Cool Skepticism - Today's Insight - April 19, 2021

NINE-YEAR-OLD DANNY BURST OUT OF Sunday school, eyes darting in every direction trying to locate his mom or dad. After a quick search, he grabbed his daddy by the leg and yelled, “Man, that story of Moses and all those people crossing the Red Sea was great!” His father looked down, smiled, and asked the boy to tell him about it.

“Well, the Israelites got out of Egypt, but Pharaoh and his army chased them. So the Jews ran as fast as they could until they got to the Red Sea. The Egyptian Army was gettin’ closer. So Moses got on his walkie-talkie and told the Israeli Air Force to bomb the Egyptians. While that was happening, the Israeli Navy built a pontoon bridge so the people could cross over. They made it!”

By now his dad was shocked. “Is that the way they taught you the story?”

“Not exactly,” Danny admitted, “but if I told it to you the way they told it, you’d never believe it!”

With childlike innocence, the little guy put his finger on the pulse of our sophisticated adult skepticism. It’s becoming increasingly popular to operate in the world of facts . . . and, of course, leave no space for the miraculous.

It’s not a new mentality. Peter mentioned it in his letter:

In the last days there will come scoffers who will . . . laugh at the truth. This will be their line of argument: “So Jesus promised to come back, did he? Then where is he? He’ll never come! Why, as far back as anyone can remember, everything has remained exactly as it was since the first day of creation.”

2 PETER 3:3-4, TLB

That’s a terrific statement describing Peter’s analysis of unbelievers. No wonder people show such skepticism these days when faced with biblical truth! For most skeptics, if something cannot be scientifically explained, it must be relegated to a child’s world of fables.

What about you? Are you a closet skeptic? Only believing and accepting from God what you can explain or measure or see? Or are you a believer living in wondrous awe of His limitless power and infinite grace? That’s a question worth pondering today.

Devotional content taken from Good Morning, Lord . . . Can We Talk? by Charles R. Swindoll. Copyright © 2018. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a division of Tyndale House Ministries. All rights reserved. The full devotional can be purchased at tyndale.com.

Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Listen to today's broadcast of Insight for Living with Chuck Swindoll at OnePlace.com.
Visit the Bible-teaching ministry of Chuck Swindoll at www.insight.org.