I saw the Charlie Brown episode about the Great Pumpkin over the last week. It’s been a favorite of mine since I was just a kid. I would always get annoyed with Linus, though, because he’d waste all that prime candy gathering time waiting in the pumpkin patch for the Great Pumpkin. The Great Pumpkin never came!
Linus keeps reminding us, throughout the whole episode, of how sincere he is. He knows that if his sincere belief in the Great Pumpkin will insure a visit from him. Linus puts all his hope in his sincerity. Then, toward the end of the episode, he has a slip of the tongue and says something about “if” the Great Pumpkin comes. This slip of the tongue; the admittance that he’s not absolutely sure the Great Pumpkin comes, ends his hopes of a visit. The truth is that there is no Great Pumpkin, regardless of the level or Linus’ sincerity. His sincere belief is groundless and empty so we see his disappointment at the end of the episode.
Many people, I think, are like that. We believe that sincerity is the key. It’s almost as if we place our hope in our sincerity. If we sincerely believe there is a ‘higher power’, then we are all set. The truth is, though, that sincerely believing in something besides the truth of the gospel of Jesus will only make us sincerely wrong. We are all, at one level or another, searching for true truth and our sincere belief in anything less than the true truth of the God of the Bible will only leave us empty; regardless of the sincerity we put in our belief.
So true! So true! Nice analogy of the ‘Great Pumpkin’ and the way, the truth, of how sadly & sincerely misguided we are as a society of intelligent people.