About six crosses are within my sight as I write this in my living room. Yes, an ancient Roman torture and execution device adorns walls, bookcases, dressers, shelves in my home. It’s pretty ridiculously absurd.
I desire this blog to demonstrate the truth of Christianity--the credibility of its text, its history, its message. Yet to the argument that its absurd . . . I have to concede. It is absurd. That’s no secret admission. The Apostle Paul even back in the day admitted that “the message of the cross is foolishness” in the eyes of the world.
Now, of course, I don’t concede my worldview’s absurdity as some means of getting out intellectual accountability free card when it comes to discussing my beliefs. I’m quite comfortable with challenges. Further, I would suggest that the absurdity of Christianity provides additional evidence for its credibility.
Consider the overwhelming preposterousness of this world. Where to begin? With the recent inexplicably intentionally tragic bombing in Boston that forever changed lives and took lives, including that of an innocent little guy, who in a school poster urged people toward kindness weeks before? A horrid explosion in Texas that devastated lives? An earthquake in China? A crazed dictator in North Korea making nuclear threats, while thousands languish in prisons for not worshiping at his throne? Attacks in religions’ names in multiple spots around the globe? Illnesses? Accidents? Wars? Terrors? Nature’s upheavals? Many who wonder where God is. Others have decided he’s simply not there, period. All this absurdity and an overwhelming much more can deluge anyone’s belief system.
And that’s just it. I just don’t see another worldview that confirms reality for what it is, like Christianity. As Frederick Buechner states in Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, & Fairy Tale (1977), “The Gospel is bad news before it is good news.” Jesus Christ, God-in-flesh, is persecuted and crucified by religious and political authorities. The innocent one meets the raw injustice of the world. Is that absurd? Or does it simply confirm the already evident absurdity of this world, where innocence is destroyed by religion and politics? God himself becoming a victim of our absurdity is the best evidence that our world is clearly absurd! What other worldview so strongly confirms our absurdity?
The cross reminds me that I’m part of a ridiculously tragic, pathetic humanity, that “my nature is built into the wall of humanity” as C.H. Spurgeon expressed it, that we have all contributed to it “by what we have done and have left undone” (Lutheran liturgy perpetually lodged in my head). We’re all in this mess together. And God is, too. He has shared in our humanity and as a result can “empathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:5). As Buechner continues, “God himself does not give answers. He gives himself . . .” We all want answers, we all want reason, logic, sense for the absurd quality of our world. None of those suffice. Perhaps an absurd world merits an absurd God, the God who gives himself. So the cross affirms for me that the world is what it is, and God intimately knows what it is.
So what prompts God’s absurdly personal investment in our preposterous world? Love. The cliched verse still bears the truth: “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” It’s unfortunate how infrequently the verse following is posted: “For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:16-17). God is not interested in condemning. He’s interested in saving.
We never see that coming. It seems too good to be true. So we tone it down a little or a lot: to have eternal life you must do all this religious activity, hold these particular views, do these particular good works while avoiding these particularly bad works. None of that is true! And that’s the good news.
Eternal life is simply ever only a gift to be received. How do you receive it? Acknowledge you’re part of the absurd mess of this world, that you’re a contributor, a neglector. In other words, agree with God on the reality of the situation. Then receive His forgiveness. He has absorbed the cost of our sin. There’s not debt to be paid. “It is finished!” He said in concluding words on the cross.
It’s tough to believe eternal life is that easy. “The tragic is inevitable. The comic is unforeseeable,” Buechner notes. I think that’s why I'm amused as I notice my home redundantly emblazoned with crosses. It is almost comic. This instrument of death intersects two realities: the world and I are fallen and broken; the world and I are loved beyond our wildest comprehension. There’s something delightfully, joyfully comical about that.
“Maybe the truth of it is that it’s too good not to be true” (Buechner). Indeed, I don’t think humanity could have made this up. It flies too much in the face of our prideful constitution and our suspicion of and avoidance of joy. In fact, a couple thousand years of church history includes plentiful evidence of quieting and containing this absurdly good news.
Thank God for leaks! :)
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