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Matthew 22:22-33 – Challenging Arguments
What kind of arguments do you find intellectually challenging? If we are honest, we close our minds, just like most people, to arguments we have already heard and discarded. That is why it is essential to keep studying.
If we want to help others, we cannot have the attitude said to me, “Well if they won’t accept that argument, then that’s their problem.” Such is a sad, superior, and lazy position!
The Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection, challenged Jesus with their tried and true hypothetical (hypotheticals do not make for good theology): “Teacher, Moses said, if a man dies, having no children, his brother is to marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers among us. The first got married and dies. Having no offspring, he left his wife to this brother. The same happened too the second also, and the third, and so to all seven. Then last of all the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore who wife will she be of the seven? For they all had married her?” (Matthew 22:24-28).
Jesus didn’t rely on what arguments others had made before Him. Jesus said a few things, but one thing was, “haven’t you read what was spoken to you by God: I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And when the crowds heard this, they were astonished at His teaching” (Matthew 22:31-33). Do you think anyone had heard that argument before? No!
Along those lines, someone chastised me saying, “Why are you always trying to find a new argument for the same position?” The answer is simple, I’m trying to find a way to help someone who has discarded old arguments, rethink. A deeper answer is that word of God is fascinating and far more in-depth and interweaved than we think.
So, study to help yourselves and others. Look for new ways to say the same things because it helps you and others. Don’t give up on people because they have heard “everything”. Don’t give up thinking yourself because you have heard “everything.” Neither is true. Maybe we all just need to have our thinking challenged with something they haven’t already heard and discarded.
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