Faith or Folly Sunday, October 15, 2006
There are a lot of really, really smart people who are followers of Christ and defenders of the faith. Some of them started out as atheists, searching to prove that God didn’t exist. Others were skeptics, investigating the Bible and Christianity and becoming convinced it was all real along the way. Read C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity (he’s the guy that wrote the Narnian Chronicles). Read Josh McDowall’s More Than a Carpenter. Read Lee Strobel’s Case for Faith, Case for Christ and other “Case for” books.
Five years ago I, too, set out to study the Bible. I was already a Christian but was full of doubt. I figured it was my analytical mind; my tendency to see things as shades of gray rather than black and white. I have realized that, though there are different technologies today and that our knowledge has progressed with time, people are the same today as they have always been. The Bible contains a lot of facts – kings and battles and genealogies. But more than that, it contains human nature. And it contains God’s nature. And it contains man’s relationship to God. It tells one story, written by 40 different authors over the span of 1500 years. It reveals God’s perfect plan for our lives.
These verses spoke to me while my intellectual mind was trying to figure this stuff out. Is it real? Are we just fools to believe this stuff? If it’s real, why does it seem so surreal?
I know very well how foolish the message of the cross sounds to those who are on the road to destruction. But we who are being saved recognize this message as the very power of God. As the scriptures say, “I will destroy human wisdom and discard their most brilliant ideas.” So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made them all look foolish and has shown their wisdom to be useless nonsense. Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never find him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save all who believe. God’s way seems foolish to the Jews because they want a sign from heaven to prove it is true. And it is I foolish to the Greeks because they believe only what agrees with their own wisdom. So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended, and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense. But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the mighty power of God and the wonderful wisdom of God. This “foolish” plan of God is far wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is far stronger than the greatest of human strength.
1st Corinthians 1:18-25, New Living Translation
I decided that I couldn’t pick and choose what I thought was real in the Bible. That was getting me nowhere. I had to take a leap of faith. And, amazingly, I have been brought to a place where I just believe. Do I still have questions? Yes, lot’s of them. But I am more at peace now than I have ever been before in my life.
You could be, too.