Sometimes
I think there are two ways of looking at the world. On the one hand, there’s no
denying that life is hard. It is impossible to dispute the fact that, actually,
this earth is full of quite a lot of crap. Why? Well, it’s full of people,
that’s why. And people are pretty crappy.
We see
it everywhere. The article about some sicko molesting young girls; the news
bulletin concerning violent protests against political oppression that most
probably speaks of wrongs on both sides of the issue; the young girl on the
school run with two kids under five, no father figure and a black eye; that guy
at the office who constantly lies on the phone to clients, and you happen to
know he’s also cheating on his wife.
And
not just people. We see it in nature too. As I sit and write this, the
headlines of the last few weeks have been filled with scenes of devastation
caused by earthquakes, floods and tsunamis.
The
problem… Sin. Everything’s just completely out of sync. Creation. Humanity. Everything…
We’re fallen, broken, stained, corrupted- marred beyond repair.
Or are
we?
See,
then there’s the other way of seeing things- the other side of the coin. For
just as undeniable as the mindless mess of this marred world is, when one
really stops to think about it, the shocking goodness that’s inherently present
in this life. Again, this spans across the breadth of both creation and
humanity. The startling power and beauty of unspoiled nature, from a sunset to
a mountain to a waterfall. The unmistakable inbuilt spark of creativity which
every human being possesses- the potential to be inspired, have ideas and make
them happen, whether to better some set of circumstances or create simply for
creating’s sake. The joy of relationships, the innate love people have for one
another. The outcome of the practice of ‘play’, be it kids reveling in
imagination or fully grown adults engaging in informal competition, that brings
forth the mysterious happiness of, for want of a better word, fun. Laughter.
Beauty. Life. All these are here
in abundance.
Beauty.
Joy. Peace.
Sin.
Pain. Distress.
Two
sides of one coin, both equally unfathomably true. So what gives? Which one
wins? One can’t help but observe in honesty, that more often, than not, it’s
the latter.
The
sad fact of the matter is that most of the time, all the ‘badness’ of the world
we inhabit somehow outranks and overshadows any goodness experienced in the
lives we live. Or, if not, we at least focus much more on the downside. We just
can’t help it.
But
what if there’s a third way? What if there’s a lens through which to view all
of life, the world and everything, that truly takes into account both heads and
tails, but still provides genuine hope and, moreover,
gives chance to honestly experience an ‘explosion of joy’…?
Some
of us believe there is. We call it Redemption.
See,
if what we read in our Bibles is true, that means we have to honestly accept
and affirm both the
beauty of creation and humanity as intended and the total depravity and corruption
resultant of sin entering the world. But it also means the story, and our
thinking, doesn’t end there. If we believe in the resurrection of Christ, and
we believe in the outpouring of God’s Spirit to gradually empower and perfect
and complete, and we believe in a Kingdom of God which starts out as the
smallest of seeds but grows to become the biggest of trees, imminently
irrupting this current natural order and the whole way of this weary world
until one day it comes in completion; if we believe Jesus’ rising from the dead
enables us to move from a realm of darkness to light and be in genuine
relationship with God himself… Surely this changes everything.
Our
thinking. Our living. The very way we view the world.
This
third way of Redemption allows us truly to hold in tension all the good and bad as we ‘practise
resurrection’- this way of seeing enacts a way of being that lives out the
great Hope we have. It’s as if the coin always lands propped up on it’s side,
and along the edge is written a higher truth.
What
this means is that we cease to see the world around us simply as it is and
appears to be. Not that we don’t acknowledge that, but that the present facts
of the current state of play no longer need lead us to a prison of paralysis,
as our understanding of Redemption and Resurrection allows us to also dream and
envision and see what any given person or place could be.
This
is not blind denial of one side of the coin in order to emphasize the other…
but rather a holistic, whole-hearted, all-acknowledging recognition of BOTH…
and a belief- a hope (both certain and expectant) in a third dimension to this
discussion, and indeed, a future fourth.
That’s
what enables
us to genuinely seek to be ‘an explosion of joy’ in our area abandoned by
Empire. If you want to know what that looks like, read on.
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