Wednesday, June 28, 2006

nonsense

It truly defies reason and certainly common sense that God would give up His only begotten Son to save the world. It makes no sense that Jesus would die because of his passion for people who hated him—hated him without cause.

Honestly, it doesn’t even make sense that Jesus ought to come back from the dead because he died unjustly so God reversed the decision. That’s the reason I was given, but it really is unreasonable. Many have suffered or died unjustly and that was the end of it. But to come back from the dead? It doesn’t necessarily follow. I mean, if you had told us that this was the only reasonable solution, and you had told us before Jesus rose from the dead, we would have laughed you out of the pulpit. But afterwards, now that myth has become fact, it’s at least palatable. But to say that it’s reasonable? No, it’s not reasonable at all. But it sure feels good. It stirs my heart deeply that someone would die not for his own offenses but for those of others, and then a good God, seeing his sacrifice, would intervene, raise him from the dead, and exalt him above everything. It doesn’t make any sense, it defies experience, natural laws, and reason, but it moves me. And I feel its truth even if I can’t work it out, like a deaf man feels the music though he can’t hear it.

How could I possibly be saved by nonsense and then live by commonsense? Oswald Chambers seems to think that it is impossible to do that:

Suppose God tells you to do something that is an enormous test of your common sense, totally going against it. What will you do? Will you hold back? ...we tend to say, "Yes, but— suppose I do obey God in this matter, what about . . . ?" Or we say, "Yes, I will obey God if what He asks of me doesn’t go against my common sense, but don’t ask me to take a step in the dark." . . . In the spiritual realm, Jesus Christ demands that you risk everything you hold on to or believe through common sense . . . By the test of common sense, Jesus Christ’s statements may seem mad, but when you test them by the trial of faith, your findings will fill your spirit with the awesome fact that they are the very words of God. Trust completely in God, and when He brings you to a new opportunity of adventure, offering it to you, see that you take it. We act like pagans in a crisis—only one out of an entire crowd is daring enough to invest his faith in the character of God.

You know, if the same Spirit that impassioned Jesus to give up His life for me and the same Spirit that raised Him from the dead is giving Life to me then how can that Life possibly make sense? Isn’t it going to have the same mysterious, nonsensical, mythical, romantic quality as someone dying for those who hate him and coming back from the dead because His Invisible Father’s love for Him? Or are we so numb to the Story that it now makes sense?

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