Remedy
There is something profoundly wrong with my arm but only a really astute observer would notice it just by looking. There is no bruising, or swelling, or scarring. I wear no brace, or sling or support, as there is none made for this issue. Yet none the less, many basic motions are painful, putting on socks, opening a door, etc.
There is something profoundly wrong with humanity, but at a cursory glance it’s something really easy to miss. People are generally cordial in greeting one another, respectful of other people’s property, and largely concerned for the well being of others. In my travels that has been largely the case with very few exceptions.
Yet I remember atrocities, horrible acts of violence carried out against fellow man, things like what happened ten years ago when some crazy people crashed airplanes into buildings in the name of religion. They willingly killed thousands and caused war to breakout.
In all the mayhem that ensued, I had to ask myself, how am I different from them? Am I somehow physically incapable of such hateful despite the fact that they are? It’s a scientific fact that I am human just like them, comprised of the same sorts of hormones, chromosomes and internal organs.
A godless world view allows room for love, friendship, and what is generally considered ‘good’ behaviour, but there is no obligation to it. With no higher authority than ‘community guidelines’, it cannot create an obligation to it. And when we remember events like 9/11 it’s a fair question to ask; where’s anti-theism when it hurts?
Society, like my arm is in need of a remedy. The difference is that man is endowed with the incredible ability to self-heal, man-kind, however, has no such power within. But:
The cross uniquely reveals not a God who is taciturn and disengaged from the human scene but a God who is right in the middle of our conflicts and struggles. This is not the Buddhist notion of retreating from the real world through monastic self-renunciation or of counteracting with good to offset the ever-present evil. This is not the Hindu notion of a pantheon of gods whose lives so transcend this earthly domain as to be wedded to myth inextricably. Nor is this the Islamic concept that endeavours to build an earthly kingdom by what means it takes, even the sword. This is the very incarnation, the embodiment of the Everlasting One, to communicate to a world that hungers for relational bliss and that yearns for a love so supreme that all else may be expelled—and yet a world that convulses with fractured kinships. —Ravi Zacharias in Can Man Live Without God?
God loves us and has high expectations of us, but in Him one finds meaning and ultimately a remedy.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. —John 3:16-17
