The thought for this post came from listening to a message by Albert Mohler… which was titled: “On the Other Side of Complexity:  Christian Conviction in the Late Modern Age.”  It is a follow up to yesterday’s post about Unconsciously Competent Christianity.

Consider what is written in Scripture… “Professing to be wise they became fools” (Ro 1:22),  “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 2:14).  Also an interchange found in Acts 26:23-25, (Paul is speaking) “The Christ must suffer and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles. 24 And as he was saying these things in his defense, Festus said with a loud voice, “Paul, you are out of your mind; your great learning is driving you out of your mind.”

There are two kinds of wisdom, knowledge, and truth: Godly and worldly.  Godly wisdom, knowledge, and truth are foolishness to unbelievers.  The world’s wisdom, knowledge, and truth is foolishness to God and Christians.  For example, “enlightened” people of the world stumble and refuse to believe things like…

God created the world by speaking it into existence in six 24 hour days,

Jonah was in the belly of a large fish for three days and nights,

Jesus was born of a virgin,

Jesus walked on water,

Jesus fed 5,000 with a few fish and loaves of bread,

That Jesus was resurrected from the dead,

That Jesus is the only way to be saved… and many other things found in Scripture.

Biblical truth and theology are actually so complex that their “elitist intelligence” is insulted and they deem those things foolishness… and those who believe as simplistic if not fools themselves.  The simple truth of Scripture… if seriously considered as true… would throw their “elite intellectual” world into such chaos and complexity they refuse to engage even the possibility that they might be wrong in what they believe.  For them, the simple is too complex to be believed.  To them the simple is so immature and unenlightened that they aren’t willing to work through the complexities so as to arrive at what is actually Godly Simplicity.

1 Corinthians 1:18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” 20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

Jesus said that in order to enter heaven we must become as a little child.  I suggest that means there is a simplicity of believing and faith on the other side of what is perceived to be insurmountable intellectual complexity.  Thus… “After Complexity There Is Simplicity.”