Skepticism or Scandal?

Now they had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And he cautioned them, saying, “Watch out; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. And Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? (Mark 8:15-18 ESV)

The default attitude of science is skepticism; a necessary posture, at least in the testing phase of the scientific method. However, with Western culture's deification of science, skepticism has become more than an essential ingredient to scientific inquiry; it has been elevated to a virtue. In the above text, we get a slightly different notion of God's attitude towards skepticism--at least with regard to our relationship to Him.

At this point in the narrative of Mark's gospel the disciples had witnessed numerous examples of Jesus' divine power, and yet they still failed to understand who he really was; indeed prior to this they had seen Jesus calm a vicious storm on the sea that had threatened to kill them all just by speaking to the wind and water and ...said to one another, "Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?" (Mark 4:41 ESV) A little later, after Jesus had fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish, they had seen Jesus walking on water, while they struggled in their boat against a fierce head wind. When Jesus got into the boat with them and the wind instantly died down, ...they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened. (Mark 6:51,2 ESV)

The disciple's inability to perceive Jesus' true identity, which from our vantage point millennia later as readers of the gospel, makes them seem almost comically dense, was not a result of honest skepticism--but then again neither is modern man's rejection of God. It was--and is--rather a result of man's fallen nature which hardens his heart and makes him resistant to submission to God. The same impulse behind Eve's seduction to sin, to "be like God" and determine her own rules of right and wrong rather than follow God's rules, still impels us today in what we so often misinterpret as skepticism, but what is in reality our intractable defiance of God. It is the same impulse that Milton wrote of as the words of Satan in Paradise Lost, "...better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven." And it is the same impulse which governs the scandal of the cross that Francis Schaeffer described in his book, The God Who Is There. "The true scandal is that however faithfully and clearly one preaches the Gospel, at a certain point, the world, because it is in rebellion, will turn from it. Men turn away not because what is said makes no sense, but because they do not want to bow before the God who is there. This is the 'scandal of the cross'."

This hard-heartedness is what Jesus was speaking of as the "leaven of the Pharisees"; it was what blinded the disciples to Jesus' identity for so long, and why, when Jesus finally confronted them with the question, and Peter answered, ...you are the Christ, the son of the living God,, Jesus said, ...flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. (Matt.16:17 ESV) It is why Jesus said, ...no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. (John 6:44 ESV) This is why any evangelical or missionary endeavor, or even the sharing of one's personal testimony, must by necessity be a collaborative effort with the Holy Spirit. For this reason prayer is indispensable (and the failure to pray is perhaps one reason why the Church is not growing in this country as it has in the past). But if we do collaborate with the Holy Spirit in prayer and in declaring the gospel, we have God's promise: And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezekiel 36:26-28 ESV)