A Broken World

I was sitting at a club I belong to the other day. I was reading, as I frequently do there. A woman came up pushing a stroller with a child too big to be in a stroller. She told us she was waiting for her daughter who was attending a religion class.

But I was interested in this child. It was clear that he had some kind of congenital brain damage. He reminded me of a cousin whom I have not seen in many years. She had a similar distorted facial expression, undirected eyes, and spastic, unpurposeful movements.

When I see something like this, as we all do from time to time, it sets me to thinking about the nature of things -- of the Universe and of God. What pricks my interest is that when I saw this child, I knew something was wrong. This can only mean that I know that something is right and that this is a breach of it. A skeptic could argue that my concept of right in this sense is just based on my perception of normal, or on a social construct that is longstanding but only arbitrary.

But if I go back hundreds of generations in my thinking, I must conclude that somewhere there were some people who did not have this tradition behind them, and yet knew from within that something was wrong, implying that they also knew something was right and this is a breach of it -- that something is broken here.

The Bible says there is a God. Common sense demands there is a God, the pratting of Athiests notwithstanding. Either the Universe has always existed, which it obviously has not because it would have run down by now; or it created itself, an absurdity; or there is an all wise God of unlimited intelligence and ability who made it.

The Bible states this is the case and then goes on to say that when He made it, He said it was good. But it is clear when I see things like this poor child and his poor mother that something is broken. What was good, what I inately know to be “right”, is no longer good. Somehow it is broken. And I know it is even if no one tells me so.

So when I see things like this, I know that we live in a world that is no longer good as God made it. It does not mean God is not good. It means that man in his sinful nature, acting according to his free will, has ruined it starting with the original disobedience recorded in Genesis chapter three.

The Bible says that Christ came into the world to bear away the sin of Adam’s race and to eventually put everything back right. He will impose righteousness on people who have been forgiven by believing on Him for forgiveness of sin. He will destroy all those who chose not to, putting them out of existence, so that God may be all in all. Then God will be glorified in His creation.