A Word About Interesting

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard someone say it, it the last week or two. But I know it’s a lot. Over the course of the past several days, I’ve noticed the speech patterns in people who love to use the word ‘Interesting.’ They’ll say things like, “It’s interesting that Costco’s gas station was closed when I tried to buy gas there the other day.” Well. That may be a fact. But I don’t think it’s that ‘interesting.’ I think when we use the word ‘interesting’ to describe a situation or reality, it should have some punch to it, shouldn’t it?

It’s interesting that I looked up the word interesting in a thesaurus, and words like engrossing, fascinating, riveting and gripping came up.  So did compelling, compulsive, spellbinding and entrancing. The one other word that caught my attention — I suppose you could say the word I thought was interesting when describing that word was … thought-provoking. The thesaurus said something interesting could be thought-provoking.

I thought it would be interesting to see how the writers of scripture might use the word ‘interesting,’ and when I did a word search of that word in various translations, almost without exception, none of the biblical writers used a Greek or Hebrew word that could be translated, ‘Interesting.’ In all my search, I only found one paraphrase that used the word interesting. And as I read it, and I noticed the context, it reminded me of the day in which we live, and the circumstances our culture seems to be fixated on.

In John chapter 15 of The Message,  Eugene Peterson paraphrases the words of Jesus

as the Lord explained to his disciples that they shouldn’t be surprised when persecution came to them because of their following Jesus.

If I hadn’t come and told them all this in plain language, it wouldn’t be so bad. As it is, they have no excuse. Hate me, hate my Father—it’s all the same. If I hadn’t done what I have done among them, works no one has ever done, they wouldn’t be to blame. But they saw the God-signs and hated anyway, both me and my Father. Interesting—they have verified the truth of their own Scriptures where it is written, ‘They hated me for no good reason.’ (Jn. 15, The Message)

The world doesn’t need an excuse for opposing what we stand for, as Christians. We are derided as believers standing for the truth of God’s Word because we follow Jesus, the Word Become Flesh, who dwelt among us.

Listen again to those words of Jesus from the Message: “ … they saw the God-signs and hated anyway, both me and my Father. Interesting—they have verified the truth of their own Scriptures where it is written, ‘They hated me for no good reason.’

I shouldn’t be surprised at the rejections I may face in this world. The rejection Jesus faced wasn’t because of what he did. It was because of who he was. To me, that’s thought-provoking. In fact, I guess you could say … that’s interesting.

I’m Ken Jones and this has been a Classic State of Mind.