The Ability To Believe
“Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)
All of us have been fooled from time to time. After all, it’s the highlight of April Fool’s Day for someone to put one over on us, or vice-versa. “Gullible” is a word that some people get labeled with, a chuckle attached to it whenever it is said. And, we can’t contain our laughter when we hear the latest “Blonde Joke.”
Honestly though, we live in a mixed-up age of gullibility and cynicism. There are numerous throngs of people who will believe in the most ludicrous conspiracy theories, but doubt that the world is round. Millions of people buy lottery tickets believing that they will be the mega-million…or billion dollar winner, but are suspicious that any random act of kindness has some catch attached to it.
And what about churches? Thousands of churches in our country have changed their names because of the stereotypes that people have placed on certain denominations. First Baptist Churches have become community churches or simply “First Church”, because a large part of our population envisions a Baptist as being someone who is legalistic in their view of how they relate to God (“Don’t smoke, drink, or chew, or go with girls that do!”).
And yet, in the past (and the present) there are also people who are firm believers in the prosperity gospel that many of the tele-evangelists promoted (“Send me a $100 seed of faith and see how God will multiply it in your life.”) It was kinda the Christian version of a Vegas roulette wheel.
Gullible and cynical.
In our extremely-polarized culture, advocates of one view or the other seek to believe that their side is always right and the other side is always…insane! A closer analysis shows that one side is more focused on convincing people how ludicrous the ideas of the other side are than they are communicating their own ideas. A popular opinion may be more dependent of creatively conveying how unpopular the opposing idea is. Instead of firm in one’s convictions, there’s a displeasure about the opposite view.
I’m sure that followers of Jesus were seen by many as being gullible, led astray by a new false prophet that has come out of Nazareth. Others who felt threatened by Him were cynical to a T. They said things like, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” and “He dines with tax collectors and prostitutes!” There was a real smear campaign about Jesus. He threatened the establishment and the understanding of how God related to His people.
In a time when good news was needed, the gospel arrived. People had been oppressed, stressed, taxed, pushed down, marginalized and minimized, and told what they were to believe and how to believe it. And then Jesus brought good news. The hesitation to believe was understandable. If one of the poor believed in Him and then Jesus was discovered to be a fraud, what would the person have to fall back upon? If he followed Jesus to a dead end, what hope could he still have for his life?
Those in power thought getting rid of Jesus would bring things back to normal, back to how they wanted it to be, but things would never go back to the way they were, even after they crucified Him. For once the gullible that believed in the gospel, found out that their faith was valid and their messiah was the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
In a culture that believes in the idiotic and scoffs at the obvious, the story of Jesus and His purpose hasn’t changed. It is still the good news of the grace of God. If I’m a fool, I’d prefer being a fool for Christ.
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