I’ve always been a bit of a problem solver.  That is to say I take enjoyment in using logic and rationality to figure things out and proceed in a better fashion.  And, most of the time, it works.  Problems are solved, solutions offered.  Fait accomplis.

            EXCEPT in certain fields.  Now look, coming into the pastorate, I just had no idea just how much medical stuff I’d be exposed to in the course of ministry.  From being with congregants in hospital rooms with doctors who’re talking to them, to talking with congregants about what their doctors have told them, I’ve had quite the medical education. 

            But there is one inviolate and immutable rule when it comes to medicine (at least in my humble opinion) is that very little of it makes sense.  Not according to the standard rules of logic it doesn’t.  You see, the human body just doesn’t adhere to our logic as much as we’d like.  Take for example cardioversion.  This is a procedure in which a heart beating abnormally is given a shock of electric current with the intent of making it go back into a sinus rhythm.  So, I’ve learned, don’t speculate when it comes to medical matters.  Logic is wonderful stuff but it just doesn’t necessarily apply in the field of medicine.

            Logic, when you think about it, is merely a system of rules that helps us assess the truthfulness of propositions.  But it isn’t “law.”  Not really.  It bends, it has to.  Otherwise, it breaks.  Take for example the sentence, “This sentence is untruthful.”  Now apply our logical laws to that and you’ll see that logic, well, it has limits.  You see, if the sentence is true, then what it is stating might not be trusted.  Or it might.  It depends on how you come at the problem.  Regardless, it is important for us to realize that, as much as we want them to be immutable, logic isn’t.

            Another place we clearly perceive the failure of logic is in the heart, mind and actions of our God.  If we’re honest, God doesn’t always make sense, at least, not to our limited minds.  We strain sometimes to grasp the God given to us in the Scriptures.  Let’s face it, when we read of some of the things that God did, we’re bound to be shocked, mortified perhaps.  We might think, darn it God, that just isn’t reasonable (Which is just another way of stating that it isn’t logical). 

            But the scripture here is pretty clear.  If it ever comes to a battle between Jesus and logic, the smart money is on the lamb, not the logic. 

            Here I read for us John 3:16-17 – “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

            It doesn’t make sense.  It isn’t logical, at least not by human standards it isn’t.  Sons (and daughters) for that matter are precious.   Irreplaceable.  The idea of giving your son up to save someone else just doesn’t make sense.  It becomes even less so when you figure the broader story it fits into.  In that story, you and I, well, we’re broken.  Sin has crept up into this world and into us in such a fashion that we can’t hardly realize all of sin’s deleterious effects.  What John 3:16-17 tells us is that God sent His Son in order to save sinners.  That, in a way, God gave up His only begotten Son, in order to spare a set of ungrateful louts, such as myself. 

            On paper, that doesn’t’ make much sense. Trading the good for the bad, right?  That isn’t what we’re supposed to do.  And yet that’s exactly what Jesus does.  John 3:16-17 gives it to us as a proposition.  In the 18th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus puts this same idea forward in another fashion.  Telling us a brief parable, Jesus shares with us that, “What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?  And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray.  So, it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.”