It costs God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious wills cost Him crucifixion.
~ CS Lewis
And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God… Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him”— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
~ paul, The Least of The Apostles, in 1 Corinthians 2
Oh beloved, it is true. There is a deep foolishness to this world. It is ruled by a prince of darkness who would cause the foolishness within us to fester too. He would have the foolishness grow until our hearts cried that G_d was not there.
But, thankfully, foolishness has its limits in this world. Wisdom points us to the incredibly plain arguments for G_d’s existence.
The Design of the world
Our heart’s desire
That things even move tell us that SomeOne started them moving
The fine-tuning of the universe
The reality of our moral compass
And so many other things, give enough light to those who truly love truth. If we are honestly seeking it, we will find it. But one argument crushes everything else into insignificance:
The Cross, and The One who endured it.
It is a foolishness of another kind. It is so incredibly beyond comprehension, that it is either a complete con and lie, or it is exactly what it proposes to be. It is not some simple little story of a good man dying a heroic death, after teaching us some nice lessons about how to be good (or at least, better) people.
No, The Cross is so much more, and this is why a clearly intelligent man like the apostle Paul spoke about it the way he did in the passage above. The cross is not simple, but it is profound.
G_d died to balance the payment of death required by the justice we all know exists in the universe.
G_d entered into our blindness and crippled state, and through His death both gave us sight, and the ability to walk a whole new path of Life.
G_d met death, and swallowed it whole. He then spit it out, and tore its keys of authority away from it forever.
G_d carried our sorrows and fears that we might be completely healed of them.
G_d showed what Love really is. He gave up His own singular attribute of Life, that all could be included in the same.
G_d brought us into His death with Him, that our Life would now be His victorious Life over death.
G_d killed us in His death, that our capacity for manufacturing more death would be destroyed.
It goes even further….
G_d’s Word spoke a word more powerful than all others involved in creation at The Cross: “Tetelestai!” Meaning, it is finished. Creation was completed upon His death, as the seed of the First new eternal and spiritual mankind was prepared for planting… to bloom on the third day.
