Monday 26 September 2016

The Inconvenience of Loving Wisdom

Those who are afraid to test their convictions will lose the moral high ground in calling non-Christians to test their own beliefs.

A woman came to my door one day carrying a massive Bible and toting literature adorned with pictures of happy people working in a bountiful garden. She was a Jehovah’s Witness asking if I’d be interested in a Bible study.

To be perfectly honest, I did not want to do a Bible study with a Jehovah’s Witness, but neither did I want to completely reject her. It’s gotta be tough going door to door asking people to start a Bible study as a Jehovah’s Witness. So I outlined my terms:

I’m a Christian who believes that Jesus was God. I believe that He was crucified for our sins and was raised to life. In fact, my life is pretty thoroughly built around those things since I work for a Christian organization. But if that is not true … if Jesus was not God, was not crucified, and did not rise for the dead, then I don’t want to believe these things. Even though it would cost me everything I’ve built my life upon, if what I believe is not true, then I don’t want to believe it. So If you can say the same thing, then we have a basis for a study.

The woman walked away, essentially telling me that she preferred what she currently believed, even if it were not true.

Intellectual honesty is a scary prospect for those of us who have built our lives around faith in Jesus’ resurrection. But if we want to engage people whose hunger for truth outstrips their satisfaction of what they currently believe, we must also have the integrity to join them. If what we believe about Jesus is wrong, then we must be willing to side with truth and walk away from falsehood.

Most Millennials, and perhaps almost anyone, can smell beliefs of convenience, people who are so entrenched in their theology that ...

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