Tag Archives: Cross

The Foolishness of Preaching

The preaching of the cross is foolishness. Only fools do it. Only fools listen to it.

If you want self-help, ask Oprah for a book recommendation. If you want to know how to make more money, I’m sure Dave Ramsey’s got some thoughts for you. If you want to know how to vote, Rush Limbaugh can guide your hand.

But if you want to know God more, see Christ more clearly, discern the presence and work of the Spirit, then there’s only one place to go…

…but I warn you, it’s foolishness.

The preaching of the gospel concerns the foolish notion that an obscure 33 year old Jewish peasant, who claimed to be God, died on a Roman cross 2,000 years ago under the accusation that he was inciting revolt against the government. It affirms the crazy notion that this peasant didn’t stay in the grave, but somehow rose from the dead, defeating death, the devil, and all the forces of chaos in the world.

Seriously, you have to be a fool to believe that stuff. That’s CRAZY talk! People get put in insane asylums for believing that kind of thing.

But that “foolery” is exactly what truly Christian preaching concerns itself with. It announces that the wisdom of the world is foolishness before the God of creation. It says the wisdom of this Jewish peasant, who never wrote a single word, trumps the wisdom of Oprah, the advice of Dave Ramsey, and the guidance of Rush. It says a guy accused of inciting a revolt against the government was actually the God of the universe.

If you want pragmatic religion you can find it in any Christian bookstore. But if you want the religion of a Jewish peasant who rose from the dead, listen to the foolish preaching of the cross. Through its lens the world looks upside down and maybe even a bit impractical, but then again, maybe that’s why Jesus said it was hard to believe and harder to live.

It’s foolish to love your enemies.

It’s foolish to give up this world to gain the next one.

It’s foolish to bless those who curse you.

It’s foolish to pray for those who persecute you.

It’s foolish not to enact revenge.

It’s foolish to be concerned with the betterment of others more than your own self-help.

It’s foolish to worship a God you can’t see.

It’s foolish to believe the meek will inherit the earth.

It’s foolish to give away everything you have and follow a crucified Jewish peasant.

It’s foolish to listen to preaching that honors these things as true wisdom.

And yet that’s the foolishness we’ve been called to hear, believe, and live in light of. Because, ultimately, that foolishness is the wisdom of the of the Creator and Redeemer of the universe.

Carry Your Cross the Right Way, Cheater!

Tonight my wife and I were driving down Main St. in Nicholasville and we saw one of those cross carrying evangelists. As we drove by, my wife astutely observed, as only a journalist can, that on the bottom of his cross, the part that was dragging on the ground, there was a wheel bolted to make it easier for him to drag the cross behind him – or rather, roll behind him.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be too cynical or anything. But if your goal is to emulate Jesus by carrying a cross across America, don’t you think you should do it like Jesus did?

I mean, let’s be serious – everyone knows Jesus didn’t mean to literally take up a cross and walk down I-70. But if you’re going to do it, if you’re going to take Him up on His challenge – go all the way, man, go all the way!

Here’s the thing – the Romans didn’t offer a wheel to help Jesus lug that freaking thing up Golgatha.

Bolting a wheel to your garage-made cross is CHEATING!

Jesus didn’t get a wheel, cheater!

A Father’s Patient Love

I’m sure I’ve expressed here before that I often struggle with the concept of God’s love for me. I’m a hyper-self-reflective person and it’s hard sometimes to reflect so much on my own failures (compared with my relatively few successes) and believe that God could really love someone like me, especially with a Fatherly kind of love.

Now, in the following discussion, I don’t mean to redefine sin or minimize its significance as a missing of the mark of God’s glory (that is, God himself!). But I’ve been thinking recently about God’s love in the midst of our failures and I think I’ve come up with something that touches on the reality of it, however imprecisely.

My daughter cannot do anything for me. She doesn’t help with the chores around the house, she doesn’t talk to me about her day, she doesn’t even let me know if I’m doing the right thing (though certainly she lets me know when I’m doing the wrong thing!).  At this point in her life, she is simply incapable of doing any of these things.

But my love for her is not based on her performance or her lack thereof. My heart beats for her even though she can’t talk, even though she can’t affirm or deny her own love for me, and even though she cannot share her own heart with me.

I understand that due to her stage in life, there are places she should be emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, and physically. And there are places that I simply cannot expect her to be. It would be wrong for me to hold my daughter accountable for her inability to hold conversations. It would stupid of me to assume there’s something wrong with her b/c she doesn’t think logically.

In the same way, and this isn’t an excuse for not being as spiritually mature as I should be, I believe there are levels of expectation that God has of us – and his expectations are reasonable. Yes, God demands holiness and God desires love from us. But God is also fully aware of those circumstances in our lives which blind us to truth, inhibit our growth, and simply lie so deeply within us that we cannot even see them. And while he wants those things to be redeemed, he has no grand illusion that these things change overnight.

We learn the language of faith as a baby learns the language of her parents. We learn to think correctly about God as a baby learns to think more clearly about the world she finds herself in. We learn to see areas where we can be more obedient and faithful to God as a baby learns increasingly what her parents expectations are and how to lovingly and graciously obey and submit to them.

These things do not come overnight. And I’ve come to think that God doesn’t expect them to come that way. I believe it’s our performance driven culture that asks adult things of little children (think of THAT parent at any little league game you’ve been to). But God is so averse to our performance driven culture. He doesn’t want to leave us as we are, but he is also patient with us as we discover, ever so gradually, who we are in him.

Think on these things, friends.