Next week at my ministry’s worship service Joe Jones will be speaking on 1 Corinthians 2 and the topic of wisdom. In preparation for his talk, Joe is going to be posting 2 blogs as a lead-up to Tuesday night. Joe is one of my best friends and a powerful communicator of the Word, so even though many of you won’t be able to attend his talk next week, I guarantee you will be challenged and entertained by his writing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One of the funniest things I remember about my childhood is that I firmly believed my father would accidentally spank me to death. I would freak out so much over spankings people thought my parents were abusive –though my parents never were.
The main reason I thought I would die is that my father is huge. He’s about 6’7,” weighs 300-something pounds. He’s so big that every time he would visit my elementary school, kids would talk for days about how I was being raised by a giant. This was awesome, because in the fiercely competitive social battle war-zone that was Dowell Elementary School, the only thing cooler than having a giant dad was having a Nintendo Power Glove.
The confusion concerning my dad spanking me to death was not my only childhood misconception. I thought all dinosaurs were big alligators, I thought babies were made when people hugged in bed, and thought the tooth fairy was just an old lady that collected teeth while riding in a magical flying ferry boat.
There is a name for the specific type of misconceptions that are popular among children – Kid Logic. In particular, Kid Logic is defined as the misconceptions children have about the world that is caused by an over-confidence in the small amount of knowledge they do have.
As I get older, I am convinced that Kid Logic is also a popular phenomenon in the church. More often than I would like, when I’m traveling and speaking at conferences I’ll hear a Christian who read a few books on evangelism or led a couple of Bible studies ranting about how some other set of Christians is wrong or how Christians on their campus should REALLY be doing ________ . And I quietly think to myself – that’s Christian Kid Logic. Christian Kid Logic is when Christians with a little bit of knowledge about God become so over over-confident in our beliefs that we start making claims about what the entire Christian world SHOULD be doing.
The dangers of Christians applying Kid logic is not a new issue. Case in point: 1 Corinthians chapter 2.
At the beginning of 1 Corinthians 2, the author is telling a group of Christians to stop arguing over which Christian preachers and scholars know the most about God. This type of Christian debate also happens a lot in the modern church. Just insert modern arguments over which worship music style is best, church size, and/or what type of preaching is best, and you find yourself with a modern version of this very old fight.
The author of 1 Corinthians does something unexpected. He argues that truth is not simply revealed through logic or the possession of knowledge, but also through experience. Why would he argue this? Because there will always be intelligent men and women who can effectively use complex logic and articulate language to give the appearance of truth in almost any argument. However, truth that is supported by experience over the passage of time is very difficult to fake.
Hitler used logic to argue Aryans were a super race; scientists once claimed slavery was necessary for the development of the savage natives ; and according to record sales statistics, the Jonas Brothers should be considered a legitimate music group – experience and time have revealed all three beliefs to be categorically false.
In short, the beginning of 1 Corinthians chapter 2 is saying that the problem of Christians using Kid Logic is not that Christians have not read enough books to make better arguments. Rather, Christians need to live such that our life experience reveals to both ourselves, and the rest of the world, that Christ is true.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To read more of Joe’s writing, check out his blog at www.iagreewithjoe.com
