“The Counter-Intuitive Ways of God” by Pastor Nate

My kids have been in swim lessons and I have loved watching them trying to wrap their minds around this strange skill.  Do you remember when you first learned to swim?  It is such a scary process at first.  You know that you can’t breathe underwater so you logically conclude you must find any way possible to keep your head above water.   During your first attempts, you try thrashing around wildly, moving every limb and appendage with as much force as you can muster.  It’s as if you’re fighting the water, struggling against it in hopes of keeping afloat.  Your ferocious efforts cause you to swallow water, which causes you to freak out even more and struggle even harder, and eventually, your swim instructor has to come over and save you from yourself.   But eventually, you learn that this violent, assaulting approach does not work, in fact, it seems to make you sink faster.  Your swim instructor begins to convince you to relax a little bit, and sooner or later, you are amazed to discover that if just do nothing, you can float quite peacefully on the water.

It’s all completely counter-intuitive.  It doesn’t make logical sense that you should just let go and be still and give yourself over to the water, but that’s actually crucial for mastering the skill.

It’s funny because our life of faith also has some counter-intuitive elements.

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians he invites the people to not think with a Greek mindset or with a Jewish mindset but instead to embrace a new type of wisdom that God has revealed through Jesus Christ:

For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, ²³ but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. – 1 Corinthians 1:22-24

Paul’s words remind us that the Wisdom of God is different than our worldly wisdom.  Although it might seem counter-intuitive to worship a crucified Savior, our faith tells us that God is deeply present in suffering; that God uses weakness for God’s purposes; that crucifixion is actually the beginning of Resurrection Life.

Certainly, there is still room in our faith for a reason, intellect, and knowledge but there are also times when we, as people of faith, are invited to let go of our need for logical explanations and instead embrace the counter-intuitive ways of God.  We are invited to have faith that God really can use our despair to bring hope and take something like death and author new life.