Peace and love have taken a beating lately. Aside from the
daily frustrations and injustices, Islamic terrorists executed attacks in Paris
and Nigeria. Beyond all that, governments around the world have basically
admitted that similar attacks are inevitable. Wars and rumors of wars trend
online and the nightly news brings us little comfort. Here in Michigan, a
wintery oppression has dropped a canopy of gray upon the earth. Bitter winds
have closed schools and driven all but the hardy (or the foolhardy) into their
homes. Hope has been a far distant light obscured by a curtain of despair. Joy
has been remarkably absent.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I find myself remarkably
troubled by the evil and injustices of this world. A brief trip online (if
that’s possible) leaves me dejected and despairing, both emotions that I know
should not define my existence as a Christ-follower. Yet I find myself
increasingly distressed by the ominous shadow cast over this planet.
The Problem
I know that I should not be surprised by the presence of
evil in this world. Scripture recounts to us the degradation of humanity as far
back as Noah’s time:
Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled
with violence. God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all
flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. (Genesis 6:11, 12)
My head knows that this is true, that I should not be
surprised by the corrupted state of this world as if it were a new thing. There
is nothing new under the sun and the evil acts of man are certainly no
exception. Yet so often our hearts are troubled and left trembling and confused
by the presence of evil. Many times we are tempted to doubt the goodness of God
in light of the sinfulness of man.
As believers who were called out of evil and sinful lives,
we often fall prey to the faulty assumption that our new life in Christ will be
immune to the pervacious infection that plagues mankind. Of course we would
never put it in such broad and expansive words but we react nonetheless when
the hatred and evil rears its ugly head in our own lives. Someone hits our car
and drives off without a note. A co-worker sets to passing hurtful gossip and
opinions about us at work. Our Facebook and Twitter feeds are full of hateful
and ungracious comments. I don’t know about you but I often recoil at those
things and want to retreat into my own world (or in my case, into nature).
These reactions only show that we harbor the roots of this faulty assumption
about the expected affairs of the Christian.
Perhaps the first followers of Jesus had a similar
expectation because Jesus took them aside to dispel such notions directly
before He was to be betrayed by a corrupt and unjust justice system:
If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated
you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you
are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the
world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, “A slave is not greater
than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; (John
15:18-20a)
Jesus goes great lengths to make His disciples clear that
they should not be expecting a rose-petal strewn path. Their fate was bound up
in their Master’s, and so are ours. We should not expect the world to suddenly
become a heavenly kingdom when it is populated by the lost and the lonely. The
hurting population of this world yearns for reconciliation but in the absence
of that, for distraction and power. The flesh craves lust and power and meaning
from wherever it can be found. It should surprise none of us that those
desperate desires would result in a swath of broken dreams, broken hearts, and
(saddest of all) broken bodies.
When we are confronted by the harsh and bitter realities of
a broken, fallen world we often have one of two responses.
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