March Madness

Americans go a little bit crazy this time of year. If you're a basketball fan, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of NCAA basketball. Even if you're not a hoops fan, it's nearly impossible to avoid the game this month. It's on TV every weekend, and it's the topic of conversation in workplaces and schools where Americans, weary from the long winter months, watch 64 teams vie for a national championship.

Even though common sense says the team with the best record is going to win, lots of us root for the underdog. Yes, it's unlikely that the little-known team from Nobody University in Somewhere, U.S.A. will beat the perennial powerhouse. But if the game is close in the second half, a lot of us throw reason out the window and cheer for the Nobodies to make the Final Four. It's a little bit crazy, but it's fun. And once in awhile, the underdog wins.

Sometimes skeptics accuse Christians of throwing reason out the window. They say we believe in things that are too hard to accept. "Worship a God you can't see?" "Madness," they say. "God is good? Then why is life filled with so much injustice?" "God can raise the dead? Where's the proof?" "Follow a moral code that's thousands of years old? C'mon, this is the twenty-first century!" Are Christians a little bit crazy for believing such things? Some would say so.

Actually, though, I think the opposite is true. If you don't believe in God and the Bible, you are forced to accept some pretty mind-bending ideas of your own. Bible commentator Alexander MacLaren wrote, "The difficulties of faith are 'gnats' beside the 'camels' which unbelief has to swallow."

For example, if you reject God as creator, you're left believing that life, with all its complexity, came from an impersonal and mindless source. Since we never observe life arising from nonliving things, does it make sense to believe that all life arose by chance from some purposeless act of spontaneous generation? Are Christians crazy for believing that life was designed by the purposeful hand of the living God?

If you say the Bible isn't true, where will you find reasonable clues about the meaning of your own life, and your own origin and destiny? What will you tell your children when they ask you why certain things are right and wrong? How will you explain the Bible's fulfilled prophecies, its life-changing power, and the marvelous teachings of Jesus? Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, with all authority in Heaven and on earth. Hundreds of first-century eyewitnesses could testify that he arose from the dead. Isn't it reasonable to give him our highest honor and allegiance?

When the apostle Paul preached about Christ to King Agrippa, a governor named Festus was in the audience listening. At one point Festus interrupted and blurted out, "You are out of your mind, Paul! . . . Your great learning is driving you insane." But Paul replied, "I am not insane, most excellent Festus. . . . What I am saying is true and reasonable" (Acts 26:24, 25). Do Christians believe some mind-stretching ideas that go beyond the scope of human reason? Yes! Are we crazy for believing them? No! What we believe is true and reasonable. The real madness is trusting in chance for creation, trusting in self for salvation, trusting in society alone to tell us what is right and wrong, and trusting in an empty wish for eternal life.

Christians don't claim to have all the answers, but we trust in the one who does. It's not crazy to follow Jesus. It's a march toward maturity.