Looking at the world around us it’s easy to find ourselves asking this question. When we see the suffering, the depression, the poverty, and the horror of everyday life for so many it’s hard not to see the nightmare reality of this world as a curse.
That’s a good place to start searching for the meaning in it all because it is a curse.
You see when God created the world He created it as a good thing, a wondrous, and beautiful thing. Here’s the rub; actions have consequences.
I’ve always thought if I ever found a perfect church, I’d spoil it by joining because I’m not perfect. Most of us mature enough in life to realize we aren’t quite what we could or should be. Some people never attain this level of self-awareness, and we judge them to suffer from a type of psychological problem known as narcissism. A central aspect of narcissism is grandiosity. That is, narcissists tend to think highly of themselves. In particular, they tend to have a positive view of themselves compared to other people.
Most of us don’t suffer from this malady. It is more often some form of feeling we aren’t good enough that plagues us. Those who stumble out of a dysfunctional family are all too often familiar with this one.
Whatever brand of psychobabble seeps through our lives working itself out in hubris and braggadocio or anxiety and self-doubt it doesn’t take a genius to figure out this world is messed up. Neither is it too complicated for the least perceptive among us to discern. All too often what the world calls good is bad and what the world calls bad is good.[1] This alone is enough to make us see the fractured carnival mirror reflection of justice that permeates our reality. Add to this our personal experiences and anyone who thinks we’ve found ourselves in a bed of roses may be fooling themselves, but they aren’t fooling anyone else.
Anyone who can walk through this vale of tears with no faith is a better man then I Gunga Din.[2]
I wasn’t able to do it. I made it till I was thirty years old and the meaninglessness of it all was on the verge of driving me to suicide. I kept coming back to if that’s all there is, my friends then let’s keep dancing let’s break out the booze and have a ball if that’s all there is.[3] However, I found living at the perpetual party at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe was not very uplifting and after a while I couldn’t even pretend it was fun.[4] How anyone can stagger through all this with no hope of anything beyond this is beyond me.
I can only pray that if they ever come to the end of themselves, they will look to God. That’s what I did and I was surprised to find that God was looking at me.
‘Why is the world so messed up? Because God made man His viceroy in this creation and instead of listening to God and doing things His way we listened to Satan and gave the whole shooting match away. The story is there for us in Genesis and because of that decision God laid a curse on the whole deal.
But He also gave us a promise at the same time that He would send a Savior. Jesus is that Savior. The penalty for disobeying God is eternal separation from God. The only way back is to live a perfect life which no one can do. So, God became a human, lived a perfect life, and then died for the sins He never committed as a substitute for us.
In doing this He defeated sin, death, and the Devil. He also opened the way for all of us to get in on the action. All we have to do is accept Jesus as our leader in life and believe that God raised Him from the dead and that’s it. The whole deal is reversed, and we’re once welcomed home. Let’s run like the prodigal to greet the Father who has waited for us, who greets us like the like lost child we are.
Does any of this make any sense? It does. As a matter of fact, it makes perfect sense.
You see no matter how messed up it is if we will accept God’s offer, if we will step past the end of ourselves and into His waiting arms the veil will fall from our eyes, and we will see this world for what it is: an incubator for the children of God.
It’s not a matter of seeing and then believing instead it’s a case of believing so you can see.
The Bible lays all this out in great detail. Anyone who’s interested can contact me for a guided tour.
[1] Isaiah 5:20
[2] Gunga Din by Rudyard Kipling
[3] Is That All There Is by Peggy Lee
[4] Restaurant at the End of the Universe the 2nd book of the trilogy The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
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