This year, 2016, Leicester City FC won the English Premier League.
No-one saw it coming. Bookies gave them 5000-1 odds at the start of the season.
If you and I had put $100 on them, we’d now have $500,000.
What Leicester City’s Premiership win teaches us is this: there’s a difference between improbable, unimaginable and inconceivable.
Leicester City’s win was improbable – hence the 5000-1 odds. It was unimaginable – at the start of the season we imagined other teams winning, but not Leicester City.
But it was always conceivable because, in the end, any team can win. And this is what makes history history – unique, once-off, unrepeatable events.
Much of the Christian faith rests upon these distinctions. The Bible asks us to believe in miracles – with the ultimate miracle being Jesus rising from the dead.
Jesus rising from the dead is improbable – who knows what the odds are on that? It is unimaginable – none of his followers saw it coming.
But it is always conceivable because, in the end, if there is a supernatural, personal God, then this is the sort of stuff that happens. And this is what makes history history – unique, once-off, unrepeatable events.
Plus it’s no less conceivable than other stuff we’re asked to believe – e.g., intelligent life coming from non-life, mind-body duality, and Southampton beating Manchester United in the 1976 FA Cup Final.
Article supplied courtesy of espressotheology.com
Sam Chan is a public speaker for City Bible Forum and is the author of How to Talk About Jesus (Without Being That Guy)