What I’m Thinking: Wait a Minute Moments

Faith – including the Christian religion – contains a number of beliefs that make one say, “Now, wait a minute.” In the resurrection of Jesus, and in the Beatitudes’ reversal of the world, we find just two of them.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the, “Now, wait a minute,” moments of faith. Every religion has them, and Christianity has its share.

The Apostle Paul takes on one of them in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians (1 Corinthians 15:12-20). He’s speaking about the resurrection. It was bad enough that Jesus of Nazareth’s ministry ended in crucifixion. That’s a failure that is difficult to explain or account for. But then, claimed the Christians, Jesus rose again. And the number of people that we have known that have died and then been alive again, well, it’s a very, very small number indeed.

A challenge to believe, let alone base your faith upon.

Jesus himself did much the same thing, at least as Luke records it in the sixth chapter of his gospel (Luke 6:17-26). In the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus reversed the expectations of the world, claiming that it was the poor who were blessed by God, that it was those who weep that would find themselves comforted.

We call them the Beatitudes (particularly from Matthew’s version), but Jesus went on in Luke to talk about the reversal: that those who were filled would be those who would become hungry.

There are a lot of “Now, wait a minute” moments in the Christian faith – in any faith. The point of these “Now, wait a minute” moments is, in fact, to assert that the way things are is not what they can be, not what they should be.

In my opinion, “Now, wait a minute” moments ought to be there for those things where we accept casual, relentless, routine evil. Those are the moments where we should stop, and look, and say, “No. This must be, can be, should be, will be different.”

That will make death to life, that will make poverty to plenty, look like a casual miracle indeed.

That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear about what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below; I’d love to hear from you.