A Different Look at the Other Side

“A Different Look at the Other Side”

So many times I find myself frustrated by the way “the world” looks at life. I see so many people searching for truth and I see various “worldviews” putting their best sales pitch forward to try to win their allegiance. So, not having anything else to chose, people buy what the world is selling. The idea that you can determine for yourself what truth is, the idea that there really aren’t consequences for sinful or foolish decisions, the notion that we don’t really need God to make the world work.

I meet people who have bought into these world views and my first reaction (if I’m honest) is, “I’m right and you’re wrong… Now I don’t want to hear what you have to say, but listen to me, because I’m going to tell you the truth…” My second reaction isn’t that much better, “ Who is the person responsible for teaching them this nonsense…” and my anger and contempt grow. At this point I need to pause. My anger and contempt aren’t going to do very many people much good, and it’s exactly the way the world expects “Christians” to react.

Over the last several weeks I have been going through a class with some of our members here at Cornerstone. We have explored some of the “Great Thinkers” that have shaped many of these different worldviews, and as I looked at their lives and the influences that shaped them, my anger turned to sorrow; sorrow not only for the millions, if not billions, of people who have followed in their footsteps, but sorrow for those individuals themselves. I am struck by how many of them started their lives pointed toward God and Christ, people like Charles Darwin and Friedrich Nietzche. I look at their lives and feel a sort of pity.

My prayer is that I can engage with people in such a way that they may see a changed life and therefore see a more accurate picture of who God is. I think the way we do that is to recognize that humankind has been created in God’s image, every one of us. Instead of getting angry and feeling contempt for a fallen world, I feel more and more as if I should lament over it… much in the same way Jesus lamented over Jerusalem in Matthew 23. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent it! How often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!”

I am convicted to have the eyes of God and look for ways to “be” Christ to any and all who are looking for Him!