Thinkaloud | good enough?

God doesn’t cease to exist…

The world is full of people who want to do good, people who have legitimate concerns about the quality of life around them and who are working hard to correct what they see as an imbalance in the priorities of society. Such do-gooders have high expectations of the personal integrity of civil servants and our recently elected members of parliament. Often they spare no energy in pointing out the faults and frailties of those in the spotlight of public scrutiny.

As sins of commission and omission, as well as personal lifestyle patterns, are paraded through the media, and forgotten episodes of human failure are dredged up for all to see, the question arises: “Where can we find people who have done no wrong?” Of course, we cannot. There are no perfect people. All of us were born with an inclination to do wrong, to be rebellious, to want to break the rues. And every person has done so.

This is not to condone either public or private wrongdoing, but simply to remind us that holier-than-thou finger pointing and the gleeful announcement of a person’s shortcomings is not the answer to the human condition.

The answer lies deeper than that; it is the realization that flawed people need to be made right with God. He is the source of all there is. We did not make ourselves and as we are fatally damaged by sin, we must go to the only One who can repair the damage. Any suggestion for human rehabilitation that ignores this premise is irresponsible and will bring no healing to our disease. On the contrary, such clearly ineffective humanistic answers to life’s problems will blind people to their true condition and compound their despair.

Miriam Richards was a Salvation Army poet who beautifully and clearly gave a Christian response to our dilemma. She wrote:

What can I say to cheer a world of sorrow?
How bring back hope where men have sorely failed?
Just where I am I’ll speak the word of comfort,
Tell how for me Christ’s sacrifice availed.

What can I do to ease life’s heavy burdens?
What can I do to help mankind in need?
Just where I am I’ll share my neighbour’s hardship,
Lighten his load, and prove a friend indeed.

Just where He needs me, my Lord has placed me,
Just where He needs me, there would I be!
And since He found me, by love He’s bound me
To serve Him joyfully.

The priority of any life-public or private-is this: we are accountable to God.  Politicians are accountable to God.  Critics are accountable to God.  The media is accountable to God.  Church leaders are accountable to God.  Ordinary people are accountable to God.  He does not cease to exist because He is ignored.  His laws are still the guidelines of the universe, even when they are willfully broken.

When people are right with God, things go well in themselves, in their family, where they work and in society.  This is so because there is only One who is able to handle all the problems and mess that we have created.  Another songwriter, Cecil Alexander, put it this way:

There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin;
He only could unlock the gate
Of Heaven, and let us in.

Writer: Lieut.-Colonel Maxwell Ryan is a former Editor in Chief in Canada and the UK. In retirement he is a copy editor of theRubicon and the author of theRubicon series called Resurrected Writers.

2 Comments to Thinkaloud | good enough?

1. Colonel Max:

   You are right that the divine standard is there whether we choose to measure our performance against them.

   I have difficulty though with the first sentence of the last paragraph and would amend it to read:
   “When people are right with God, things WILL TEND TO go well in themselves…[caps mine]”

   As much as we strive for holiness personally there is still heaps of sin in the world and it refracts, bringing attendant suffering. the best we can do is ensure that it stops with us.

   Andrea
Andrea614Regent on October 19th, 2008

2. Andrea:
   Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I agree that the shading of meaning you suggest may be helpful. Certainly when, because of God’s grace, the negativity of sin stops with us this is an indication of our rightness with God.
Maxwell Ryan on October 20th, 2008

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