A Leap of Faith

July 11th, 2026
by Bruce Smith

“Only in the leap from the lion’s head will he prove his worth.”
-Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

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Many things in scripture can be difficult to understand, the elect, the Trinity, the tension between grace and truth. Eternity is a concept that is too great for the human mind to fully comprehend. However, you don’t have to understand something completely in order to believe. The faith of a child is one that believes without any hesitation. As we grow older, we often lose this kind of faith. It’s not a bad thing to explore and gain a deeper understanding, but where your mind reaches its limits, faith must take over. At some point you will have to take a leap from the lion’s head.

Without God, life would be trivial, accidental, and selfish, with no real basis of right and wrong—meaningless and totally hopeless. Thus, our hearts search for significance in the existence of something greater than man alone. Eventually, this search brings us to the story of Jesus. Many religions have peaceful teachings and wise sayings, but the story of Jesus is different. We are confronted with things like prophecy and ancient stories and incredible self-sacrifice. The most convincing characters for me are the apostles. It cost them everything to follow Jesus. They didn’t even understand what he was up to until his resurrection. These men, who ran away in fear, came back with the confidence to live and die for Jesus after seeing him alive again. Paul tried to exterminate Christians and then became one because of an encounter with the resurrected Jesus. Our leap of faith isn’t based simply on stories in a book, but on the testimony of those who saw Jesus risen. Other religions have wise teachers, but none have a resurrected Savior. I may not have an answer for every question, but because of the resurrection, I’m willing to take some things on faith.

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Let me now remind you, dear brothers and sisters, of the Good News I preached to you before. You welcomed it then, and you still stand firm in it. It is this Good News that saves you if you continue to believe the message I told you—unless, of course, you believed something that was never true in the first place. I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said. He was seen by Peter and then by the Twelve. After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. Last of all, as though I had been born at the wrong time, I also saw him. For I am the least of all the apostles. In fact, I’m not even worthy to be called an apostle after the way I persecuted God’s church. But whatever I am now, it is all because God poured out his special favor on me—and not without results. For I have worked harder than any of the other apostles; yet it was not I but God who was working through me by his grace. So it makes no difference whether I preach or they preach, for we all preach the same message you have already believed.
- 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 (NLT)

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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Directed by Steven Spielberg, Lucasfilm Ltd. / Paramount Pictures, 1989.