Today’s Scripture
Reading (November 15, 2017): Luke 20
Star Trek fans know of it as the “Kobayashi Maru Scenario;” it is
the classic no-win situation. No matter what you do, you cannot beat the
problem. Of course, in the Star Trek Universe, Captain James T. Kirk did beat
the “Kobayashi Maru Scenario” by reprogramming the computer. Some would argue
that Kirk cheated, but Kirk maintained that he simply does not believe in
no-win situations. There is always a way out;
the trick is to find it. (And in the case of the “Kobayashi Maru
Scenario,” the elusive solution was found in reprogramming the computer.)
I like to play chess – I just wish that I played the game better. In
chess, the object of the game is to get the other player’s King. You can lose
any other piece on the board and play on, but if you lose your king, the game is over. Now,
typically, this is done through a battle of attrition – you try to get so many of
your opponent’s pieces that he can no longer properly
defend his King. It sounds simple, but really
it isn’t. A great offensive weapon when going on the attack is the fork – getting one of your pieces in such a place where your piece can’t be touched, but you have a choice
of two of your opponent’s
pieces to remove from the board. And your opponent
can only save one.
The move works great with a King –
because the King has to be protected, and as a result, the other piece must be sacrificed.
I have a feeling that Jesus was a good chess player because this passage is the variation of the classic fork; it is the religious elite’s “Kobayashi Maru.” There just wasn’t a right answer. No matter what the Priests said, the answer was going to cost
them something. They had hoped to
back Jesus into a corner, to force Jesus to say that his power came from
heaven. Then they would have all the evidence that they needed to attack Jesus as
a heretic. But Jesus changed the focus to John the Baptist, who was still a
popular figure in Judea. To say that John was not a prophet was going to the
cost them in the arena of public opinion. But to say that John was a prophet of
God was also going to cost them because they had very publically opposed John
during his lifetime. Why was it that, if they believed that John was sent from God, that they spent so much of
their time fighting against him. There was no right
answer – and so they deferred.
In chess, a fork just causes you to lose a piece. In real life, forks often occur in places where we hold an
inaccurate belief – and where it is precisely that belief that has to be re-examined – and eventually sacrificed because it is just not important. For the religious elite, it was the idea of Jesus’s nature, and origins that needed to be re-evaluated – and, as Jesus’s no-win scenario pointed out, John’s nature and origin
– something that they steadfastly refused to do.
There are a lot of side beliefs that we can hold. And some of them might
be right – or they might be wrong. But the prime belief about Jesus raises the
same questions for us as it did for the priests. Do you really believe that Jesus is from God? A lot of
the disagreements in the universal church are really on issues that just don’t
matter. The origin and nature of Jesus is the one about which we must have a firm belief. This is our king, to be protected at all costs, because if we lose that belief, then the game is over.
Tomorrow’s Scripture
Reading: Luke 21
No comments:
Post a Comment