Sometimes pure logic is translated by others as insignificant illogic. Take for example, my son. Andrew, who like his dad before him, was not exactly a stellar college student. Yea, he graduated with a 3.0, which is good, but it’s certainly short of great. But what would torque me was when he would bring home a semester report card that disclosed a much-less-than stellar grade in a particular class. Now don’t misunderstand me; I wasn’t bothered by the grade. Rather I was upset by the admitted lack of effort that Andy would put into the class. So when I’d push the envelope, he’d try to persuade me to grasp his lame rationale for why he had shortchanged his effort. Now first you need to know, Andy often “Aced” his tests in those classes. But then he’d opt to circumvent any homework assignments that he deduced contributed nothing to his overall education.
“Why?”, you ask. I’m still asking. Because as Andrew went on to explain, “Dad, that class is irrelevant to anything I want to do with the rest of my life.” To which I typically countered, “Oh, you mean like graduate??” Then Andy would launch into his idealistic logic (a.k.a. naive logic): “This class isn’t in my major. I’m never going to use any of those math equations in the real world. And who really cares if Henry the VIIIth had 6 or 60 wives?! Knowing this ridiculous trivia will never impact my future.”
Then came my 2nd counter, with what I deemed the purest of logic: “Son, what good will it do you if you “Ace” every class in your major, but your GPA fails to land you the job you want someday? I hope you don’t regret this choice later.”
Now honestly, because I had been where he is and have learned through the test of time, that Andy was largely correct: he’ll probably never even encounter, much less require, those irrelevant bits of trivial pursuit for anything meaningful over the course of the rest of his life. However, he is finding out that getting a job in his field isn’t just falling out from Heaven into his lap as perhaps he may have vainly presumed. I wonder if he may be rethinking. Nevermind; pure waste going down that track.
It was Jesus who posed a far more relevant, even eternity-altering question, that seemed ever so logical, yet is far-too-often met with the same Andian (my suggestion to Webster) Apathy we see in our day. It’s our question for this morning as we continue our current sermon series on the “Great Questions of Bible”: “What good is it if I gain the whole world and yet lose my own soul?”
Why not come this Sunday to hear the rest of this pure logic?