1: Do we imagine ourselves as heroes?
“One of the good people contributing to the way the world ought to be?” Tim Keller asks in his book Every Good Endeavor.
Do we believe the world would be a better place if others simply acted as we did?
Perhaps we believe “the world would be dramatically improved if everyone were free-spirited and progressive and willing to defy oppressive traditions,” Tim notes.
“Or perhaps we think the world would be far better off if we were standing for proven moral absolutes.”
2: Christians believe something entirely different.
“Only the Christian worldview locates the problem with the world not in any part of the world or in any particular group of people but in sin itself.”
Sin? What is sin? Simply and profoundly, sin is our loss of relationship with God.
“Sin infects us all, and so we cannot simply divide the world into the heroes and the villains,” Tim notes.
The solution to our sin problem is God’s grace: “Our restoration of a relationship with God through the work of Christ” on the cross.
Yesterday, we explored the three questions different worldviews seek to answer:
1: How are things supposed to be?
2: What is the main problem with things as they are?
3: What is the solution, and how can it be realized?
In response to question #1, Christians believe “the whole world is good,” Tim notes. “God made the world and everything in it was good. There are no intrinsically evil parts of the world. Nothing is evil in its origin.
What is the main problem? “The whole world is fallen.”
The solution? “The whole world is going to be redeemed. Jesus is going to redeem spirit and body, reason and emotion, people and nature. There is no part of reality for which there is no hope.”
Tim references philosopher Al Wolters, who writes: There is a “great danger” in singling out “some aspect of God’s good creation and identify it, rather than the alien intrusion of sin, as the villain. . .
“As far as I can tell,” he writes, “the Bible is unique in its rejection of all attempts to either demonize some part of creation as the root of our problems or to idolize some part of creation as the solution.”
3: Christians believe no aspect of the world is affected by sin more or less than any other.
In fact, the Christian gospel “is more globally pessimistic about human nature than virtually any other view of things,” Tim writes.
“There is no one class or group of people responsible for the world’s situation; we all are responsible.
“Each of us is capable of the worst kind of evil, and there is nothing we can do to change ourselves, or even see ourselves in our true light, without God’s help.
“And yet, on the basis of God’s salvation in Christ, the gospel allows us to be at the same time deeply optimistic, envisioning not simply heaven but a perfectly renewed material creation.”
What results is a “unique combination of optimism and realism about life,” Tim notes. “Not sentimentality or bitter hopelessness.”
Because “both naive and cynical stories are partly true,” he observes. “Life in this fallen world is to a great degree meaningless, our aspirations are constantly being frustrated, and sometimes the respectable people are oppressive and bigoted.
“And yet there is a Good that will triumph over Evil in the end,” Tim writes.
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: How do I deal with the meaninglessness of life, and how my aspirations are constantly being frustrated?
Action: Journal about my answer to the reflection above.
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