In the age of Jesus, it’s not like you could dismiss a voice talking from heaven as someone playing tricks on you with a wireless lapel mic and a hidden loudspeaker. That just wasn’t a possibility. So these people had to dismiss the voice from heaven as thunder, even though they heard the voice, and what it said. They dismissed the voice as thunder because they did not want to believe, or be confronted with the truth.
I’ve seen it happen where someone comes to church, dressed all in black, with colored, spiked hair, wearing chains and combat boots, listening to the latest and greatest heavy metal – and then several months later you find that that person is now wearing skirts, blouses, cardigan sweaters and beautiful high heeled shoes. This didn’t happen overtly, and didn’t happen overnight, but somehow the idea that “good Christians don’t do that” permeated someone’s life to such an extent that they gave up the exciting and diverse person that they were to become just like everyone else merely to fit in and be accepted.
They’ve seen this movie before, and so some of them are thinking, “Great! Jesus is here, he’ll calm the storm and all will be well.”
But Jesus doesn’t calm the storm.
He’s just standing there, telling them not to be afraid, in the midst of all this raging chaos.
I tried to rationalize, I tried to ignore, I tried to bargain, but for some reason, God kept putting this on my heart, and I finally relented. As I gave the money to my local priest to give to the bishop, I was almost in tears, wondering how this could remotely be God’s plan, seeing as how I didn’t have the money to deal with my own bills.
The trouble with this viewpoint is that it seeks to benefit from faith without putting any work into it. It looks for safety, it looks for rescue and the salvation from eternal damnation, rather than a relationship with God. It is purely practical.
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