The Christian worldview offers us this: human nature is fundamentally broken. This is not an angry or pessimistic perspective, any more than the dentist telling you that you've got a cavity. It simply is.
We were made to be image bearers--bearers of God's perfect image. We were made to represent or reflect something of God's goodness perfectly, if incompletely.
Scot (only one 't') McKnight in his book Embracing Grace uses the analogy of icons on a computer. When you and I were double-clicked on, whenever we took on a task--answered the phone, drove to work, checked e-mail, took a nap--we were supposed to mediate something of God's goodness, His beauty, truth, love, perfection to one another and to experience it ourselves.
But then sin happened, and the icons cracked. Sin is broken relationship. We are fallen, broken relationship-type people. Now when I'm double-clicked on, this icon may or may not produce something of God's character. It depends on how much sleep I got, what I ate for lunch, and if I happen to like you today or not.
We've broken relationship first with God and secondarily with one another, with the ways that we write laws and handle money and sexuality and t.v. and power and natural resources.
See, we were made to worship God, love people and use things. Instead, we worship our own desires, love things and use people.
And so when we come together and make nation-states and militaries and build supermarkets and churches and make movies, it all so easily goes so very wrong.
2 comments:
This whole discussion really points back to Krispy Kreme. Scot McKnight lives approximately four miles away from a Krispy Kreme in the Chicago suburb just below the one where I live.
dude, it's really all about krispy kreme...thanks for bringing us back to the basics, burly.
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