, a fraud. It was never a castle that fell into ruin – it was built as a ruin!

Why did people build Follies? Why did they expend the energy and resources to build something with no practical value? The only answer I can imagine is vanity. The Folly is the quintessential example of Vanity – with a capital V.

Is there a spiritual parallel to architectural Follies? I think there is. When men and women build ministries based on their own personality (and for their own vanity), they are building Spiritual Follies.

The Apostle Paul frequently used the metaphor of architecture and building to explain spiritual principles. He urged the people in Corinth to:

“Let each man be careful how he builds. Anyone who builds may use gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. There is coming a time of testing to see what kind of work each builder has done. Everyone's work will be put through the fire to see whether or not it keeps its value. If the work survives the fire, that builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss.” (I Corinthians 3:10, 12-15)