ROMANS 3:10-12 – “As it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.””
THEME OF THE DAY: A GARDEN VIEW OF THE WORLD AND OURSELVES. The world is a hurting place full of hurting people. It is hurt manifested on the faces of people who know the painful reality of living in a messed up world where grieving, sorrow, confusion, evil, and meaningless routines seem to define most of life. Within these hurting people are four categories distinguished by how they handle their personal hurt, pain, and suffering in the world. It is only the last group that is able to make sense of the world and live above it.
The first group of hurting people admit it. They are not afraid to realize and confess this world is a miserable place full of much trouble and trial. They embrace the words of Job, “Man who is born of a woman is few of days and full of trouble” (Job 14:1). However, they have no answer and basically just exist, not live, resigning themselves to a life of little enjoyment and much misery.
The second group of hurting people attempt to ignore the pain of living in a fallen world. They don’t ask the hard question of “Why is life like is?”. They attempt to avoid pain, suffering, and grief by seeking pleasure and satisfaction of their fleshly desires. They resort to drugs, alcohol, immoral relationships, and anything else able to distract, even quiet, the gnawing dissatisfaction and discontent lying deep inside their very beings. This group is a reason why people go into huge debt – seeking to find satisfaction in something new which quickly becomes old needing to be replaced with something new. The prodigal son in Luke 15 is a great example. Live for the now; “go for the gusto”; fulfill all the passions of fallen flesh; give oneself over to pleasure in seeking to find something or someone to soothe the pain of living in a fallen world. And like category number one, this too will only lead to futility, folly, and failure.
The third group of hurting people won’t resign themselves to life being nothing but misery. They won’t be passive and just say, “It is what it is” as does group one. Nor will this group refuse to let go all restraint, as in group two, and seek pleasure to escape from reality. These people acknowledge pain, suffering, and evil, but put their confidence to provide the answer in the evolving wisdom of man and humanism. They advocate more education and place high stock on technology and man’s ability to solve the world’s problems. The problem with this group is not ignorance, but self-deception and a failure to see there is nothing new under the sun. They fail to learn from history. Man’s moral problem is not due to a lack of education or solved by “doing better”. We may call this the folly of relying upon humanistic moralism to solve a spiritual problem. Outward conformity never works because this is a heart issue, not a behavior issue.
The final group of people get it right. Hopefully, that is all of us. The only group of people seeing the world as it really is, are Christians. We know why the world is a chaotic mess and we know the only solution. And here it is . . . the only proper way to see the world and ourselves is from a ‘garden view.’ Unless we constantly remember the catastrophic event of the fall of humanity in the Garden of Eden and the entrance of sin into the world, life with all its confusion, pain, suffering, and evil will never be understood. The reason the world is in such turmoil, full of strife, contention, and selfishness is due to sin. Humanity, including us, is not just a little sick or needing moral education, but hopelessly dead in sin with a will, a heart, and a mind totally depraved and incapable of fixing our dilemma. We are hopelessly broken. And the only solution is the Gospel of Jesus Christ understood, embraced, cherished, and proclaimed. Without a ‘garden-view’ of the condition of the world and humanity, we cannot make sense of anything under the sun (Genesis 3; Ecclesiastes 1:12-18).
The world is in bondage; and the only answer is outside of ourselves. It is in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus. May the Lord help us develop and maintain a worldview coming from heaven, not from our own understanding or the world. As followers of Christ, we have the only answer. Let’s not keep it to ourselves in a hurting world.
PRAYER: Father, help me have my worldview shaped not from the world, but from You and Your Word.
REFLECTION: If we don’t see the world as it really is and sin as bad is it really is, we will reduce Christianity to mere morality.