Are we headed for extinction or eternity?
For the Institute Of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephens University. Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt
“It is only the infinite mercy and love of God that has prevented us from tearing ourselves to pieces and destroying His entire creation long ago. People seem to think that it is in some way a proof that no merciful God exists, if we have so many wars. On the contrary, consider how in spite of centuries of sin and greed and lust and cruelty and hatred and avarice and oppression and injustice, spawned and bred by the free wills of men, the human race can still recover, each time, and can still produce men and women who overcome evil with good, hatred with love, greed with charity, lust and cruelty with sanctity. How could all this be possible without the merciful love of God, pouring out His grace upon us? Can there be any doubt where wars come from and where peace comes from, when the children of this world, excluding God from their peace conferences, only manage to bring about greater and greater wars the more they talk about peace?” – Thomas Merton (Seven Storey Mountain p. 142)
It seems that the more we as a race grow and develop and learn new technologies, the more dangerous we become. This world has has the potential to be a paradise from the beginning. But each time some new technology or science or method is invented, I am caught up in the spirit of this age in thinking that this new thing will answer the worlds problems. With nano-technology scientist have already turned silicon (sand) into gold. There are many alternative fuels out there ready to be used, and they are discovering more efficient ways to make oil from many different sources. A solution to Global Warming is offered through capitalism by building carbon-capture machines. Imagine the irony if Capitalism actually saved the planet!
However the sad truth is that we’ve been trying to dig ourselves out of the same hole for thousands of years now. We have new gadgets, and air-conditioners (thank you Jesus), but we haven’t stopped domestic violence, racism, murder, greed, lust, or even simple over indulgences such as drunkenness or gluttony. We haven’t managed to become our own savior, we have become our own worst enemy.
As Merton continues in his book, “We have only to open our eyes and look about us to see what our sins are doing to the world, and have done. But we cannot see. We are the ones to whom it is said by the prophets of God: “Hearing hear, and understand not; and see the vision, and know it not.”
The evidence of our failure is all around us, but we are blinded by our own lies and continue to believe that somehow we will get it right in the end. So how do we get out of this mess? In Romans (7:24,25), the apostle Paul asks a similar question: What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Jesus came to destroy the works of Satan. Satan subjugated creation from us in the beginning. It’s like he tricked us into giving him the legal rights of ownership. But fortunately we didn’t own creation, we were only sent to “tend the garden”. Jesus came and broke Satan’s back by dying on the cross and the started the reversal and renewal of this fallen world beginning with his own bodily resurrection.
Someday Jesus will finish what he started, and until then we are his emissaries, his imagebearers. We go out into the fallen world and reflect his image to a world that is blind, deaf, and mute. We heal the sick, cleanse the leper, and raise the dead. Perhaps God will use us to do these things literally, and I pray that I would be used in such an obvious miraculous way. But more than likely God will use the majority of us in more subtle ways, but no less powerful and effective. A simple gesture of love to the unloved, a prayer for the dying man in a home for the elderly, baking bread for your neighbor, a sacrificing boss, or moving someones couch or refrigerator. There are probably as many expressions of the kingdom as there are people.
