Do you not understand?

The very same person who is quick and clever in worldly things will often utterly fail to comprehend the simplest truths of Christianity. He will often be unable to grasp the plainest reasonings of the gospel. He will see no meaning in the clearest statements of evangelical doctrine. They will sound to him either foolish or mysterious. He will listen to them like one listening to a foreign language, catching a word here and there but not seeing the drift of the whole. The world through its wisdom did not come to know God (1 Corinthians 1:21). It hears but does not understand.

—J.C. Ryle, ‘Expository Thoughts on Mark’