Friday, April 02, 2010

Human History, Evil, and Solutions

Human history is, in one sense, the story of man trying to fix brokenness through what some have called “functional Saviors.” Functional saviors are the things in which we place our hope for atonement, our hope for satisfaction and joy.

Rather than submitting to the righteous plan of God, mankind has continually sewed together fig leaves in an attempt to cover their nakedness before God. They think they can appease God through a variety of religious rituals, philosophical ideas, and moral reformation.

Human history is littered with the remains of man’s religious institutions that try to fix the brokenness in lives. Early on, it was the creation of gods, complete with religious rituals, temples, priests, and holy books. In more recent times, particularly in our culture, it is the elevation of education, medicine, rehabilitation, ignorance or atheism, all attempting to fix the problem of brokenness. They essentially by redefine the problem to a problem of health (fixed by the medical establishment), a problem of ignorance (fixed by the educational establishment), a problem of control (fixed by government legislation), or a problem of superstition (fixed by atheism, a superstition in itself).

The truth is that only the Bible gives us a worldview in which evil even exists. Apart from the Bible’s teaching, there is no legitimate explanation for the existence of evil, much less its problem. There is no moral reasoning by which evil can be asserted apart from the existence of the God described in Scripture. The very existence of evil presupposes that there is a God with a moral standard by which evil can be determined. 

Man, while living in the world perfectly describe by the Bible, rejects the Bible as revelation and therefore rejects the Bible’s solution. They attempt to find a solution on their own.

But God had a different way to fix the problem. And that is the gospel as found in the Bible.

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