The Museum Or The Zoo?

The next time you are planning an outing for children ask them which they would prefer: a trip to the museum or a trip to the zoo. They will probably choose the zoo. Why? The animals in the museum are dead. They have been carefully stuffed, attractively arranged, and correctly labeled, but they are dead.

You and I would make the same kind of choice if someone asked, “Which would you prefer, a dead faith or a living faith?” Yet some of us, without realizing it, have a faith which is more dead than alive.

Some Christians possess a dead faith because, like the Sadducees in Jesus’ time, they are preoccupied with the details of religious doctrine and law. When the Sadducees questioned Jesus about whether or not marriage relationships survived after death, He would not answer directly. “Your God is the God of the living,” He said. He wanted to discourage the legalistic museum mentality that preoccupies itself with religious trappings and…