Contents of this Post
It’s Confusing, even Downright Scary.
There are good reasons to be afraid. So what then?
- One strategy I’ve heard of all my life – and seen people practice (metaphorically, of course) – is to throw up your hands and run screaming in all directions at once. That can feel satisfying, even if it’s not too practical.
- Or hide under the bed for a long time.
- Or get angry at everyone and everything.
- Or start blaming.
- Or start breaking things – or people.
Lots of options are available, most of them not good.
What Would Be A Good Strategy For Dealing With An Increasingly Dangerous World?
For those who hold to a Christian view of the world, is there guidance for us in our Scriptures? I believe so.
I have three short passages I like to refer to,
passages that summarize a moral, spiritual, or psychological approach to take that would be both more healthy and more Biblically credible than the run screaming one – or some others we might think of.
John 16 “In Me you may have peace.”
At the end of this chapter Jesus is recorded as trying to comfort the disciples. This is right after the “Last Supper” and an hour or so before his arrest. They don’t really know what’s coming, but Jesus seems to.
“A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.
33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
1 Peter 4 How should we live – anyway?
7 The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray. 8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. 11 If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
What “the end of all things is near” means to Peter is not really clear. But it clearly implies a dramatic, or stressful, or climactic situation. In such a confused, probably dangerous and frightening, situation – how should we live? How should we behave?
Here in the US, or in this world, we may just muddle on yet for a few years, or maybe even many decades. Maybe things will just sort themselves out. But in many ways it doesn’t really look like it.
How should we then live?
Galatians 5 Faith through Love
The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
Seriously? Well that does simplify things – not to say it’s “easy”, but it is fairly straightforward. The concept is simple, and gives us something to focus on.
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