We've been lied to. Someplace along the way, it happened. I don't know who or when, but someone sometime told us that we should have perfection, and we bought the lie.
What do I mean? When the mad gunman of Virginia Tech happened, there was an outcry. We've got to do something! This is intolerable. There should never be such an incident. The fact that such incidents are so very, very rare doesn't seem to occur to anyone. It should never happen. Then there are the levees in New Orleans. People are upset because the Corp of Army Engineers says that they're not fixed yet and are not 100% safe against another Katrina. Or how about the news recently that 1/3 of the maternity services of hospitals in Philadelphia are closing or have closed because they can't afford to stay in business? Why? Because the malpractice insurance that obstetricians have to pay is higher than anyone else. Why? Because parents think that every child born should be perfect, and any complication is likely the doctor's fault. And, of course, there's the Iraq War. If any more Americans die over there, it's just another indication of failure. Why? Because perfect peace has not yet been obtained.
We're living in a fantasy. The world tells us that we need to achieve perfection in our security measures, our law enforcement processes, our automobile safety, our product safety, anything at all that you care to mention, it seems. The Bible says "The creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it" (Rom. 8:20). Or, as Christian psychologist Larry Crabb says, "There's a worm in everything."
It is my belief that the sooner we grasp this, the sooner we can move on to better ground. The sooner we see the reality that the world in which we live is decaying and the people who live in it are sin-sick, the sooner we can stop relying on the world around us and start relying on the only reliable One. We can hold out false hopes for a long time, but sometime it has to happen that we will see these are false hopes. Perfection will not be reached here. There will continue to be murders no matter what we do. Natural disasters will happen despite every precaution we take. Children will be born with physical problems as long as children are born. And no war is ever pleasant. No product is 100% safe. No one is good, not even one. Let's shift from this lie, recognize that there is a worm in everything, and place our confidence on the One who cannot fail instead of trying to make a perfect world in the dying pieces of this decaying planet.
1 comment:
The problem is that we are surprised that we are flawed. I often hear the lament that "we shouldn't still have _________ in this day and age". Yet we have more disunity than we had before.
I grew up watching Star Trek where there was an interesting morality play in every episode. It would at first be clear that certain things like racism, world war and so on did not happen in the 23rd Century. The human characters were all perfect secularists who knew Shakespeare by rote. Everything always started off great, then by the end of the hour a planet had been blown up and Cap. Kirk would make a faulty decision that got Ensign Jones killed.
There is a worm in everything, no matter what the culture or the Federation says.
Post a Comment