Believing

As we head into Easter week, there's one thing that the gospel writer John wants to make abundantly clear: seeing is not believing.

In John 11, the gospel writer John records a tremendous story: Jesus raises a friend who's been dead for many days back to life. Astounding! I would like to think that if I had been there with my peeps, even if we were skeptical to that point about Jesus, we would have come to our senses and realized that this guy was the real deal--or at least worth taking somewhat seriously.

But here's what John says about the aftermath of the raising up of Lazarus:

45 Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him. 46 But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.

Just to clarify: these folks went to the religious leaders (the Pharisees) not to pass along good news. They went to tell them that Jesus was gaining more and more followers. That things were getting more and more rowdy. They were tattling, not testifying. In John's telling of the Jesus story, this is the last straw. The religious leaders set out to kill him from the point of Jesus raising a dead person back to life. Pause and consider that for a moment--how deeply would you have to be set against a person to want to put them to death after they've raised someone back to life from the dead?

Hillary haters, perhaps you could chime in here and give some insight. Ya'll can get pretty intense.

So here's the deal as we head into Easter week: seeing is not believing. In fact, it is possible for us to become so deeply entrenched in cynicism and skepticism that we dig a hole and harden our hearts and miss the wonder of simple miracles in front of us...even to the point of missing the point of a dead guy being raised from the dead. To decide ahead of time to not believe is to not believe, no matter what the evidence.

St. Augustine talked about a posture of "faith seeking understanding." I think that this is critical to enter into any true mystery of faith. If we lead with skepticism, doubt, or even reason, we will find a way to explain away just about anything we find. If we can move forward into Easter by faith, even just the slightest bit, I believe that God rewards that, blesses that.

This is not to say that we chuck our minds or stop thinking. It's just that we've been taught that skepticism and doubt is a better way to approach the world than faith and belief is. I agree with Tim Keller who invites us to "be skeptical of our skepticism." What if skepticism is simply a poor or the wrong set of glasses to view reality through? What if nothing truly wonderful can be apprehended that way?

P.S:For those of you not in the Triangle area who aren't inundated with news about the Eve Carson shooting from last week, there's good news: they've made two arrests. Pray for students as they return this week from spring break and continue to process this stuff, would you?