“How
can you believe all this stuff?”
I
asked her, “What stuff are you talking about?”
“Well,”
she answered, “all this stuff about the world becoming a place of peace
and love. How can you believe it? I mean, just look around!” She spread her
arms wide. “The world is messed up beyond belief. How can you believe that God
is going to fix it? It’s just a fantasy.”
I had
to think for a while about my response. The world is indeed warped and broken, and we all know it. Turn on any newscast, open
any newspaper, or fire up any internet browser, and you’ll see all kinds of bad
news. Our political system is dysfunctional. Sexual harassment is rampant. Human
trafficking is widespread. Even the environment is suffering the effects of
human greed and ignorance. And that’s only in our own country! If we look
farther afield, we see millions of victims of war, poverty, and natural
disasters. We see refugees, starving children, and dictators who commit
incredible acts of brutality on their fellow human beings. My friend is
absolutely right – the world is messed up beyond belief. On this day that
we celebrate the coming reign of Christ, the time when all the problems of the
world will melt away like ice cream in the summer sun, all Christians
should ask themselves: Do we really believe – as my friend puts it – all this
stuff? And if we do, how do we respond to those who say that it's a fantasy, if not a mass hallucination?
Maybe
the best response goes something like this.
First,
love is the most powerful force in the universe. If you don’t want to call it
“love,” you can call it “attraction.” It is, quite simply, the force that holds
the whole universe together. “Love” is just the name that we give it when we experience
it in our own lives. Love is the magnet that keeps us together in spite of hurt
and misunderstanding and stupidity. Without it, everything would fall apart
like grains of sand when they are tossed into the wind.
Second,
love comes from God, the One who is shown to us in Jesu1: Christ. Love is the
foundation of the universe because God created it; and all creators put
a part of themselves into what they make. The author of the New Testament book
of Colossians said exactly that when he wrote (1:15-17), “The Son is the image of
the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, for in him all things were
created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones
or powers or rulers or authorities. All things have been created through him
and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
Finally,
because God’s love is the most powerful force in the universe, it must triumph
in the end. Our world is messed up now because God gives us the freedom to make
choices – and we make really bad choices all the time! But some day, even though
we don’t know when or how, love will get the last word; and on that day, God’s
kingdom will come in fullness. All the bad choices that we’ve made will be repaired, and we and the world that we live in will be made whole. God won’t just
slap a bandage on the universe; God will do major surgery and heal everything
once and for all through the irresistible power of love.
Now,
if you believe all this (and I certainly hope that you do), then I call on you
to be a resistor! I’m not talking about a “resister” in the political sense, of
someone taking a stance against government policies and practicing civil
disobedience (although if you decide to do that, more power to you). No, I’m
talking about a “resistor” in the electrical sense! A resistor is anything that
slows the flow of electricity through a circuit. Now, don’t worry – I’m not
going to ask you to stick your finger into an electrical socket. We humans can’t
resist electricity all by ourselves. But we can help
to resist the flow of despair that is surging through our country like a roller
coaster. That despair is being fed by a whole host of problems: an inability to
communicate effectively with one another, governmental dysfunction, a
resurgence of hate crimes, a lack of jobs that pay a living wage, unaffordable health
care, and rampant gun violence. Faced with these evils and all kinds of others like
them, it’s no wonder that people are despairing! So it’s up to us Christians to
be resistors and proclaim that despite all the evils that we face, those evils
won’t win in the end. The appalling situations in which we find ourselves
aren’t permanent. They must one day give way to the power of God’s love that
offers peace and joy to the entire creation!
I once
heard the story of a preacher who misunderstood the language of the King James
Bible. When he read “And it came to pass,” he didn’t understand that “It came
to pass” is simply an old way of saying “It happened.” So he preached a whole sermon
on how all the problems of our world will one day disappear, because the Bible
says that they have only “come to pass.” His knowledge of the Bible may need a
little bit of help, but that sermon was right on track! Our problems aren’t
permanent; and we resistors need to keep saying that to folks who are in the
depths of despair. “Hang on!” we should be saying. “This situation won’t last
forever! God will get the last word!” I don’t know about you, but the certainty
that God’s kingdom will arrive someday and that Christ will rule over
everything is sometimes the only thing that lets me get to sleep at night. It’s
what keeps me from going haywire in the middle of the tempest that is today’s
world. It’s what gives me the strength to go on. Let’s share that message! Let’s
be resistors! And let’s not only proclaim hope; let’s show other people what it
looks like! Let’s be little pieces of the reign of Christ that God has promised
us, full of hope and love and peace! Maybe if all of us started doing that on a regular basis, more people would join us in believing “all this stuff.”
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