1 Corinthians 1:18
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
We live in a culture that is increasingly obsessed with feeling sorry for itself and which yammers at us more and more about the need to be “powerful” and claim our rights. The eternal paradox of the Cross is that the most powerful thing God ever did was put up no struggle when the cops hauled him away, submit to an outrageously unjust kangaroo court, suffer a beating in silence, keep his mouth closed while a bunch of thugs jerked him around, listen to bought-and-paid-for testimony against him, watch his friends slink away, and finally be driven like a mule from prison to the most vindictive form of torture and death ever devised by a race famous for its creative flair for cruelty. To the self-help culture devoted to inner children and the endless clamoring for “therapy” and sullen resentful victimhood, this is truly “folly.” It is the exact opposite of the whole strategy for gaining worldly power through guilt and envy. It is, in a word, love. And it is the thing—the only thing—that saves us. For it is the very power of God.
