“If I only saw a sign, I would believe.” This is a familiar chorus I have heard from nearly every non-believer I have encountered. Sadly, it is also a familiar refrain I have heard from many Christians. We look for the impossible to validate a faith that does not make any sense. We ask to see the impossible for ourselves, unwilling to take the words or testimony of others on this account. It needs to be personal. It needs to be tangible. Or else, how could I believe? And in this we destroy our journey-of-faith and wish for certainty in its place. But be honest, how could you ever be certain, of the impossible? Even if you witness a single incident of it, will one witness be enough to believe in all the others, and for the rest of your life? So if you must witness more than one incident, how many will be enough? All of them? Would it really take time travel to finally make us believe that what is recorded in scripture was real? If you are looking here, you are cheating yourself. There is another venue, and something a lot more personal for each of us.
To begin, certainty is not the goal. If I asked you to trust me, how would you go about it? You might evaluate our interactions, our history together. You might conclude that if my behavior was always in line with your expectations, that you could extend trust to me, and then see what happens. But therein lies the catch. No matter how I have behaved with you in the past, no matter how consistent our history may be, each time you extend trust to me, you take a risk. If past is prologue, then you may believe the risk to be low. But that “belief” is still a “belief” you hold about my trustworthiness, based on a myriad of factors, but none the less a “belief” that I will not let you down. This is how trust works.
You may trust your mom for example, because your mom has demonstrated that she loves you. Even if she screws up, she still loves you, though her mistake proves her human. You may even elect to extend trust to her again after a huge mistake, because there has been only one (or few you know about), and generally she does not make them. But even with mom (mistakes or no), every time you extend trust, you hold a “belief” that it is worth it, to trust her. Certainty is impossible. Because you cannot absolutely predict what anyone else (including God) may do, or why they do it. In the end, you have ideas about it, guesses about it, even educated guesses about it. But behavior is a tricky thing to absolutely predict, and so people surprise us sometimes (for better or for worse). To trust anyone, is to embrace “belief”, at the exclusion of absolute certainty.
But where God is concerned, it is more blame that goes around, than trust. That has directly to do with our picture of “who or what” God is. The media, our parents, our church, our friends, our professors, may have all played a role in forming an image in your mind about who God is. Suffice it to say, it boils down to one of 2 main images. Most folks think God is a version of Santa Clause. We go to Him to ask for stuff. We are happy when we get it. Mad when we don’t. But are generally quick to ruthlessly blame God for anything bad that happens, under the logic that Santa should have been watching and been able to prevent the bad stuff before it ever happened. After all, He has done it for others, why not me? Way too many Christians have this exact image of God, despite all the scriptures. Most Atheists just don’t believe in any kind of Santa Clause, or any god, but if there were a God, He would be to blame for everything.
In the Santa Clause picture of God, no trust is required. Neither is certainty. If you get the stuff you asked for, hallelujah. If not, it must not be in God’s time yet. So Santa has a slot machine sort of response to what you ask for, the odds are low, but you never know. How could faith ever grow in you, if this is the image of God you believe in, or have the most experience with? And believe me, Satan is WAY too happy to keep this image of God in your mind. Perhaps enough to grant you some of those wishes himself, in order for you to never shed this image of the God you pray to. But our real God, needs us to trust Him. That trust is a critical component of His ability to save us – from us. Denying yourself to let some random God you don’t really know remake who you are, is just not likely. Better to keep the Santa image, and just hope for the best.
So God’s problem is getting you to stop thinking of Him in terms of doling out rewards and punishments, and start thinking of Him for the Being He truly is. The other image of God (a saving God). God wants to save you, from you. He loves you (being the primary and singular motive of His). God sees sin as the punishment and the addictive disease. And He has only one way to rid you of it. But for that to work, you have to trust Him enough to let Him do it, in spite of how it looks. Trust, in spite of common sense. Trust, in spite of what everyone else tells you. Trust, that He is able to do the impossible in you, where history demonstrates, you are clearly unable to do it. So if that is His mission, and trust is what He needs from you. Offering you certainty does nothing to accomplish it. If you witness a 1,000 different acts of the impossible, all you will have learned is that it is possible for God to do the impossible. You might have already imagined that. But you will still have no reason to let Him reconstruct who you are. A thousand elements of certainty do not build trust, they build resentment. Back to the Santa Clause image – now that I have seen 1,000 impossible things – I intend to open complaints about why I did not benefit from any of them. A thousand acts of love and impossibility for others, does me not one bit of good. So now I am mad at Santa, because there was only coal in my stocking, while my neighbor got Barbie’s playhouse.
