A simple faith?

1 Corinthians 2:1-16

Recently I did a preaching series here was about how we as Methodists do our theology or to put it more simple language how we understand God. I talked about the Wesley Quadrilateral and how we draw on four things – Scripture, Reason, tradition, and experience to help us understand God, the world and our place in that world. Just what parts of the Quadrilateral we prioritize is up to us. As someone who is more evangelical in their theology, I tend to prioritize Scripture followed by our tradition and then reason and finally experience. Others may rearrange things to fit their understanding of God.

This is really helpful for those Christians who really want to think about how their faith relates to the world. It means very little to those who are happy to keep their faith simple. And both sides of the fence of valid. Sometimes those who have decided that a simple faith is enough, are those who have the strongest faith. In fact, the times when I wanted to jack in everything about the church and faith have been when I have studied theology. And I find myself thinking far too much about theology and philosophy.

Paul’s approach was deliberately not to be complicated. It would not have fit him anyway. He knew the emptiness of philosophy. Philosophy occupies us for a while but then the next philosophy shows how foolish it ultimately is. It’s a bit like the health surveys we get. Don’t eat processed meat it’s bad for you and the go-ahead it’s okay.

Philosophy, and theology to a lesser extent, claims to answer the great questions about life, but in the end, it ends in frustration and disillusionment. The only thing that is constant is the message of the cross, of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This is the message that has power to transform the world. That message of love and grace and power is revealed to us, not through clever philosophical arguments or deep theological reflections, but is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit.

And I think we as members of the Church have become very good at tuning out the Holy Spirit. There have been times when I’ve looked at some of the material coming out of the Church and I’ve asked myself, where is God in all of this? We have had an article in our Connexion magazine recently that was well written about our priorities as Christians, but not once did it talk about God and worship. It may be they assumed we’d know this was a priority but it’s a big assumption. And Paul highlights in a later verse of the chapter when he writes: ‘This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.’

In the letter to the Romans Paul writes: ‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ because it is the power of God unto Salvation.’ That is the purpose of the Gospel. To bring people to a knowledge of Jesus Christ and the redemption we are offered through Christ. What we do with it after that is up to those who hear it. And this where the Spirit comes in.

It is the Spirit that convicts and challenges and demonstrates the love of God, not our clever arguments and theories. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we don’t study Scripture or think about what we believe. Peter tells us to always be ready to give a reason for your faith. But Jesus promised us that when we stand up to speak to people about him it would be the Spirit that would give us the words to speak.

If we think about all the millions and millions of books that have been written about what we believe, they can be all summarized by this sentence: ‘God loves you.’ That’s it. And maybe this week as we go about our week and we are given the opportunity to share the Gospel maybe just tell someone that God loves them and trust the Spirit to do the rest.