We Know How to Make the World Better!

In last week’s Blogspot, I introduced the sermon series for August: “So What’s So Hot About Christianity?” Yesterday’s sermon was about the vision of life that Christianity provides to the world: “We’ve Got Vision!” You can find that sermon online at my sermon archive. In that sermon I spoke about the vision of Christianity as providing a realistic yet hopeful appraisal of the world and the human situation. It is realistic in that it looks at the world as it is and says, “things aren’t right. The world isn’t the way it should be.” This sense of things being out-of-joint reflects a latent sense that things have been or could be better. Based upon powerful stories found in the bible, Christianity affirms that, in fact, humanity, along with all the rest of creation, was created “good.” That is, it was created to be good, and was pronounced “good” by God. The state of goodness is both the original state of being of the world as well as god’s rather subjective appraisal. But it is also a divine calling for the world to be good, that is, to act in accord with its created potential.

I use the word “calling” here deliberately. A “call” implies a relationship of dialogue, a conversation, speaking and hearing. Always with a call, a response is elicited. This response is predicated upon the existence of a relationship. God is intimately related to all of creation, and each creature responds to its calling by manifesting in the world precisely what it was called to manifest. God calls to the sun, and it responds by manifesting light and heat (and science reminds us of the many other things it manifests as well). God calls to the seas and they teem with life.

This sense of goodness, of appropriate response to a divine calling remains with us when we speak about the world seeming out of joint. We retain a deep inner sense, perhaps a racial (as in “human race”) memory of the original state of goodness, and we call that memory “the way things should be.”

This vision or story of the human condition is so powerful that it can be put into a formula. The Biblical scholar Walter Wink phrases it this way:

·   We are created and called to be good (in Hebrew, tov: good, beautiful, excellent, pleasant, lovely, convenient, fruitful, sound, cheerful, kind)

·   We have fallen from that divine calling or pronouncement

·   We need to be restored and redeemed

Now the interesting Christian spin on this formula is that it applies to all human endeavors: nations, governments, businesses, schools, families, you name it. We are created for good, we have fallen from that calling, and we need to be redeemed and restored.

The hopeful part of this formula is that it is based upon the conviction that Humanity is capable of restoration and redemption. This is the vision of hope, of a future towards which we can strive and dedicate and direct our efforts as humans.

This week, I want to look at the means Christianity provides in order to attain a better world. Just as I spoke earlier about a formula to describe the human situation, many have found in the Bible a formula that seems to encapsulate and summarize the means whereby we can make the world better, and move it towards restoration of its original goodness and blessedness. It is found in Micah 6:8: “God has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?”

Each aspect of this formula suggests a way of acting in the world that manifests the state of being one wants to achieve. “Justice” includes such things as an ethical means of acting, and addresses all the various human social structures and constructions such as distribution of wealth, the means of attaining wealth, control of resources, wielding of power and control over people’s lives, and so on. “Loving kindness” refers to a quality of relating to others and the world around characterized by mercy, beauty, good-will, favor, beneficence, benevolence, grace, and piety. “Walking humbly” refers to an intellectually and reflectively engaged spirituality that keeps an eye on oneself, on one’s fellow human beings, and on God. It combines an interior awareness with an awareness of the exterior world, all in the context of the big picture.

So, this week:

Justice

Loving kindness

Walking humbly with God.