The World’s Problems - No. 44
There is only one way the world will experience restoration.
We love Justice because we were made for it. We empathize with others because God gave us a heart. Our love of Justice and our ability to empathize with other people drive us to want to be the solution to the problems in the world around us. Our highest calling in life is to participate with God and his restoration work, so it's very good that we desire to help others and alleviate suffering. But we have a fundamental misunderstanding of God's restoration work.
We see the hungry and want to feed them, we see the naked and want to clothe them, and we see the vulnerable and want to protect them. The world is filled with the poor, the broken, the abused, and the enslaved. We cannot solve these problems using the world’s way of thinking. We must address the reason they exist in the first place.
The reason inequality, injustice, abuse, and enslavement exist in our world is because some people want what they want and don't care what it costs others. Greed, self-obsession, and the exploitation they cause cannot be solved with money, programs, or laws. Yet we tend to think that we can solve injustice through better programs from legal systems, to NGO’s and campaigns.
The fundamental problem with our understanding of God's restoration work is that we act like it's something we do outside of us. We fail to recognize that it is first something God does inside of us that then ripples out from us. This is understandable because we fail to see that the problems in the world outside of us exist within us. We think these problems are external and must be solved, rather than recognizing that they are inside of each of us and must be healed.
If this idea doesn't make sense, then consider your own life. We live in cities filled with the poor, and yet most of us have abundance. We hate exploitation, yet we support organizations that perpetuate it. I'm speaking to myself right now as much as I'm speaking to anyone else. The world’s problems are not the result of broken systems that simply need to be recalibrated. The world's problems are the result of individual people valuing themselves over others. Or perhaps a better way of saying that is, valuing themselves in spite of others. The answer is not to just give all our resources away and spend the rest of our lives focusing on other people. The answer is first and foremost to deal with the roots of the world's injustice that exist inside of us. In order to do that, we must invite God to do a work in us.
Something I had to ask myself is why I’m ok with worrying about my own financial security, and I am relatively unconcerned with the financial security of so many other people who have significantly less than I do. The simple answer was that I cared more about myself than I did about anyone else. That is a sobering reality to accept.
There was a time in my life when I was very motivated to fight the injustice in the world, but I had an experience with the Lord where he told me, “Don't spend your life fighting injustice. If you spend your life fighting injustice, you're honoring injustice more than you’re honoring what my son did on the cross. Go and build good things.” After that word, I assumed that meant go and build programs and organizations that solve the injustice in the world. Instead, God took me on a journey deep into my own heart to die to myself and be healed from the brokenness within me.
As a result of that journey, I can now see that my motivation to fight injustice was born out of self-obsession. I wanted meaning, purpose, significance, and impact to come from my life. I loved God and wanted to glorify Him, so when I saw something bad, I wanted to fix it. Now I can see so clearly that unless I heal the injustice in my own heart, I cannot truly partner with God in His restoration work. I can't give away what I don't have. More importantly, the restoration of the world is God's work. It's something he does through us. As long as we are self-obsessed and unwilling to let him restore us, then we are not allowing him to work through us. If we can't see the roots of all the world’s injustice in us, then it means our ego is far too big, and we are simply unable to see ourselves clearly.
As I've said many times, the solution to the world’s problems is only transformed hearts. That's why Jesus didn't come to build a government or rewrite legislation. He also didn't start feeding programs or housing projects. He came, and He shared the good news. He invited people into transformation. The restoration of the world happens one heart at a time. There's only one thing that can transform human hearts. That’s what the gospel was all about, solving the world’s biggest problem, one person at a time.
Imagine if every church in America functioned like the picture we see in the early church. Christians would be the storehouses of the community. The hungry and the homeless would come to us, and alongside meeting their physical needs, we would share the good news with them. The reality is that if those who call themselves Christians would do what Jesus said, the world would be a very different place. So why don't we do what He said? The answer is simple, the price appears to be too high. We want what we want when we want it, so picking up our cross is unappealing. As a result, we've created a Christian worldview that allows transformation to be more of an idea than a lived reality.
We must allow our love of justice and our desire for restoration to drive us each individually to the cross. Where we can see ourselves clearly, repent for our self-obsession, and invite God to heal us. That is the only way the world will experience restoration.
Unless we get a clear picture of what drives the world's brokenness, then no matter what programs we start, laws we pass, or money we give away, we will continue to perpetuate the same injustice in a million different ways. We may solve hunger or exploitation in one place for a time, but some other evil will take its place, and eventually it will return. On the other hand, when someone does the deep work of heart transformation and moves out of the center of their own lives, God begins to work through them in powerful ways. They may launch programs and organizations or rewrite legislation, but it is now the spirit of God in them. They are no longer reacting to injustice but instead building something good with God.
In our culture, we are obsessed with systems-based solutions to virtually any problem. That's because scientific thinking and the industrial revolution have shown us the effectiveness of better organization. We love data because it shows us patterns and highlights what's broken in a system. But let's be honest, those things don't actually restore the world. More often than not, the things that we intend for good end up being used to serve the self-obsession of those who can profit from them. We can't afford to use systems thinking to solve problems that originate in individual human hearts.
Our working model as followers of Jesus for solving the world’s problems should be simply to live the way that Jesus told us to and to share the good news. In the cross, we see the restoration of the world.
The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who, by profession or culture, are identified as ‘Christians’ will become disciples – students, apprentices, practitioners – of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence.- Dallas Willard
- John
