Monday, March 18, 2019
644 - Uniquely Inconceivable
Spirituality Column #644
March 19, 2019
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Uniquely
Inconceivable
By Bob Walters
“I don’t think it means
what you think it means.” – Inigo Montoya to Vizzini regarding the word “inconceivable”
in the movie, The Princess Bride.
Competing
Christian and global cultural narratives are pretty much at lock-horned,
seemingly irreconcilable odds these days, but I can’t believe it is the most
radical community, philosophical, and political dissertative discord on record.
Think how
outrageous the words of Jesus must have sounded in the Jewish culture of 2,000
years ago. He brought a message
different from anything the world had heard to that point, wanted to hear then,
or has heard since. Jesus was presenting
the plain truth of God. To the Jews,
Romans, Greeks, Asians, and anyone else who happened to be listening, what
Jesus was saying was inconceivable.
Some things
aren’t that much different between now and then. The truth of Christ hasn’t changed, of
course, though obviously there is much more widespread “knowledge” of God and
belief in Jesus and understanding of scripture now than there was then. But we have great swaths of dangerously
influential leadership in the realms of pious, civic discourse today – media,
politics, academics, cultural trendsetters and commentators – who are every bit
as filled with self-righteousness and secular sanctimony as were the
religiously show-boating and judgmental Pharisees of ancient Jerusalem. The
Jewish leaders, unbeknownst to them, had grown far from God even as Jesus,
divine God incarnate – in truth, righteousness, and love – stood before them.
Our
cultural leaders today – also far from God – have fashioned new and inflexible
religions of abortion as a health and privacy choice, gender as fluid,
patriotism as racism, family values as homophobic, morality as mere opinion,
truth defined by and existing only in their opinion, human identity validated
by victimhood, social science as actual science, climate science as a control
weapon, history as a vapid display of perceived immorality, and Christian reality
as a danger and threat to their social fictions.
In Vizzini’s
lexicon: “Inconceivable!” Yet here we
are.
Jesus
brought into the world the one and only unique revelation of God: Christ His
son, the Holy Spirit, sacrificial love, forgiveness, grace, adoption into the
Kingdom of Heaven, hope, peace, and imparted onto humankind the divine, free
restlessness of curiosity, wisdom, and
discovery. No more was man a slave with
his fate unknown and Hell around every corner.
The Trinity of heaven was the template of divine intent: the shared
nature, love, delegation, and teamwork from which humanity was conceived. Jesus died and returned to show us that our
fate was eternal life, not temporal despair.
Society works overtime to generate
differences where none should exist, just as the Pharisees created dissension
against God’s truth to protect their self-interests. Those who cannot rule in virtue must plant
doubt, sow fear, and foment anger. In
all history only Jesus revealed Heaven’s
freedom and God’s sacrificial love to the world.
Inconceivable as it may seem, it is
truly unique and absolutely true.
Walters
(rlwcom@aol.com) can’t imagine how the modern news media
would have covered Jesus … likely denied or missed the story as badly as did
the Pharisees. Oh wait … that’s mostly what they do now. Praise God for all who can see the truth
anyway.
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