The first problem with asking for signs, is that it does not bring trust. The second, is that it will only make you mad they were not for you, or selfish if they were (who does not want more miracles in their own lives). And lastly they are usually requested as a condition of belief (instead of a result of it) doing nothing to foster trust, so there will never be enough of them, to really make a believer out of you. You will either find a way to let your skepticism reduce the impossible, to a scientifically explainable trick (or perhaps a random set of circumstances that worked out just right despite the incredible odds, like say the hypothesis of evolution) - or you will find you have an insatiable appetite for more signs, at the cost of what you profess is a belief. In any case, the mission God has to save you, from you, by remaking you fails because He grants your wishes for signs as a condition of belief. A change in thinking, on the other hand, will pull back the veil that has blinded your eyes to the impossible. What you witness after a change in how you perceive life, is going to be mind blowing. Sounds crazy right now, but that’s the point. It is crazy. But it is also real. And it will be a lot more personal to you than you could possibly imagine now.
Take as a case in point the story of two types of people in the gospel of Matthew the 27th chapter. Picking up in verse 38 it reads … “Then were there two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand, and another on the left.” You could argue these men might have been believers in the Jewish faith (though obviously not perfect observers of the Law). It is not known exactly what they believed at least from Matthew’s account. However we know from other versions of the good news, that one repented before he died, the other did not. Dieing in the company of known criminals tends to make one look like a criminal even if this is not true. This death will do nothing to uplift the reputation of Christ. But Jesus does not care about His reputation. In His trial all manner of lies were told about Him, and His response was perfect silence. No condemnation, no calling people out on their sins, only silence. But Jesus was eager to speak to anyone who seeks salvation. When the dying theif seeks Jesus, Jesus responds, no matter what kind of physical pain He was in. When that same theif was hurling insults at Him, Jesus remained silent.
Matthew continues in verse 39 saying … “And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads, [verse 40] And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.” Dying in the company of thieves, and up on a Roman cross, was decidedly NOT the sign the Jewish people were looking for where it comes to proving Jesus was God. These were believers. These were those who studied scriptures. And yet their ideas about what God was supposed to do – that is, to throw off Roman oppression and setup a Kingdom that would last forever – overpowered all the other texts and prophecies that predicted exactly this part of the mission of God to save us. “Believers” who desired something else of God, and refused to accept what God was actually doing to truly answer their prayers. When Santa does not behave how we want Him to, what good is Santa right? And so in this case, the very fact Jesus was actually fulfilling prophecy, was the very fact that disqualified Him as being the Messiah in their minds. Sound familiar?
How often do we ask God for a thing, and threaten Him that if He does not do it, we will believe no longer? Save me. Save my child. Save my spouse. From the disease and death that stalk them. If the results are not what we expect – we become angry and decide there cannot be a God – or else why did He not answer my prayer. But perhaps He did, just not in the way you expected. Perhaps from Gods point of view, saving you, your child, your spouse, for eternity is most important to all of you. Should earthly life end today, and infinite life begin tomorrow, reunited, with infinite love in all of your hearts – is this not the preferred outcome all of you would want, even if it comes at the price of shortening how long you live in this world today? Let’s say instead of focusing on the eternal, that God allowed you the answer to your prayers, and saved that life in the here and now. As time passes, you, or your child, or your spouse, begin to change (not for the better). Perhaps over time, one of you decides there is no God at all, and if there is, He is not worth following. Sin is more “fun”, instead of the disease it truly is. If that is how you meet your end in this world, and the eternal world is sacrificed in the process. Did God really do what was in your best interest all those years ago when He saved you only to meet this new end? And God knows what you will choose long before it happens. Santa might let this play out. But God would rather it didn’t. God would prefer to cherish you while your free will choice reciprocates that love, rather than let you exist long enough to discard it under the weight of sin’s embrace.
So because God does not do what we want or expect, does not make Him any less trustworthy. Keep in mind Jesus was doing what ALL of us need for salvation. Not trying to prove Himself to nay-sayers at the time and place of His death. Matthew continues in verse 41 saying … “Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, [verse 42] He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.” And there we have it, the Athiest’s Anthem coming right out of the mouths of the very top leadership of the church at that time. What image of God do you suppose they had, the one of a saving God who would die in our place, and fulfill prophecy – or the one of Santa who doles out punishment and reward emphasis on punishment. And had Jesus descended off that cross in front of their eyes, gliding right down in front of them fully healed, what do you suppose their response would have been? They would have hated Him all the more, because now Roman oppression still abounded, and Jesus would be impossible to kill after all. Think about it, they already had ALL the previous miracles Jesus did to consider in weighing whether or not He was the Messiah, and NONE of them changed their course of action or belief. They chose to dismiss every previous sign and still pursue killing Him.
