I recently bought some wireless headphones. They had great sound, good battery life and I could use them to make 'hands free' phone calls while my hands otherwise occupied. They were perfect until one day they stopped charging properly. My useful headphones became a frustration once they no longer met their purpose.
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Last week I wrote of God creating this world to fit his good purposes. Yet rather than seeing a world which we might call good, we too often see and experience the opposite. The word which the Bible uses to explain this is sin.
Most commonly, when we speak of sin we think about 'breaking the rules'. Whether sin is a big deal or not then depends on which rules have been broken, and how important we think those rules are. However the Bible sees something deeper going on.
In the Bible, to sin is to reject God's purposes for his world and to live according to our own purposes instead. We are not simply acting in such a way that it breaks God's law, we are approaching life in such a way that we feel we can decide what that law should or should not be!
The trouble is that we are wired to live in the way that God purposed us to live. While in some ways we still experience the goodness which God intended in his creation, we also see the negative effects of rejecting God's purposes ripple not only through our lives, but through the lives of those around us, and into the whole world. But what else should we expect to see? After all, when two people come together who both believe that they have the right to decide what is right and wrong and what the real purpose of life is, that is bound to lead to tension. In a world of nearly eight billion people who believe that they can determine what is right it leads to catastrophe and we see a world of injustice, suffering, misery, conflict and much more.
Yet as we also said last week, to be created to fit with in the larger purposes of God means that how we live truly matters. I suspect that we know this to be true.
For example, when we are wronged by another person, we are sure that a real injustice has occurred. This could not be true if life were an accident with no purpose which transcends what I might decide for myself. In that case while I may not like how another person treats me, I cannot say that their actions are objectively any less valid than how I believe they should have acted. But because God has created with such a purpose, and because that purpose is true for all of us, then I can know that the wrong done to me is wrong objectively. I can take comfort in knowing that God cares about those wrongs and will right those wrongs.
What is more sobering is to realise that the times when I reject God's purpose and act as if I can decide what is right and wrong also truly matters. My own actions matter in the sight of God and my own attitude of rejecting his purposes is something which deserves to be held to account.
Given how little I even consider God in many of my decisions, let alone actively try to conform to the purposes he has for me and his world, I worry that God righting my wrongs leaves me in a hopeless situation.
Thankfully we are only at the beginning of this story and the Bible doesn't stop after telling us there is a problem. It provides God's resounding answer to our problem. Next week we will see how God has lovingly solved our problem in Jesus.