1 Corinthians 1:18-21 “For 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. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’ Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.”

One reason for sticking with the preaching of the cross is that those who find it foolish are perishing. It is not as though they have an alternate plan that works just as well. Christ crucified leads to life. Everything else leads to death. It’s that simple.

So why do people find the cross foolishness and prefer their own way? Have you ever tried a fad diet or weight loss product? Certainly you are aware of them. In the 1920’s Lucky Strikes cigarettes advertised themselves as a way to stay slim. In 1946 Marion White wrote a book touting ice cream as the key to losing weight. I can’t tell you how much I wish she were right. In the 1950’s Domino Sugar company ran a campaign claiming that consuming their sugar was better way to stay trim and slim than eating fresh fruit. Why do people go for this stuff? Because they don’t hurt. It’s more fun, even if it doesn’t work. Even if it leads to death.

In one way, people might suspect that the preaching of the cross is the easy way to life. Jesus dies for you. But it seems too easy, and it means admitting such horrible things about ourselves. Letting Jesus take our sins to the cross means admitting that we have sin, and that we are too weak and incompetent to take care of the problem ourselves. It means accepting that people are bad, not good, including me. People would do almost anything to avoid trading their dignity and their positive self-image for the cross of Jesus Christ and all that it says about us. So they write it off as foolishness, even if it kills them.

Then they try to dress up their own foolishness as smart. Much of our world has the idea that the only things we can know for certain are the things we can observe. One of the Indiana Jones movies has the hero teaching in a college classroom. In his lecture he tells his students. “Archeology is the search for fact. If it’s truth you are looking for, Dr. Tyree’s philosophy class is right down the hall.” You see, facts are real. Truth is an abstract concept, something people debate, something you can’t be sure about.

But maybe you see a problem. What are you going to do about God? How are you going to know about him? He doesn’t sit still for people in a laboratory, and you can’t dig up his bones. You won’t see sins under a microscope, and the scientific method can’t explain what happens when they are forgiven. The Hubble Telescope can’t see all the way to heaven, and no space probe will ever find it in the universe. This is why “the world through its wisdom did not know him (God).” And a world that is locked in to human observation and science as the only way of knowing is bound to find the idea of God foolish, much less the preaching of Christ crucified.

There are ways of knowing things that don’t have anything to do with what goes on in the classes or labs at some university. There are things we know that don’t come from text books or experiments. Life isn’t something anyone has ever seen, not life itself. We see living things, we know we are alive, but the thing that makes us live, that force or power that separates us from the rocks or the elements on the periodic table–that defies observation.

Love is one of the most interesting things in all the world, and people study it a lot. Some scientists can tell you about hormones and chemicals and nerve connections in certain parts of the brain. But do you believe for even a moment that love is just a mechanical reaction, an illusion produced by chemical and electrical processes going on inside of you? You know that there is something more going on inside your personhood.

And God hanging on a cross isn’t the conclusion of someone’s PhD dissertation or years of government funded studies. The world finds it foolish in every way. But we preach it anyway. We know it’s true. It is God’s saving wisdom.