How to Fix the World

Timothy Kellor made an interesting point in his book, Counterfeit Gods. He said, “The Bible is unique in its uncompromising rejection of all attempts to identify part of creation as either the villain or the savior.”

All worldviews trend toward villanizing some aspect of life that is the root cause of the worlds problems. Fix “this or that” and everything else will fall into place they believe.

For Buddha it was desire itself. For Socrates it was the body. For Rousseau it was opportunity. For Marx it was class based. For the enlightenment it was rationalism. For post-modernism (both rich and poor) it is power structures.

But the problem is, they never work in the long-term. They make huge promises. They make ideological claims of utopia. Yet the problems remain. Thats because the answer to evil in the world isn’t to fix it, it’s to replace it with version 2.0.

The scriptures teach that the answer lies in the corrupted human heart. Our nature is incurably evil and must be replaced. The only option therefore is that the caterpillar must metamorph into a butterfly. And this is not simply a fixing, but rather a complete destruction of everything we know and see. Because it isn’t just the software that has a virus, the hardware itself is broken and must be replaced.

Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” And in John 3:5-6 Jesus said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, they cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

Hence we must be a part of a second creation. A new earth that begins now in the human Spirit only in small measure. And in whole at the second coming of Christ, when He recreates the entire world.

So don’t make idols of this worlds promises. Utopia has never come. Nor can it ever be achieved. Time has proven it over and over again. Human nature is just too easily seduced. Clearly, we are incapable of playing god.

When Jesus returns, it won’t be to fix what is broken. When He returns, everything will be cleansed by fire and made new from the ground up. And that includes our corrupted nature as well.

As it says in Revelation 21:1-5 “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared.… I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!” And then he said to me, “Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true.”