Monday, February 20, 2017
536 - Value Proposition
Spirituality
Column No. 536
February 21, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
February 21, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Value Proposition
By
Bob Walters
It
would be a hoot to host a time-traveling visitor from the past – in my own mind
the perfect guest would be Ben Franklin – and show him, say, an airplane.
Transported to the technological
world of today, Mr. Franklin – a well-traveled and forward-thinking diplomat,
philosopher, raconteur, writer and inventor – would see and grasp things of today
impossible to merely explain to him if one of us 21st century types popped
back into the 1700s. A declaration like,
“Mr. Franklin, man can fly across the
Atlantic Ocean in an afternoon” would be more believable watching jets at
Kennedy Airport in 2017 than if merely stated in Mr. Franklin’s 18th
century parlor.
It’s not so much that seeing is
believing – in a Christian sense that’s actually backwards, believing is seeing – but the previously
unimaginable technological elements of today’s world like transportation, agriculture,
communications, medicine, construction, warfare and even grocery stores (to
name just a few) are impossible to describe to someone whose ideas on
these topics were confined to horse-drawn plows, sailing vessels, quill pens, one-sheet
printing presses and one-shot muskets.
“Here
Mr. Franklin, take a look at this smart phone.”
This experiential disconnect is akin
to the other-worldness of explaining a life in Christ to a non-believer. The Christian story makes almost no sense to
one lacking the faith, understanding, context and experience to understand it; to
one without ears to hear, eyes to see,
etc. Whether one’s world is muskets or smart phones, imagining something beyond
our experience is very, very difficult.
And the true side of faith – the Kingdom side, the fruitful side, the
Christ side – is a glorious world mysteriously beyond the stubborn, small
secular daily experience clung to by much of modern humanity.
Never before in history has the
technology for telling and spreading the Good News of the Gospel been so great. And maybe never since the time of Jesus has
so much of an otherwise intelligent culture turned its back on the Kingdom of
God. Today’s technological and philosophical gospel of non-God science,
evolution, ethics and social interaction flees from the truth of Jesus. It cannot see nor is it willing to consider
truth beyond material evidence. Plenty
of evidence exists for Jesus, but absent faith there is no way personally to appreciate
Christ’s enormity, eternity, cosmic value and final truth.
This musing about Ben Franklin stirred
last week after hearing a thoughtful presentation titled “Why I Am a Christian”
by Ms. Alycia Woods of Ravi Zacharias Ministries. Among her many good points were that things
like hope, beauty and love, all created by God, can be felt nominally by
non-believers but not in the same enormous, boundless way they are experienced when
faith in Christ enters the equation.
Christianity is the great explainer of
the human condition. Ms. Woods noted
that Jesus endows each person with great eternal value in God’s eyes; a value
secular culture can neither assign nor comprehend, and a value utterly absent
in atheism.
Like acquainting Ben Franklin with jet
travel, the value of Christ is in the ride.
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