And should Jesus have chosen to assuage His own ego, by proving to these priests He truly did have this power, what kind of God does that truly make Him? A God of ego? Who would gladly sacrifice our eternal considerations for those of the moment? How could we be saved then? It is often our expectations of what God should do, that could never be met anyway. Because we come from a place of ego and selfishness, where God comes from a totally opposite perspective. Jesus believes it is better to die to save all of us, than to do anything shortsighted, and gain nothing. Jesus never used any of His power to benefit Himself. Instead He used it unceasingly on us, the objects of His love, restoring us, removing the pain of sin and death from us. Our restoration tops the mind of a saving God. Not just getting rid our physical diseases, but getting rid of the way more deadly sinful disease of bad motives driving bad choices we continue to embrace. Curing us of our desire to sin, is way more important. Saving us from an eternal perspective way more important than saving us in the moment.
The ridicule continues as Matthew writes picking up in verse 43 saying … “He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God. [verse 44] The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth.” Matthew hears the mockery of the thieves, but misses the repentance of the one. Here we have an example of Jesus suffering the same fate as we do from time to time. Jesus trusted in His Father. And yet, He was dying, very painfully in this world. The Father had NO interest in seeing His Son be tortured and die. But the Father had a GREAT interest in seeing all of humanity be saved and reconciled unto Himself. The death of His Son was that price. In order that the need for Justice be satisfied. So Jesus dies, in extreme pain we inflicted. And the Father must sit there in silence and watch. The eternal salvation outweighing the salvation of the moment. This is how great our God desires to save us in the eternal realm, not just the here and now. It is a different way of thinking.
So the repentant thief represents one kind of person, the mocking priests another. For those mocking priests, no sign would ever be enough. And frankly the next section of texts are going to have some doozies. For the repentant thief however, for those of us who seek salvation from Jesus, what will happen in us is a change. You will note that repentant theif was NOT saved from the cross. He died in this world, but with certainty about his own place in the next one. And change began to occur even in the worst dying circumstances any of us can imagine. We too will become different than we are today. Not because we work for it. But because we begin to choose to trust Him, and allow Him to remake us however He sees fit. Then change is surely on its way in us. We read scripture differently. We begin to see love as the primary motivation, instead of some wild afterthought. We begin to reason differently. And over time, the blinders of bad choices, the blinders of doubt, fall away – and what is revealed is a regular diatribe of the impossible happening all the time. For example, the changing of hearts. Not just of others, but of my own. Learning how to love differently, and more deeply, than you had ever imagined. No seminar could ever get this done. But allowing Jesus full access sure does. Without Jesus, things tend to degenerate. But with Jesus, things tend to improve, especially in areas where it matters the most.
That sign, that impossibility, is very personal, very tangible, and you will live with its benefit every day of your life. Does it cure your cancer? No. It could. But it does not have to. It fixes something more important. The quality of your days expands exponentially, whether you are beset by physical pain and disease, or whether you are healed from them. Keep in mind, disease does not exist in heaven. So whether here or there, you are destined to see disease, pain and death no more. And what happens to the desire to see a sign now? You lose the selfishness part of that. Instead of asking for goodies for yourself, you have no thought of yourself. But you are swamped with thoughts of others. You want to BE a sign for someone else, help them, meet their need if you can, no matter how you are feeling at the time. And where you are powerless to meet their need, you do ask God for the impossible. Not as a condition of belief, but because you are SURE He can, and will do what is right for that person’s eternal interest. Where it comes to the removal of sin, 100% guarantee He wants that. Where it comes to all the other worldly stuff, His gifts must fall in line with our salvation. Knowing He longs to give them, and knowing He must hold them back, if they would add to our downfall.
Life, instead of existence, is a very tangible, and personal thing. No one else can define it for you. No one else can deny the impossible you are witness to in your heart and life. For you know what is true for you. You see what God does in your life. What you suffer from in the eyes of others matters not. Whether you are burdened with wealth, sickness, persecution – those do not represent the favor or curse of God. They represent the danger of evil in this world, and are used by Satan to try to get people to believe in a Santa Clause image of God doling out rewards and punishments. But for the one who truly believes, and chooses to truly trust, the curtain is pulled back – and the impossible is revealed every day no matter what our circumstances or positions may be. Certainty has never been the goal. Trust in spite of not knowing has always been it. That kind of trust prevents the next Satan in the world to come. And creates a new creature of you in the world we live in today.
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