Red is the new white

One of the basics you learn early on in the Christian life is that the way that God's economy works is usually the complete opposite of how we expect things to work. The Scriptures are full of examples of this. If you want to save your life, you have to lose it. If you want to inherit the earth, be meek. A king, the Son of God, is born in a stable. The scarlet blood of Jesus makes us white as snow. A boy who will eventually rule Egypt has to first be thrown into a cistern. The kingdom of heaven belongs to babies. On and on and on it goes.

So, it doesn't take long to grasp this concept and, by the grace of God, to employ it in your life. But it struck me today that I don't really understand why there is such a huge discrepancy between the way I think things should "normally" work versus how God says they actually are. Maybe it's that the things of God are foolishness to those who are perishing, and that he has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. Or, maybe it is because we are so radically depraved that we call darkness light, and light darkness. We see the things of death (worldly riches, gratifying the lusts of the flesh, etc.) as attractive signs of abundant life.

How is it that we can get our thinking corrected so we are accustomed to valuing things the way God does? How can we finally begin to see life as life and death as death?