“I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know
that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will not ask, 'How
many good things have you done in your life?' rather he will ask, 'How much
love did you put into what you did?”
As part of our daily routine, my wife and I watch the
evening news with Brian Williams on NBC. It is important to us that we have an
idea of what’s happening around the world, though some days we wonder why. The
effect of hearing about pain and suffering, greed and violence, one tragedy
followed by another, day after day is sometimes more than we can bear. Love of
God and love of neighbor are both woefully absent.
The world is broken
This may be hard to imagine, but a century ago, there were
countless people who believed the world was getting better and better. Among
other things, they believed science and education would bring the necessary
enlightenment to solve all the world’s problems.
Then came World War I, the Great Depression, World War II
with the Holocaust and the atom bomb, and then the Cold War and its threat of
mutually assured destruction. In a span of fifty years any talk of a better
world had come to sound hopelessly idealistic.
Another fifty years have passed and the world strikes us as
being so badly broken it can never be fixed. Occasionally there are signs of
hope; even the NBC news ends with a “Making a Difference” segment that points
out something good someone has done. However, most people today – and
especially those who are younger – have a dim view of the world and its future.
The Bible says sin is at the heart of the world’s problems.
Sin is not a matter of breaking some arbitrary laws God has insisted we obey;
it is putting ourselves first, seeking our own well-being at the expense of
others. Sin is ultimately a love of self that leaves little room for either love
of God or neighbor.
In one of life’s great ironies, it is this love of self that
inevitably becomes self-destructive. Too many end up as broken people living in
a broken world that looks like this:
·
A man enjoys the intimate embrace of a woman,
but has no time for the child born as a result of it.
·
A woman commits adultery and tells her husband
of twenty years, “I never really loved you!”
·
A company executive lays off older employees,
demands more work at less pay from younger ones and is given a bonus for doing
so.
·
A general sends troops into certain death in
pursuit of a military objective of uncertain value.
·
A society acts with hurtful prejudice toward
those who are of a different race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual
orientation.
·
A leader kills tens of thousands of his own
people in order to prop up his failing regime.
These are but a few examples of human sinfulness and
probably not even the worst. What they share in common, though, is the
devastation and destruction they produce.
Unfortunately, our attempts to fix what’s wrong with the world
have accomplished little. We declared a war on drugs and imprisoned everyone
who sold or possessed them, but what we ended up with 40 years and a trillion
dollars later were overcrowded prisons and no appreciable decline in drug use. Many
wonder what has accomplished by “wars” on poverty, crime, or illegal
immigration, or by our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
God has a plan to fix our broken world
There isn’t actually much new about the problems we face today. Our weapons may be more destructive than what has come before, but those of us who wield them are probably no more evil than our ancestors.
Some days we might wish we could eliminate everyone who is
part of the problem. If we did so, however, there might not be anyone left.
The biblical story of Noah describes this very thing. God wiped
out the whole world and started all over with only one good man and his family.
The flood didn’t solve anything, though, because afterward God could see the
inclination of the human heart to evil remained unchanged.
God’s plan to fix a broken world began anew by calling Abraham,
who was old and childless, to leave everything for a new land where he would be
the founder of a new people. God revealed himself to Abraham and his
descendants in ways that were personal and powerful. Through Moses God gave his
Law to let people know how they ought to live; God also prescribed a means of
offering sacrifices when people failed to live as they should.
Some great things happened as the Chosen People lived in the
Promised Land, but there were still huge problems. Rather than being a light to
other nations, the Chosen People too often ended up being just like them. This
national failure included a leadership problem as many of the kings lived in
open rebellion against God.
Prophets arose to confront these evil rulers and to speak of
God’s plan for a coming king, an anointed Messiah, who would rule in
righteousness, establishing a kingdom where the “shalom” (peace and well-being)
God desired for the world would become a reality. People began to look forward
to this “Day of the Lord” when the broken world would be fixed.
Hundreds of years passed before Jesus burst on the scene
saying, “The time has come; the kingdom of God is at hand. Turn from your evil
ways and believe the good news.” This proclamation of the coming kingdom was accompanied
by acts of healing and other miraculous signs. God’s light was shining in the darkness as the
“shalom” of God began to impact our broken world through Jesus.
Excited crowds followed him in eager anticipation of what
was to come if he truly was the Messiah, but no one was prepared for Jesus to
be arrested and crucified. Jesus had given hints of his sacrificial death all
along, but everyone was too excited about his expected triumph to pay much attention
to them.
The death of Jesus, however, was central to God’s plan.
Human depravity is simply too great to be overlooked. God’s love is vast enough
to forgive everyone who does wrong, but doing so would trivialize every
victim’s pain and suffering in ways totally inconsistent with God’s love.
Neither is it possible for humanity to atone for the wrong
we have done. A drunk driver who sobers up and convinces hundreds of others to
act responsibly has still done nothing to make it right with the family whose
child was killed in an alcohol-fueled accident.
We all stand condemned for the things we have done and for
the things we have failed to do. Doing nothing to restrain evil allows it to
thrive.
God’s plan recognizes there is a price to be paid for all of
this, a price beyond what any of us or all of us could pay even with our
lives.
The only suffering that could possible atone for the
suffering of humanity would be the suffering of God himself. This is the
mystery and the miracle of the cross: Jesus, the Son of God who knew no sin,
took our sins upon himself and died in our place.
The cross was at the heart of God’s plan, but it was not the
end of it. God raised Jesus from the dead, affirming the truth of everything
Jesus had said and done. The resurrection also assured the return of Jesus as
King of kings and Lord of lords, and our own resurrection in the recreated
heavens and earth.
You have a place in God’s plan
This is God’s plan to fix a broken world and you have a place in it. Simply believing the story is not enough; God wants you to live it day by day.
God has not left us in the dark concerning how we ought to
live. In Matthew 22:34-40 Jesus gave us a summary of everything God asks of us:
When the Pharisees heard that he had
silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer,
asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the
greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest
and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor
as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
By summarizing the Law in this way, Jesus made it simple to
obey God, but he did not make it easy.
To love God with all our heart,
soul and mind calls for total commitment. It changes how we worship, what we
value and how we live every aspect of our lives.
Likewise, to love our neighbor as
ourselves sets the bar high. This is not about tolerating each other or
learning to get along, but about caring as much about the well-being of others
as we do about our own.
Neither love for God nor love for neighbor comes to us
naturally because we live in a world that teaches us just the opposite. In
order for us to love our neighbors – and even our enemies – in the way God
wants, there is much for us to learn, and much for us to unlearn.
The purpose of this book is to help you grow in your love
for God by learning to love your neighbor. As you experience this journey over
the coming months, may you indeed find your place in God’s plan to fix a broken
world, and may the process of discovering it be the adventure of a lifetime!
