Inconceivable! It's one of my favorite lines from the movie, "The Princess Bride".  It's the favorite line of the evil genius who was hired by the wicked Prince Humperdinck to kidnap the Princess Buttercup to describe the actions of the Dread Pirate Roberts. Be it Roberts climbing the Cliffs of Insanity, besting the swordsman with a blade, wrestling the giant into submission, or out thinking the evil genius himself, the only word to describe his actions is, "Inconceivable!"

There are many things in our world that people consider inconceivable. I asked Anita the other day what she simply couldn't comprehend and her quick response was, "The things some people eat." Be it bugs in part of Africa and Asia, my Scottish tradition with haggis, or the guy who thought Rocky Mountain Oysters were a good idea, Anita describes them as, "Inconceivable!" For me, what's inconceivable is quite easy, after all these years it's still Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett. "Inconceivable!" But in Matthew 5:43-48, Jesus tells us that the thing that should be most inconceivable in our world is the life of the Christian.

In these verses Jesus identifies a number of things that are conceivable of Christians. For example, greeting your friends, praying for those who comfort and encourage you, and showing love to people you find lovable. The world can conceive of these things because this is what we all do by nature. Those outside the Church have also identified an number of conceivable descriptors for Christians, namely, they are boring, hypocritical, and judgmental. If we take a close look at ourselves, we can see plenty of honest evidence that would bring them to this conclusion ... be it those who bare our name while functioning as the morality police, the scandals surrounding so many church leaders, or the words spoken to young women outside of abortion clinics. The world has a very conceivable image of Christians.

However, Jesus calls Christians to do something more. In a word he calls us to be, "Inconceivable!" Not too long ago I heard Leonard Sweet speak on the idea of more and he identified two ways that we can do more. One way to do more is to do something better. In the above examples of conceivable behaviors with would include being that much more intentional about greeting our friends, engaging in even more fervent prayer for one another, and going that much more above and beyond the norm in our loving kindness towards the people we find lovable. Of course, this idea of more as better has us doing the same old conceivable things at a higher level and, no matter how well we do them, those outside the church will continue to view Christians as boring, hypocritical, and judgmental.

But Sweet identified another way to do something more ... more as different. If we look to the world of video games we can get a better idea of what this looks like. The XBox 360 and Playstation 3 are more as better. They have better graphics cards, increased memory, and other features that take everything that's been done in previous gaming systems and pushes them to a new and higher level. However, more as different would be the Nintendo Wii. It has less memory, a lower overall quality of graphics, and costs less, but it provides gamers with an entirely different user experience that actually incorporates body movements into the games. Wii is more as different and Nintendo is concerned about their ability to keep units on the shelves while Sony and Microsoft are trying to sell them.

In other words, more as different means being inconceivable because our lives look the much different. Be it that we praise God by celebrating life and enjoying the many good gifts he's given us, allowing God's word to shape our daily actions, or taking the time to compassionately and non-judgmentally listen to those outside the faith, more as different results in our world proclaiming, "Inconceivable!" and want to know how we conceived of such a life.

So, how is it that we can conceive the inconceivable? Because we have an inconceivable God. If we look through the pages of Scripture at all of the verses about the natural human condition, we'll run across things like evil, depraved, wicked, and sinful. The basic picture is that we are enemies of God and, based on any merit of our own, we are unlovable.

Yet, even with that picture, the central story of the Bible declares that while we were unlovable, Christ died for us. In other world, Christ has done the inconceivable for us and now, having experienced the inconceivable, we are free to head out into our world and be inconceivable.