Importance: 30%
The Big Idea
The Human mind works in categories. We cannot conceptually understand anything that is not on some level a category of some sort.
What in the World do we do without a clean primary driver? Things can get overwhelming quicklyÂ
Human mind works in categories. The first designations we teach babies are categorical names (Mom, Dad).Â
A human category that gets too narrow and rigid that it stops reflecting reality becomes a stereotypeÂ
Categories give stability to the world and our roles around us. Endings are or beginning are hard because the categories that apply to me are changingÂ
Talk about how the categories we use shape the way we think about the world around us.Â
Identify and pic of a dog
Identify a pic of a cat
Look at the pic of Fossa and see if it fits in either actually related to a mongoose.
Like the category of Cat and Dog we can get a long way in understanding the animals around us but there are times where our categories fall apart.Â
Sometimes our categories blind us to the true reality of the world around us.
We see this especially in cultural or racial contexts where people are considered a particular way just because of how they look or where they come from.Â
Native-born Americans criticized Irish immigrants for their poverty and manners, their supposed laziness and lack of discipline, their public drinking style, their catholic religion, and their capacity for criminality and collective violence. - Picturing History
But our categories can go even deeper than any of the ones we have discussed so far. Paul talks about two foundational categories people often use to understand the world around us.
Signs and wisdom or
Experience and Thinking
People that want signs what an experienceÂ
Like Jesus setting things right in the temple, He gets asked for a sign. Basically they didnât want to believe him unless they saw something to prove he was powerful.
People that want wisdom want to think it all out.
Like Paul going to talk to the Greeks in Athens. They thought what he said was interesting but if they couldnât reason it out then it was just gibberish to them. Â
Paul reminds us that faith in Jesus does not fit in either category.Â
It doesnât fit with a sign of power. Jesus dying looks like the weakest thing He could have possibly done.
It doesnât fit with wisdom either. Logically it does not make sense for someone who does not deserve to die to sacrifice themselves for others who do. Â
The powerful and logical thing for Jesus to have done was to show who He was a God in power and might and to make those who deserve to die die. Which would have been all of us.Â
So even though many people may want signs and wonders from Jesus they donât always know what they are asking for.Â
Instead of either sign or wisdom. We have the folly of Christ crucifiedÂ
Signs only go so far
Then if anyone says to you, âLook, here is the Christ!â or âThere he is!â do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand. - Matthew 24:23-25
Wisdom only goes so far instead we have the strength of God
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. - Psalm 73:26
Our category is flipped. Proverbs trust in God is the beginning of knowledge
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction. - Proverbs 1:7
Or again
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. - Proverbs 3:5-6
We start from faith and trust in Jesus and then we get to see his powerful signs and understand the wisdom of Scripture.Â
Story of Thomas Aquinas writing lots of theology that is all super philosophical and reasoned out but on n his deathbed he is reported to have pointed to all of his books and said âAfter what I have experienced, all that is just straw.âÂ
God likes to use the small things in the world to do great things
God saved the world by killing His Son? We donât have to understand it or physically have seen it, but through faith we are saved.Â
Shift of category from experience or thinking to faith and trust in Jesus
Because only when we start in the right place will we head in the right direction
For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.