Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is Christianity Just Wishful Thinking? | Historical Books | 2 Kings 10:18-36

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

Is faith just wishful thinking? Are love, justice, and truth real? What do you long for? In today's episode, Jeff shares how 2 Kings 10:18-36 encourages us to long for Jesus, the true king of righteousness. If you're listening on Spotify, tell us about yourself and where you're listening from! Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 2 Kings 10:18-36

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. What if Christianity is just a bunch of wishful thinking, a big fictional game of people chasing their hopes and their desires. That's one of the key critiques that Sigmund Freud had of religion in general. He wrote this nearly 100 years ago in the future of an illusion. religion is a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality such as we find nowhere else but in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion religion's eleventh commandment is thou shalt not question it's a big statement have you ever felt that way maybe you're newer to exploring the bible or newer to considering the existence of god to begin with and this is one of the questions holding you back.

What if Freud is right? What if this is just a system of wishful illusions and you're not supposed to question it? Or maybe you're in a different spot. Maybe you've been in the church or you've considered yourself a Christian for many years. And Freud's critique of religion strikes an uncomfortable chord within you. You're going through the motions of religious activity,

yet you're wondering behind the scenes, is all of this just a wishful illusion? Am I in a state of blissful, hallucinatory confusion? You may wonder if it's too dangerous to ask questions, and therefore you settle into a version of faith that minimizes thought to maximize safety. Decades after Freud wrote that, another thinker and writer made this claim.

Christianity is mainly wishful thinking. Even the part about judgment and hell reflects the wish that somewhere the score is beating, being kept. Dreams are wishful thinking. Children playing at being grown up is wishful thinking. Interplanetary travel is wishful thinking. Now, this is all sobering to consider, isn't it? I mean, is faith like a child playing grown up or people imagining the possibility of travel through deep space? What if all of this is just a fictional game of chasing our hopes and our desires? What if one day will come to find that the fiction really is a fantasy, and the game is one that we've lost?

Now, these questions can feel very modern, and in some ways, they are unique to our setting in world history. But in other ways, these are ancient, human questions. Questions provoked even in the historical books of the Old Testament, for the people of God in the days of exile, our passage today stirs up questions like this. The end of King Jehu's reign in 2nd Kings chapter 10 forces us to consider whether biblical faith is simply wishful thinking unrooted from reality or whether it's something else entirely. Now as we get ready to approach God's word, let's pause and ask for his grace, his steadfast love to move in and through our time.

Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and breath and thank you for your word. We bring before you every part of our experiences, God, our joys and our sorrows, our anxiety and our excitement, our calendars and our contingencies. Would you meet us in the space? Jesus, help us abide in you as we engage with your truth. Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in and through this time in Second Kings. And as we read your living word, may it read us and restore us to new life with you. in Jesus' name, amen. Now the first 17 verses of chapter 10 in 2nd Kings,

they detailed Jehu's killing of Ahab's descendants, an act of judgment for the wickedness of Ahab during his reign. Now, as we get into verse 18, Jehu's vengeance turns to the prophets of Ba'al and the pagan worship of false gods. Now, just a quick note if this is your first time hopping into the historical books with us. The worship of Baal has been a huge, stumbling block for God's people in this particular era of history, leading them further from their

calling to love God and love their neighbors. As we read through verses 18 through 27, we get an overview of Jehu's cunning plan to carry out judgment against a group of Ba'al worshippers by trapping them and killing them. Now, let me just add a quick yet important note that this passage describes the actions of Jehu as a king of Israel and a one-time, historical moment of judgment. This is not a prescription of how God's people are meant to act, either back then or now. In a world that's filled with violence and hostility, God's people are unquestionably called to be a community that is ambitious to love him and to love those around them. Now, in its historical setting, J. Hu's act of judgment might have seemed like a huge victory for God's

people. Verse 28 says, thus Jehu wiped out Baal from Israel. He sounds like a slam-dunk victory. Maybe Jehu has proven himself worthy of the throne. But as we read on into verse 29, this victory is exposed as vacuous. We read this in verse 29, but Jehu did not turn aside from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nabat, which he made Israel to sin. That is the golden calves that were in Bethel and in Dan. Okay, so get this. While eradicating, but all worship from Israel seemed like a victory, Jahu turns out to be less impressive than we hoped.

