Utopia

Today’s news is full of terrorist attacks in Paris. The militant Islamic group ISIS is taking responsibility. I can’t imagine being in Paris, enjoying an evening out and having it turn to horror in the blink of an eye. Yet that appears to be the reality of today’s world. It doesn’t matter if it’s ISIS or homegrown, disenfranchised high school students attacking classmates, our world seems to be overrun by violence. But, what else is new? At almost any point in history you could have said the same thing.

Do you wonder why I say our world is broken?  For centuries humanity has tried to find their utopia, and failed. Many have believed that religion is the answer. ISIS wants an Islamic state, ruled by Islamic law and sees their utopia there. But the non-Islamic world sees it as anything but utopic. Rome tried to make an entire empire Christian. That didn’t work out either. History shows that the religious rulers enjoyed their power a little too much and turned utopia into a lot of people’s nightmares. Today the west basically would like to be religion free. Even when you take religion out of the picture mankind would still struggle over who would have power in the utopia and spoil everything. Utopia is just not in our nature.  If nothing else, history should teach us that.

The problem is us. We’re broken, even the best we do falls far short of perfection. Ancient Israel makes a great example. They had a theocracy, headed by the Creator God. All they had to do was obey His commandments and they’d have utopia. Sounds easy. In fact, the Bible tells us that Israel said to God, “anything you ask us to do, we will do.”  So God called Moses up on Mt. Sinai to witness God whip out those Ten Commandments, and while he was gone, the Israelites pooled all their gold together and made an idol, a god shaped and made by their own hands.  A god they could control who required a bit less of them. That entire experience of being saved out of Egypt and brought across the wilderness towards the Promised Land is stock full of Israel’s dislike of their “utopia”. All their needs were provided for, but they didn’t like the provisions. They found something wrong in everything God did for them. So much for a utopia even when God is in charge.

That’s a good symptom of brokenness. We don’t like God, or anyone else, to be in charge. We want to be in charge of our own destiny, and the world we see today is the child of that desire. The more we try the worse it gets. The Israelites may have promised to do whatever God asked of them, but they broke the first Commandment before they even saw it, and built themselves another god. But you try it, try and live the Ten Commandments. Maybe you’ve never killed anyone, or committed adultery, or stolen anything. But it’s hard to have never envied anyone. And most of us fail at obeying our parents. Even if we kept the majority of the commandments, the Bible doesn’t let us off the hook that easily. The little spoken of reality is, you break one, you break them all.  God doesn’t grade on the curve. Jesus made it even more complicated by saying that if we are angry with someone, it’s really the same as murder, because that’s where murder starts, in our mind, with anger or hurt.  Or if you’ve been lusting after someone, it’s as good as adultery, because, again, that’s where it all begins.

Above all, there are the first commandments that deal with our respect for and behavior towards our Creator God. God says we are to have nothing before him in importance. Well, that’s far easier said than done. Our lives reflect what we cherish. That’s the measure of our commitment to God. Does he really come first? And can we keep it up 100 percent of the time. No, because we’re broken.

The good news is that God chose to take care of this issue. He never intended or believed the Israelites could perfectly obey the Ten Commandments. What he really wanted was for them to recognize the fact that they could not do it, and admit it. Remember, sin simply means “missing the mark”. Try as hard as we can, we can never hit that mark. Never. So God sent his Son to hit the mark in our place. Who does that?  Who steps in to take our place, especially if it requires death? Very few.  And no one could take our place from God’s Holy requirements, unless it was God himself. Because no one else is good enough.

The idea that you can earn your way in Christianity is a huge misunderstanding of the Bible. The Israelites couldn’t earn their way, and we cannot earn ours.  We can never hit the mark. Christianity isn’t earned, it’s accepted. The Bible says the only thing we earn is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life. It’s freely given, not earned. We have this gift being handed to us, and all we have to do is accept. Easier said than done, because we really want to earn our own way, and are a bit suspicious of free gifts

As long as people turn their backs on God’s gift, there will be no peace on earth. It just won’t happen. We might have lulls, but the fact is, because we are broken, we just can’t get it right, no matter how hard we try. Our only hope lies in doing it God’s way. And that means giving up control, saying “I can’t do it”, and asking God for his gift. That’s the first step to utopia