if I doubt, I am brilliant

In my post from yesterday, I said my guess was everyone in the audience was thinking one way or another of the implications of the latest physics and some of the biblical records. Walking through walls might well be within the realm of physics? Jesus walked through walls, or so it appears (John 20:19). There may be extra spatial dimensions in the universe that we are not aware of? Who could have access to those extra-dimensions if he also happened to have created them?

I must admit I have another hunch. I would guess a large percentage of the audience made the Jesus connection to what was being taught and almost as fast as the speed of light, dismissed this thought. There would be nothing worse on a university campus, Christian or not, than to see any link to Jesus and scientific evidence. The student sitting next to me certainly felt that way.

We had been chatting a bit during the lecture and when it was finished, I said, “It’s kind of interesting he says it is not scientifically impossible to be able to walk through a wall. It seems to me I have heard that story before. The Bible claims Jesus did that.”

His reply, “O, I don’t take that stuff literally.”

I wasn’t asking him if he was a “raving fundamentalist.” I was simply making an observation. So, why the instant dismissal of any Jesus connection? I think a person would instantly dismiss any connection because if I give in to thinking that way about anything, I would have to begin to think seriously about the rest of the stuff in the book!

This is the curse of modern thinking and also why so little of God’s Kingdom life is accessed by people. Dallas Willard addresses this in Hearing God.

Very few people ever develop competence in their prayer life. Why?They are prepared to explain away as coincidences the answers that come to the prayers that they do make. They consider it intelligent to doubt.

As long as I doubt, I am an intellectual.

As long as I am skeptical, I could be brilliant.