We're not hedging our bets here

We’ve all heard the phrase “hedging our bets”, but do you know where it came from?

The agricultural practice of planting hedges to create barriers around fields dates far back through the centuries, when farmers would clear land to plant crops, but intentionally left strips of thorny woodland as a natural boundary.  These hedges served multiple purposes, including protecting crops from wind and weather damage, marking property boundaries, as well as keeping livestock contained.

Over time, the concept of “hedging” came to represent any type of action someone would take for protection against potential harm or loss.  Late in the 1800s, the phrase “hedging your bets” became a popular expression, referencing the practice of playing it safe by not putting all your money or resources into a single outcome.

A basic illustration of this concept can be seen in sports betting – rather than only placing a large bet on the expected outcome, a second, but smaller, bet would be placed on the opposite outcome.  This smaller bet is meant to ensure some level of profit to offset any losses from the original wager.  Put simply, hedging your bets is a strategy to minimize or eliminate risk.

There are places where “hedging your bets” is good, like when investing money or developing skills and abilities.  You want to have a diverse group of investments – that way the natural market fluctuations won’t impact you.  Diversified investments can also set you up to take advantage of opportunities that wouldn’t be there if you kept putting your money into only one type of investment fund.  Likewise, having a broad skillset and wide-ranging experience can be an asset to career opportunities.  “Hedging your bets” and increasing your own capabilities is never a bad thing.

However, there are situations in life where “hedging our bets” will cause an opposite problem.  The two types that immediately come to mind are relationships and beliefs about God.  I would not advise you to “hedge your bets” when it comes to developing your relationship with your spouse.  To hold back from connecting or, worse yet, investing in other relationships that can substitute for your partner is never a good idea.  Doing either will keep your marriage stuck in the shallows, and I can guarantee that you’ll both feel unfulfilled.  When it comes to eternal matters, many people opt to take bits and pieces from various religions to come up with their own system.  Combining parts from Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and others with the parts that resonate with us may sound like a good idea at first, but on closer inspection, this can be dangerous.

When it comes to what we believe about God and the ultimate purpose of the human race, our beliefs have consequence.  Each of the religions I listed above claim to be “the way” but they also contradict each other in critical places.  So either one of them is right, or all of them are wrong – there is no other logical conclusion, regardless of our feelings on the topic.

Some people will also try to justify their personal mix of religions, claiming that if they are wrong and there is no afterlife, then at least they did “some good” with their time on Earth.  The problem with this thinking is that the “some good” doesn’t amount to anything.  It’s just wasted time if all we do after our body dies is disappear into the void.

Christianity also makes the outrageous claim that those who have died will come back to life.  Not that their soul just lives somewhere else for eternity, but that everyone will be bodily resurrected – those who believed in Jesus for eternal life to live with Him in the new Heavens and new Earth, and those who rejected Jesus’ free gift of eternal life will spend eternity separated from Him.

However, people have taken issue with this claim – even going back to the first century AD.  Paul was writing to the believers in Corinth about a wide-variety of questions they had, and at one point, he addresses them regarding anyone who claims there will be no resurrection of the dead:

1 Corinthians 15:16-19
For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.  And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.  Those, then who have fallen asleep in Christ [anyone who has already died believing that God will raise them] have also perished.

If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone.

With his last statement, Paul is very clear that he is not “hedging his bets”.  He flatly rejects any idea that Christianity is something that is good, even if just for this life only.  If Christ has not been raised, then death won.  Jesus’ offer of eternal life is no good for us if He can’t even keep Himself alive.  Paul goes so far as to say that we should be pitied more than anyone if we’re only hoping to make ourselves feel better in this life.  The truth is, Christians will have wasted a lot of life if Jesus can’t fulfill His offer.

Let’s make this real personal, shall we?

If Jesus was not raised from the dead, this means I will have wasted every week for the last 12+ years writing a weekly blog.  Countless hours of reading, studying, thinking, and writing – all worthless.  Not to mention the times I’ve attended church or church functions or helped someone or sacrificed my own desires because of the change I thought Jesus made in my life.  If this Jesus-thing is just for the here-and-now…yeah, pity me.

I can’t hedge my bets here – either Jesus came back to life or He didn’t.  If He did, that changes EVERYTHING.  If He didn’t…then Paul and I really messed up.

When we see Jesus and the miracle of His resurrection clearly, lives are changed.  But when we forget or mix it around with other options, trying to “hedge our bets”, we get stuck.  So let’s be clear and trust Jesus to follow through on His promise, shall we?

Keep Pressing,
Ken