As surely as the trees lose leaves in the fall, so my middle-aged body seems to be dropping “optional” organs each year. The surgeons in town are loving it, but I’m not quite so thrilled. As I recently weathered yet another surgery, it caused me to ponder how much faith I place in the medical men and women who render me unconscious and slice me open.
Yes, I believe God is sovereign and “my times are in His hand,” as the Bible says. Nevertheless, when anesthesiologists conk me out and doctors rearrange my internal organs, it matters very much to me that they know precisely what they are doing.
Imagine arriving at the hospital for surgery and communicating this to the folks at check-in: “Hey, I’m here for some surgery. I don’t really care what you people do to me, as long as I feel good about it all. And I don’t care who does the operation – the janitor, the maintenance guy, the lady in the gift shop, a real doctor … it doesn’t matter, as long as they are sincere.”
Sounds a bit outrageous, doesn’t it? Sane people are not apathetic about the qualifications of the doctors who dissect them. It’s not enough for a surgeon to be sincere – he or she must also be skilled and educated.
My, isn’t that narrow-minded of us?
And speaking of being narrow-minded, let me try another analogy. Let’s say I’m going on a business trip to Denver. I wander through the Atlanta airport to randomly board a flight – any flight — trusting that it will take me to Colorado.
“I choose to believe that any of these planes will take me to Denver, as long as in my heart, I sincerely want to get there,” I say as I board a plane bound for Boston. “I refuse to commit to a specific flight – that takes away my freedom. It’s just too narrow-minded.”
Let’s face it – we have to be narrow-minded every day. We desire and demand precision, or “narrowness,” from folks around us all the time – our doctors, dentists, scientists, car mechanics, airline pilots, bankers, even the clerks at the grocery store. We don’t want these people to do whatever they feel like doing; we want them to do what is accurate, right and truthful.
Have you seen the commercials which feature characters doing highly specialized jobs for which their only qualification is that they spent the previous night in a certain hotel? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be lying in the surgery holding area while some guy in scrubs sharpens his scalpel over me and announces that he’s not a real doctor, but he did stay in a Holiday Inn Express the night before. And I don’t want to be on a plane headed for Boston when I need to be in Denver.
I think lots of people are living the spiritual equivalent of these exact scenarios. They sincerely believe they’re on a plane to Denver, when in fact, it’s headed for Miami. They are entrusting their spiritual lives to “gods” — living, dead, or fictional — who are long on promises and short on deity.
Many folks balk at the claim of Jesus that He is “THE way, THE truth and THE life” and the ONLY way to eternal life (see John 14:6). That’s just too narrow-minded, they say.
Know this: Your faith is only as sure as the One in whom it is placed.
Lots of religious teachers have roamed the earth and attracted devoted followers, but only One rose from the dead, a fact that was verified by hundreds of eyewitnesses (see 1 Corinthians 15:2-8). He’s the One with all the credentials, the One who fulfilled all the prophecies made about Him hundreds of years before His arrival, the One who defeated death, the One who invites and survives the most intense scrutiny, and the One I’ve personally found true over and over and over again.
That One is Jesus Christ. He said His way is a narrow one (Matthew 7:13), and that’s just fine with me.