You don't have to be Einstein to believe!
0 comments | Posted by Steven Layson on 18 May 2008 in From Steve's Study ::
Albert Einstein was the epitome of intelligence. It’s as if this 20th century scientist has become the yardstick against whom all others are measured.
As a result, you may have become concerned at the report during the week of a letter from Einstein to the philosopher Eric Gutkind in 1954 which has recently come to light (described in Thursday’s Herald). In this letter Einstein states: “The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”
It’s a bit disconcerting, to say the least, to hear someone so intelligent who seems to have come to the conclusion that there is no God. After all, if Einstein can’t bring himself to believe, how can we?
You may draw some comfort from the fact that this is no new problem. Even in the first century, the “intelligencia” found the Christian message hard to accept. Paul found himself the subject of sharp rebukes and ridicule from the philosophical “heavies” of his day.
This pressure from the “learned” understandably made the members of the Corinthian church concerned. Perhaps they had gone against reason and put their hope in a faith that was illogical and plain wrong.
Paul doesn’t try to hide from this conflict. In fact he faces it head on in 1 Cor 1:18: “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
He recognised that there is an inherent conflict between the world’s wisdom and God’s. Indeed in verse 25 he concludes that “the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength”.
This seems to be a deliberate choice made by God, for in verse 27 he says, “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong… so that no one may boast before him.”
It is actually not important what the world (even the most intelligent people in the world) thinks about the logic or otherwise of the gospel. It is not our intelligence that will save us, but the grace of God shown through the death of his Son on the cross. Who would have thought it possible that God could satisfy both his justice and mercy in one act?
Therefore, as it is written: ‘Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.’
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