This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed- John 3:18-19
Okay, so I recently realized I have somehow morphed into a “New Testament person”.
This simply means I tend to do most of my devotional reading out of the New Testament books. In an effort to break out of the rut, I revisited 1st Kings. It didn’t take long for me to recall why I have been gravitating towards the New Testament. 1st Kings is depressing. Really. Depressing. Like lose your faith in humanity depressing. The first half of the book is just an endless litany of the sin and bad behavior of one horrid king after another even more horrid king. The sin of the king was then followed by a season of oppression or famine that was obviously God’s judgment. The people (who were also sinning like crazy) completely ignored or wrote off the obvious judgment as a giant nothing sandwich. The book actually had me feeling quite smug about the superiority of modern humans.
At least until I did some thinking and put some things together.
Like, the fact that our own federal, state and local governments have been doing some pretty awful things at home and abroad for quite some time now. That’s how we got Critical Race Theory in most of our public schools. It’s how we ended up with the gender unicorn and queer story hour. It’s why the censorship of ideas is suddenly standard operating procedure. We got here because many of our leaders over the course of the last fifty years have born a striking resemblance to Old Testament kings like Rehoboam, Jeroboam, Abijam and Omri.
However.
We cannot in good conscience blame the government for all our problems. We elected these people. It’s not as if they were imposed on us by some outside force. We picked them. It’s also not as if queer story hour or the gender unicorn appeared out of the clear-blue sky sometime in 2020. Those kinds of ideas slowly became acceptable and eventually mainstream because individuals rejected truth about God (Romans 1:19-22). Anytime humans willfully reject truth lies fill the void and we do and believe weird things that are ultimately foolish, silly and even evil (Romans 1:23-32). Sin is why respect for human life has evaporated into thin air. Sin is at the root of the barbaric practice of transitioning boys into girls and girls into boys. Sin and its offspring selfishness are why the birth rate is plummeting. Sin is the reason public discourse has crumbled and why we routinely have riots in the street. Sin is why many major cities are no longer safe places.
We did this to ourselves.
Sin inevitably leads to judgment and that’s where we’re living right now. Even in church world it’s not popular to use the J-word. I’m using it anyway. Judgment. The world is under judgment. Not just America or Mexico or England or Russia. The whole stupid world has fallen under the judgment of God for rejecting Him and embracing every kind of depravity and ridiculous idea imaginable (Romans 1:30). Irrational fear, dumb leaders, loss of personal rights and censorship are not just the result of people being stupid or governments being evil. Those things are God’s attempt to get us to come to our senses and repent before we sin ourselves into extinction. This does not mean God is angry at every single person on the planet. God is slow to judge partly because in any judgment it is impossible separate the righteous from the wicked. The righteous always suffer the consequences of sins they didn’t commit. Nonetheless, there comes a point where even our good, gracious longsuffering God must say “no more” in order to stay true to Himself and keep humanity from self-destructing.
So, what is a Christian to do?
First, we have to recognize that there are no quick fixes or easy outs at this point. The pain will continue unabated until people repent and turn to Jesus. However, there are some things Christians can do to be a light in these dark times (Matthew 5:13-16, Luke 11:33). If we consistently do them we might lead the world back to a place of wholeness.
We have to tell the truth about things that really matter.
Things like heaven and hell and judgment. We have to stop being afraid our friends and neighbors will think we are small-minded party-poopers if we come out as Christians who actually believe the Bible. We have to tell our friends and family who claim to be Christians but don’t think they have to do what the Bible says that they have missed a critical aspect of saving faith (Luke 11:28, John 8:51, John 14:21, Romans 2:13, 2nd Thessalonians 3:14, Hebrews 4:2, Hebrews 5:9).
We must learn be like Jesus.
Jesus loved everyone and He never stopped hoping that people would turn to Him in repentance and faith (Matthew 23:47). He literally wept for the lost and grieved for those who rejected truth. However, He also spoke the truth even when people hated Him for it (John 7:7). Jesus understood some things are more important than being honored by the multitudes.
And finally, we must remember life is good and beautiful and worth living to the fullest all the time, even in the toughest of times.
We still get to enjoy sunrises and sunsets that take our breath away. The rain is still falling on the just and the unjust. Friendships are being forged. Babies are being born. Marriages are being celebrated. Songs are being sung, words are turned into poetry. All the noble and good and beautiful things worthy of celebration are still a part of our world because God is still good.
We should celebrate those things because when we do it reminds us of the goodness of God and draws people to Jesus.
