I want to believe in humanity. I want to believe that within us, there is a measure of goodness, of truth, and nobility. And I want even more badly to believe that there is a God of wisdom and Love who values us enough to guide us in the way of life and joy. But I must admit that my beliefs and desires to believe are severely tested by the truth of what I know of this world.
Rarely do I take the time to consider the griefs our people bestow upon one another as nations, the conditions we pass over, the intense poverty, the injustice, and mass hopelessness, the wailing of countless bereaved children thrown into chaos wrought by the selfishness of other men and the apathy of our governments. Indeed, for me, to know the truth is to hate myself, my people and at times my God. Where is our innocence? We tremble and weep and do nothing, and our inheritance is passed on. This is the problem of our evil. And it is too great to stand under. When people ask, I cannot preach it away, I cannot climb atop books and hope to escape the smoke of guilt and accusation. War, rape, brutality, and base exploitation are what are flesh and blood have brought about. Though it is right, it is also wrong to say that God’s love is wonderful and mysterious, and His plans of expressing it complex, for to know the truth of things in this world, chokes this bold declaration into a desperate gasp for what is an increasingly elusive answer.
There is a God. But if He is here, He must be a weeping God, for what He has declared as necessity through the events of history, has shown him to be a God who is accustomed to the deepest of pains, for His hands are not idle in our horrors.
And so we bow and God speaks, and He says: “all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’”
And some of us whisper, “Surely I could never stay Your hand, but what do you expect me to say? Shall I stay silent when all the inhabitants of the world cry out from darkness? Are we truly nothing? And is our pain nothing to You?”
Somewhere inside of me, there is a word, that says, “We are not nothing.”
Some churched folk may say, Indeed we are significant! we are worthwhile, because the infinite worth of Jesus was the ransom for us. Very well, but you are not thinking this through. This ransom, it was not paid because of our worth, it was paid because of God’s glory. Let me affirm this truth again, may there be no talk of our worth being the reason for Christ’s incarnation and sacrifice. For that would be wrong. Truly it is not because of anything in us that God should choose us, but because God’s choosing of us is reason alone for the action (Deut 7:7-8). Further, the sacrifice of the cross, was not to display the worth man of but rather to uplift the worth of God, by displaying Him as a God of true and measureless grace. Hence Paul’s repetitive affirmation in the first chapter of Ephesians. So again, consider with me, the worth of man is lost in all this.
I hope the reader understands, I am not seeking glory for man, I am only seeking an explanation for the significance of our existence, and the affirmation of our worth in light the world’s brokeness. Not because of what we have done, but because of what we are. Human.
All I want to hear is “You are of value to Me.” and maybe then I will be able to keep my chin up, when the world is falling apart around me.
