No sense at all

While waiting at the airport for my colleague's flight to come in, I struck up a conversation with the lady selling roses in the arrival area. (She parked her cart right in front of where I was standing, so I figured I'd make the most of the moment.) Besides roses, she also had a selection of perfumes, scented soaps and some aroma-therapy ointments for sale. As she presented her spiel for each of the items, I realized that -- except for the beauty of the flowers -- there was nothing in the cart that I could truly appreciate. I am asnomic.

As far as I can tell, I was not born with a sense of smell. Not even the strongest scent (good or bad) registers after inhaling deeply. I have no more ability to pick out perfume for my wife than I do to detect a gas leak. Freshly baked bread, pine trees, pig farms, mowed grass, dead skunks, morning coffee and dirty diapers all smell the same to me. That is, like nothing at all. So all the scented flowers, soaps and jars of ointment in this lady's cart were of absolutely no value to me. They are not a part of my world or even of my imagination. People talk to me about smells, and just when I think I understand that smell is related to taste (a sense I do have), they go and describe a scent as "green".

No wonder, then, when non-Christians look at us funny when they hear us talk. So much of the Christian life makes no sense to a person whose eyes have not yet been opened by the converting power of the Gospel. The irregenerate may, indeed, understand the concept of joy -- but not at a funeral. They have a notion of forgiveness -- but it's usually reserved for the person who didn't know any better or who didn't mean to offend. Many central concepts of our faith may not be in their vocabulary at all: justification, Trinity, incarnation, sacrament, substitutionary atonement. As wiser men than me have observed: "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand."

I don't know that I'll ever be able to smell. I may forever be on the outside of the olfactory members club, shaking my head as the others suddenly hold their noses for no apparent reason. I can only guess at their motives for inhaling deeply as they walk into the kitchen or for rolling down the windows of the car in winter. Perhaps people outside the church see us with the same curiosity: "Why would Christians get so upset over seemingly nothing?" "What's a small difference in interpretation of a book written thousands of years ago?" "If they're so eager to love and to forgive, why do they insist that I change my lifestyle?" "What would possess a person to give up their Sunday mornings / a percentage of their wage / their homeland and culture to serve as a missionary in a foreign land?"

It could be that there's an operation or a miracle drug that could restore (impart) my missing sense. Maybe a knock on the noggin will jar something loose. But we know what it takes for the non-Christian to obtain an understanding of God's ways and God's will: simply the preaching of God's word and baptism in God's name. We rely on the Holy Spirit to illumine, enlighten, regenerate and convert those who, until now, have lived in darkness. Just as he graciously has done for us, proclaiming to us the simple message that God loves us all, despite the fact that we have been loveless, and has sent his only Son to carry our guilt and to pay the price for our redemption. All who trust in him, namely that he has completely removed the punishment we deserved and has credited us with the holiness of life we lacked, receive God's promise of divine love and protection, now and in the life to come. The gospel of Christ Jesus, God and man, crucified and risen, Lord and Savior, is the only effective tool for making sense of this fallen world.