He doesn't eliminate all of the pagan worship of false gods. But as the passage goes on, it gets even worse. Verse 31 adds to the sobering picture of Jehu here. It reads this way. But Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of the law of the Lord, the God of Israel, with all his heart. He did not turn from the sins of Jeroboam, which he made Israel, to sin. Okay, so yes, when we look at Jehu, his life, the end of his reign, he did take Ba'all worship out of Israel, but he couldn't take the sin out of his own heart.

And so corruption continued to reign as the kings of Israel reigned. Now, if you're like me in this moment, but also periodically throughout the historical books, you read this and you're just like, come on, Jehu. I mean, come on kings of Israel. Can't just one of these kings of Israel actually live faithfully? When will a worthy king be on the throne over God's people? Is God's kingdom even moving? Is the creator king even reigning? Now, if you find yourself asking these kinds of questions in this text, you have a lot in common with the original audience of Second Kings. Whether someone is living in the repeated failure of the kings of Israel or experiencing the uncertainty and fear of a world filled with corruption and violence today,

the outcome is actually pretty similar. We might wonder if this whole faith thing is really just wishful thinking. Based on the state of our lives and the world around us, could it just be that this really is a big fictional game? Are we just chasing our desires and our hopes? Our hopes for a just, faithful, and loving king? I mean, is all this just an illusion? Or could it be real?

Now, contrary to Freud's suggestion that this would make us stop asking questions, it's actually situations like this in the Bible in our lives, where the people of God are required to ask more thoughtful questions with more love and to do so more often. In many ways, the historical books actually serve as a kind of evidence against the critique of Freud, because at no point in historical books does God ask his people to disavow reality. He is not calling his people into a state

of blissful, hallucinatory confusion where they don't ask questions. The point of stories like this is to get us to ask questions, to really question the real character of God and the world around us. These passages are meant to make us think, to make us feel, to notice how things aren't the way they're supposed to be. The point is to stir our longing.

We can do that, because in the first century, in real world history, the deep desire of a just, faithful, and loving king, really was satisfied. History attests to the life of Jesus Christ, who lived with a whole heart before God and others, who perfectly walked in the law of the Lord. History also attests to the death and resurrection of Jesus, whereby he restored our hearts to God and to one another.

The whole point is for us to keep asking questions that bring us not to an answer, but to a person, to Jesus Christ himself. Now I want to go back to that second quote we considered after Freud at the beginning of our time together. It said that Christianity is mainly wishful thinking. Now here's the thing, I didn't read the entirety of that quote because there's a Christian thinker and writer behind that statement. It's the pastor Frederick Beechner.

He goes on to say this in his quote, sometimes wishing is the wings the truth comes on sometimes the truth is what sets us wishing for it i love that line think about that for a moment sometimes the truth is what sets us wishing for it beckner's point is this sure it's easy for anybody to call christianity wishful thinking but you can't miss the foundational possibility that our deepest wishes come from a deep well of reality, a deep truth woven into the fabric of our hearts, into the fabric of our minds, our longings, our hope. We wish for a king like Jesus because he really exists.

This faithful, wishful thinking is really a kind of thoughtful longing in the life of God's people. Now, when we look at 2nd Kings chapter 10, Jihu is in a vast company of questionable and wicked kings within Israel's history. All of them collectively stir our longing for a kind of king who once really walked this earth and will one day return to make all things new. This story points us to that ancient yet never aging truth that sets us wishing for it. So wherever you are in the journey of faith, my prayer for you is that passages like

like this will cause you to ask more questions, not less, and that those questions would in turn lead to a faithful, wishful thinking, and that by God's grace over time, your thinking would turn into thoughtful longing in a community of wisdom and compassion as you grow in the love of the gospel. The vacuous victory of Jehu points to our longing for the relentless reign and love of King Jesus. passages like this form us into a kind of people who live into the big questions we don't just ask them we live into them they change us they ultimately lead us into a process where we see that christianity is not a fictional game

where we chase our hopes and our desires it's a historical drama of our deepest hopes and our deepest desires chasing us god thank you for the truth of your love and your justice that is still moving today. I pray for everyone hearing the story that it would stir up questions and longings that point to you. I pray specifically for those who are newer to faith, that your spirit would fan the flame of curiosity, that they wouldn't just know more about you, but that they would come to know you in a real growing relationship. I pray for those who have been around faith for some time now, yet find themselves stuck and afraid of doubt.

Would you free them to ask honest questions and hear honest responses in a community of love? And I pray for all of us that our questions would be met not just with intellectual answers. Let me go back real quick, sorry. And I pray for all of us that our questions would be met not just with intellectual answers, but with your loving presence.

We pray all of this because of your grace, for your glory, your story. In Jesus' name, amen.