If you watch any news, you most likely could not escape the terrifying images depicting Coptic Christians, dressed in orange jump suits, lined up before their captors just minutes before they were savagely killed. You may have seen reports of people in the Middle East maimed by bombs and displaced by terrorists. Their homes burned, and their livelihoods destroyed. Even in our own nation we hear daily about acts of unspeakable violence, massive harm from substance addiction, the moral failure of public leaders, and so on.
When our institutions try to understand why things are the way they are, they are unable to provide solid answers. They offer speculations about “causes.” The economic situation, or lack of employment or opportunity are some of the reasons given. Could it be though that besides these influences the major sources of our failure lie in the “choices” we make?
The writer of Psalm 14:2-3 speaks to our condition: “The Lord looks down from heaven on humankind to see if there are any who are wise, who seek after God. They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one.”
Author Dallas Willard states*): “Our social and psychological sciences stand helpless before the terrible things done by human beings, but they somehow cannot admit to the ruined condition of the human will and that our mind, feelings, body and social relationships are warped.” “Are we like the farmer, who plants crops according to the best methods available but cannot admit to the existence of weeds and insects? All he can think of is to pour on more fertilizer. Similarly, the only solution to our human problems we know today is “education.” Indeed, education is a good thing, but do we really think that if people generally understood what the right thing to do is—they would do it?”
Is there any hope for us today or have we resigned to our worst expectation that the world is going to hell?
I am convinced that there is hope, but that hope needs to be rooted in reality. The truth is that you and I are ruined by sin and that our hearts need to be “renovated!” G. K. Chesterton provided this answer to someone who sent a letter to the editor of a newspaper:
Dear Sir: Regarding your article ‘What’s Wrong with the World?’ I am. Yours truly, G.K. Chesterton
So, where do we begin? God’s Word instructs us in Proverbs 9:10, to have reverential fear of being and doing what is displeasing to him. We find the definition of what the fear of the Lord is in the book of Proverbs as well: “The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.” Proverbs 8:13
*) Willard, Dallas, The Allure of Gentleness, HarperCollins, New York, NY, 2015
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