What does it take for you to believe something? Are you easily convinced, or are you more of a skeptic?
I think I’m a bit of both. There is one in my household, who shall remain nameless, who is definitely on the skeptic side of the spectrum. He will not believe a thing until he knows the soundness of logic behind it.
This has been a theme in our homeschool journey and made itself especially obvious when he was about 9 years old, and we were learning about lines of latitude and longitude.
Lines of latitude, which stay parallel up and down the whole earth, he grasped pretty quickly. Lines of longitude, on the other hand, took a minute. A long minute. Like, months and months of minutes before he finally understood (and therefore accepted) why they cross at the top and bottom. Until that lightbulb moment, he insisted on calling them all “Lines of latitude and lines that don’t make sense!” Such has been the journey of learning with my delightful, young skeptic.
I am thankful, though, that when it comes to matters of faith, he embraces the Word of God completely, even when there are hard things that don’t seem to make sense. And so, my dear boy (and all three of them, actually!) have happily placed their faith in Jesus.
Unfortunately, many people of Jesus’ day were skeptics in more serious ways, especially the Pharisees. Even though they knew the law and the prophets backwards and forwards, they just could not see that it was Jesus who fulfilled them (Acts 13:27). And so, many of the parables Jesus told were directed at the Pharisees, including the ones we read today in Luke 16.
The one about the rich man and Lazarus struck me particularly. Especially the part at the end when the rich man asked for someone from the dead to go and tell his family what happens after death to those who do not believe.
The response? If they didn’t believe Moses and the prophets, they will not believe a person back from the dead either.
In other words, the Word of God is more powerful than physical proof. It is faith in God and all He has said that brings belief, not spectacular miracles or marvelous signs. Although the Word of God does contain both!
I wonder how often we today have overlooked the simple beauty of God’s Word in favor of seeking another sign to show us the way forward.
We already have our sign. It came long ago, in a manger low, with stars above and angels high, proclaiming joyfully that the King had come to fulfill the promise of all that was said of Him from the foundation of the world. A marvelous miracle, indeed!
“Joy to the World! The Lord is come; Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room, And heav’n and nature sing,
And heav’n and nature sing,
And heav’n, and heav’n and nature sing.”*
“And this will be a sign for you: you will find the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” Luke 2:12