The Library Grin

A television station recently aired a movie of which I was privileged to see two minutes. (It looked especially boring since there weren't any shootings or car chases.) However, something significant did occur in the short time I was
watching.

A man is sitting in a library, reading a book. As he's sitting there, another man walks over and engages him in conversation. For some reason, the subject of the various world religions enters the talk flow and the sitting man says, "I've always been interested in the eastern religions."

This brings a benign and kind grin to the face of the other man, who says, with an Indian accent, knowingly and with pride, "Did you know that Buddhism is the only religion in the world that does not claim to be based on a supernatural revelation?"

The man who said those words looked so kind, so humble, so unassuming. He seemed like a person you'd like to sit down and talk to. The man in the chair really perks up when he hears this, and as they both sit together, the
conversation continues. Click. At that moment the urge to surf overcame my forefinger on the remote.

But what he said and the way he said it is worth thinking about. Leave it to the blinded human race (II Cor. 4:4) to turn things completely upside down. Think through what he said. As a point of pride, he said that his religion
didn't claim any supernatural intervention.

If we pursue that thought, then we have to come to the conclusion that what he is saying is that his beliefs are man-made. This is a bragging point? Thinking a bit deeper, we see that he's basing his whole belief system and world view on the guesses and speculations of finite, limited, of the earth, earthy minds. Even the best of minds (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle et al.) are in that finite category.

Whether he saw his problem or not, his difficulty is that finite, limited, and of the earth, earthy minds can't know everything (even a whole group of them), and since they can't know everything, their conclusions are speculative and flawed, to say the least. Can we brag on "guesses?" Yes. That's what he was doing.

With his kind grin in the library, his assertion seemed humble, and he seemed nice. But his words were, in reality, an example of man's hubris, an example of the arrogance of the clinched human fist in God's face, signaling that he needs no intervention, no revelation, signaling that he and others can figure it all out. How tragic of man to brag on something that's not braggable. However, that's our flawed history east of Eden.

If we were to call Christianity a "religion,*" we would have to say that it's a revealed one from start to finish and, we would say, it has to be that way. The Bible starts its supernatural revelation with its first four words, "In the beginning God . . ." Those beginning four words pull the curtain back to reveal how we got here and later on, why we got here (Gen. 1:28-29).

The Bible's claim is that it is indeed a supernatural intervention; it claims this every time we read a "Thus saith the Lord . . ." We note that this is its dogmatic claim in II Peter 1:21. We see in prophet after Old Testament prophet where the writers are claiming they're speaking God's words, not theirs.

The Bible pulls the curtain back further when it reveals God's grace in many ways, the most important of which is salvific. There's no way in the wide world that man's brain or a collection of man's brains could come up with the fact that God's free grace saves us. Take any brilliant or not so smart finite, limited, of the earth, earthy man and shut him up in a room. Ask this man to write an essay on the subject of "How Do You Get to Heaven?" and without exception, when he puts pen to paper, he'll put a paragraph (or more) on works in the essay. This is the only unaided speculation he can come up with, but he is sure of it, as he fails to realize just how finite he is. He can do no better.

Christmas is INTERVENTION written largely. It's Emmanuel, God with us. It's God's entering the human race and bringing His pajamas for a thirty-three year overnight. The Christian "religion*" is INTERVENTION all over the place. Christianity is the opposite of hubris because it's grace-based. Had not God intervened, we would have been the future denizens of Doom City.

It's INTERVENTION from start to finish. "God enters through a virgin's womb and exits through an empty tomb." But the INTERVENTION isn't over. On a future day, the climactic INTERVENTION will occur which Revelation 19:11 says will wipe the arrogant smirks and the library grins from the faces of the human race (II Peter 3:4). That's the day the crucified One shocks a world which thought Him long since dead and buried.

INTERVENTION? We glory in it!

Dr. Mike Halsey, Pastor
County Line Church

*We shouldn't classify Christianity as one of the world's religions. It's separate and distinct because Christianity is based on a grace relationship through faith alone in Christ alone (John 1:12-13).