When we think we are too good for God, that we are virtuous and good for our world, there is no hope.
We live in a sick and broken world.
The response and reaction to the murder of Charlie Kirk was so revealing. There was enough online without me wading in. In schools of several Western countries there were numerous quotes from teenagers, assemblies and R.E. discussion groups saying "he deserved to die". One vox pop speaker in Amsterdam said on the streets, "I don't know his positions, but i'm glad he is not with us anymore, it is a good thing." and even a teacher was quoted as saying "we need more assassinations." The Western World has become an asylam run by the lunatics, and what it says makes no sense. Hate is irrational, and the depth and width of it present in our age is not isolated or confined. The Oxford Union President said "some institutions are too broken to be reformed, they should and must be taken down by any means necessary". Any means ? The celebration of a murder is as broken as it gets. To define life by getting rid of people and killing people who don't agree with us (especially when we don't understand what they stand for), is as inhumane as it gets. The value of human life has plummeted to subhuman levels. One spokewoman Lizzy Page became the centre of attention when she said she spoke on behalf of the those who said Charlie deserved to be " a human water fountain". She describes herself as a writer, poet and mental health worker. In these chilling words she describes mental and social health in terms that can only be described as sick, without the remotest sensitivity to the human condition, with calculating callousness and ruthless grimness.
The next stageor phase of interaction is however what I want to consider for a moment. Many have gone on after spouting such verbal bile, to ask for the authorities to defend their freedom of speech and their perspective and beliefs as the outstanding great virtue in society. They have played themselves as the victim and demanded governments have a kind of freedom for free speech which prefers their personal view of goodness (and their definition of what is right) for society. If such were true, there is no hope.
Most chilling of all were the words of the suspect Tyler Robinson to his parents. When they asked him why he did it, he said, "there is just too much evil in the guy, he spreads too much hate." Tyler believes he was doing a good thing by killing Charlie, a virtuous loving act on behalf of a hurting world. This is as satanic as it gets, and people are virtuising such satanic behaviour. I am not saying for a moment that it is not debatable that Charlie may have done well and served a gospel of love better by showing more wisdom and tact. Loving conflict is not healthy and doesnt end well for anyone. Non of us should relish conflict, I am saying however, that to make murder a virtue is as twisted as it gets.
What was a rare ray of light in these dark times was Dortmund footballer Felix's posts. The 24 year old said ...
"May the Lord grant the Kirk family special grace during this time. Jesus is the true way to peace and love"
Isaiah 52:3 ff remind us that we need a substitute who stands in our relational place before God, as way to be free from the destructive patterns and dynamics we are all prone and disposed to. Without you or me ever getting to that place where we see we are broken, none of who God is and has done for us makes sense. It isn't only our Sin that we need to be saved from, it is our best excuses and proneness to be self righteous and virtuous.
I need a Saviour. I'm so grateful our God came for the sick.
Jesus said, "I have not come to call the righteous but sinners." Those who believe they are right, cannot hear the heart or words or heart of God, or His last ultimate word of forgiveness in Jesus Christ. The world today is too good. It protests it all day, every day with an increasing cresendo of self pronounced virtue. In doing so it ignores the only way to break the chains of sin and see peace with God.
People who think they are good, righteous, virtuous, religious, just don't understand Him, and He has nothing to say to them. They just make more excuses and double down on their best defence. Personally I feel my guilt so keenly, my brokenness so deeply, I am in need. He and His forgiveness is the greatest celebration of my life. I need it, I need Him. The cross of Christ is the only place which makes sense of humanity in our brokenness and shame.
The one who stands in my place, despised, rejected, scorned as the perfect incarnate, covers my guilt, my excuses, my habbits, my self defence in His goodness. Something miraculous has happened in my life. In seeing Jesus, I have started to own up to what I am, discovered who I am through who He is, and have started the process of seeing progress. I do this in the security of His love, that His faithfulness and righteousness will never let me down (Hebrews 4:15). What He has started in me, He will bring to completion. (Phil 1:6). I cannot bear my own guilt but He has borne it for me. Who doesn't need that ? He is my only virtue.
Our objective moral guilt before God is our true problem. It is a problem deeper than our self image. God loves guilty people and on the cross has borne human guilt in totallity, taken it far away. It is not a pyschological mind game, a philosphpical proposition, it is a relational gift of God who loves us more than we can comprehend, a lasting way out for us from Himself, bearing the cost Himself. Forgiveness changes everything. We can live in the freedom of forgiveness. There is hope, there is a grief but in Christ it is a grief which leads to joy.
He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
Surely He has borne our griefs,
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
The death of Christ is the begining of our lives. His death brings our depravity to death. He won for us and purchased for us the richness and fullness of life forever, in who He is, in His character, in His victory over sin forever. With His stripes we are healed. Because he was crushed, we are healed.
Keep offloading your guilt on Him and there is freedom and joy for the whole of life and increasing into eternity. Once you discover His virtue and goodness, there is no end to it, and no containment of How Good our God is.
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