World Peace and Sin

I had an interesting conversation about war and world peace with a friend of mine the other day that made me realize that how you view the human condition has a lot to do with what you think people are capable of both morally and socially.

My friend, who I’ll refer to as “Bob”, basically had two suggestions as to how war should be eradicated or at the very least, kept to a minimum. The first thing Bob brought up was that with so many countries possessing nuclear weapons that instead of fighting wars countries should go straight to the negotiating table since they know that there’s a possibility that their entire nation could be whipped out. His second idea was that if you made it so that war was no longer profitable it would be less likely to happen and if it did it would end quicker. To ensure that war isn’t profitable Bob suggested that everyone in the warring countries have their salaries reduced to the lowest pay grade in their countries military.

While I’m all for world peace I do have a theological problem with it, namely, sin. I know sin is not a popular idea in today’s culture but it is THE problem, it always has been and will continue to be until Jesus comes back. Pride and self-centeredness were the original sin (Gen. 3) and can still be found at the root of all other sin, in this case war. Because I believe in sin and the effect it has on the entire world I don’t believe you can ever find a formula that will usher in world peace no matter how badly I may want it. I’ll use Bob’s two suggestions to show how sin makes world peace unattainable.

The idea that you can somehow make war unprofitable is highly unlikely. War will always generate money, even if you do somehow manage to enforce a salary cap on an entire nation people will find a way around it. Because our own comfort and security is what we most value we will find ways to enhance it, in this case through some backwater way of gaining extra money. This is also the kind of environment that organized crime and the black market thrive in. Anytime you outlaw or limit the availability of an item, or in this case people’s ability to buy them, an illegal form of obtaining them will emerge it’s a simple matter of supply and demand. (Prohibition anyone?) This means that by implementing a law you thought would improve the human state you’ve actually made it worse and caused people to delve deeper into the baser desires of the human soul.

The reason people will never sit down at a table and negotiate is because both sides are only concerned about getting what they want, not about what the other side wants. Say, for example, one country wants to invade the other one so it can have access to the other countries natural resources free of charge. There is no way you can successfully negotiate that situation so that everyone comes away happy, one side thinks that they should be given something that isn’t theirs and the other side thinks they should keep what is rightfully theirs. This almost always leads to some form of armed conflict with one side trying to take what they want and the other side endeavoring to hold on to it.

More and more though wars are fought over ideology and less over physical territory, which leads to a real problem if you believe that people should believe whatever works for them because you can’t say that either side is wrong or right. Both sides are standing up for what they believe in, which is what their belief system teaches them to do which makes them both right if you believe you should do “whatever works for you”. Without an absolute right and wrong it becomes impossible to call war a bad thing, really the only people who have a right to call war evil are the ones with a moral code that has a clear standard of right and wrong.

As Christians we believe that the morale code laid out in the Bible is the only one capable of producing the right heart attitude to properly view our world. The world we live in is torn and shattered by the curse of sin (Rom. 8:20-24) and the only one who can restore it to sinless perfection is Jesus. For those of us who believe this we should be leading the way towards finding humane peaceful ways of resolving conflict, not because we think world peace is an achievable goal in this lifetime, but because we believe in the one who will one day come forever destroying sin and thus bring world peace.

My sin

Trying to work through writers block. I hate that word, that state of being. I’m sitting here trying to get my thoughts out on a piece of paper and my brain decides to stop feeding me anything worth typing and all I’m left with is deep, unpenetratable darkness and fog rolling around my mind. Clogging all avenues of thought and forcing me to find my way through the side streets and back alleys of thought. As I try to find my way to a clear thought I pass places I haven’t ventured in years and never dared to stay and visit for fear of what I’d remember and the things they would cause me to feel. The sorrow of loss, the deep despair of depression and hopelessness, the stabbing pain of betrayal, the fear of living a lie. They all come rushing back to me as I stop and stare into the storefronts in my mind. The stores have names like, “My Family”, “High school”, “The Air Force”, “Girls”, and “People I thought were friends”. I want to turn and walk away, to never look at these things again but I can’t. I’m held there in a state of morbid curiosity praying, hoping, pleading, that somehow as I watch the past unfold in front of me that this time things will turn out different. That maybe this time my cousin won’t get addicted to drugs. That I’ll do more with my teenage years, instead of waiting until I’m 17 to pay attention to God’s voice. That I’ll be a better leader in basic training this time. That if I replay it over in my mind for the millionth time I won’t have to break up with my girlfriend. And maybe, just maybe, this time people will care enough about me to keep me from spending the better part of a night hunched over a toilet puking my guts out.

Instead I see the same things I always see. The heartbreak, the selfishness, the stupidity, the poor choices, and the nights of crying myself to sleep. I want to tear myself away from the horror show playing out before me, but I can’t, I won’t, because as painful as it is to watch I remember what comes next. The restoration, the redemption, the growth, and finding a spiritual depth I never dreamed of. Not because I deserve it, but because Jesus died for me. He died to cover my sin, my pain, my stupidity, and my invisible spine and redeem them. He reaches into the farthest, most dirty areas of my life and transforms them into something amazing; something new, clean, and pure. And all I can do in return is give Him all the glory for it, there’s nothing about the process I can take credit for. The images in the store’s windows are painful reminders that on my own I’m useless and constantly making a mess out of things.

Jesus is the only thing I have that’s worth anything, the only one who can put me back together, the only one who’s ever lived a perfect life so I wouldn’t have to, and that makes Him the only thing worth clinging to. Not my scars, my pride, or my pain. So I watch the movies play themselves out again and again to remind myself of a love greater and stronger than all my sin. I don’t enjoy the suffering, but I love being rescued.

If you don't have Jesus you don't have jack

I visited a local church today as part of my philosophy class requirement and came away incredibly upset by the experience. This a church I've been hearing about for some time and I was really looking forward to visiting it but by the end of the service it was all I could do not to stand up and start yelling at the pastor. I kept thinking that at some point he'd say what I expect to hear in any church that is truly a church, but he never did. Not once did he mention sin, repentance, and most importantly there was no mention of Jesus being the only way to heaven. In fact throughout the entire service of singing, praying, and the message, none of these things was touched on. In fact I don't think I heard the name of Jesus mentioned once.

This may seem incredibly obvious but I'll say it any anyway; if you don't have Christ at the center of what you're doing, you don't have Christianity. You have a group of nice, moral, caring people who are going to Hell. I'm glad they care about the city and in particular the downtrodden and mistreated but if the Gospel of Jesus' redemptive work through His life, death, and resurrection, isn't at the heart of what you're doing you're doing it in vain. What I attended this morning was a meeting for spiritual/religious people who want to have the trappings of a church (worship music, prayer, sermon) without the message of the church. The pastor kept making references to "speaking and living the truth" without ever saying what that truth was. You can't live and speak something you don't know, and these people don't truly know Jesus and His message therefore they don't know The Truth.

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." - Jesus, John 14:5-7

Also if there is no sin then why did Jesus have to come and pay for it with his life? If there's no sin then Christians have the most dumb, pointless, and useless belief system in the world. If there's no sin there is no reason for Jesus to come and die, which means we believe in a God who is either small minded and simple, or incredibly cruel, neither of which is worth following. So if Christianity is true then sin is real.

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." - Romans 3:23

If we really, truly love the world we will tell them the hard truth: No one is good enough to get into Heaven on their own and it's only by believing that Jesus is the only payment for our sins that we will be allowed into Heaven. And that is The Truth.