G.K Chesterton once said when we look at the world we all know "we're the survivors of a wreck, the crew of a golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world."
The world isn't supposed to be like this. We've found ourselves stumbling around the wreckage of a sunken ship. Scrape off the rust and barnacles and the brass shines a bit. Kicking through the silty debris stirs up remnants of a grand old party. Surely, we're not made for pain and suffering. Joy is real so it must come from somewhere.
Human history has seen some improvement and yet all cultures, all nations, suffer the effects of self-inflicted poverty, disease, abuse, addiction, racism, and war. History repeats itself. There's nothing new under the sun. But seriously, what’s wrong with the world? It's a profound philosophical question that everyone considers. Many offer their well-reasoned diagnosis. Some say the problem is corrupt politics or economics. Some say we lack the right education. Some say we haven't evolved enough. Some throw their lives into a particular cause hoping to do their part. Many of us just fall back into ambivalence where we keep calm, carry on and look out for our own interests.
Christianity offers the best explanation of our problem. The Book of Genesis explains the history of how God made the universe. At the end of his creative activity, God gave his stamp of approval to the universe. “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” God made everything good! Despite the wreckage, the world still points to the glorious goodness of God. The peace and beauty we long for existed at the beginning.
What went wrong? How did we end up here? The answer is not all that complicated. Don't get lost in the labyrinth of sociological, biological, historical treatises. The problem is me. The problem is you.
God set up the world to function as a kingdom under his good rule. He created humans to represent him in the kingdom, ruling under him with responsibility as they increase, innovate, and cultivate. The story takes a terrible turn. The first humans rejected God. They rejected his goodness. Becoming traitorous rebels, they ignored his commands choosing to live life without him. We all follow their example.
Paul, an early Christian leader, said, "there is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away." We were created to worship God and enjoy him. Worship is part of human nature. When we turn from worshipping God we all choose something else to worship. We replace the worship of God with something else. The Bible calls this idolatry. We worship the creation rather than the Creator. It could be anything. Money, power, sex, politics, safety.
However we do it, we’re all rebels. We prefer self-sufficiency as we follow our own desires. Here's where we see the problem materialize. Rejecting God and his commands remove us from the source of life. We fall short of God's standards. The suffering and injustice are results of our rebellion against God. Without God's intervention, human wisdom falls dreadfully short. No human has the power to change the human heart. We lie because our hearts fear transparency. We lust because we're not satisfied with what we have. We're racist because we believe the lie that our people are better than your people. The Bible even says that the physical world is cursed and broken because of our sin. The world is a mess because we make it a mess. The verdict is we're guilty. We're complicit. We have sinned against a good and holy God. That's the problem. We're guilty. We crashed the ship. We sit dead in the wreckage unable to save ourselves. Human solutions are nothing more than temporary rearrangements of the wrecked pieces. It's a tough truth for modern people to accept but we don't have the ability to fix ourselves let alone the world!
Christianity has the best explanation for the problem. It also has the best solution. We can't save ourselves. We need a rescue that comes from outside humanity. God’s solution is so very good. It's the good news that Christians call the Gospel. Our souls are deathly sick. Sin makes us guilty before a holy God whose commands we've broken and spit upon. But God in his mercy has the solution. He came to earth as the man Jesus who lived a sinless life - the life we should have lived but couldn't. Jesus died sacrificially in our place, taking upon himself God's wrath and the punishment we deserve for our rebellion. God accepted Jesus' sacrifice by raising him from the dead. Jesus says that we too can experience this resurrection.
For the solution to change our lives, we simply trust that Jesus is the solution we need. We accept that his death and resurrection are what we need. We turn from our attitude of selfish rebellion to an attitude of repentance and dependence. We bow before God and humbly admit "Have mercy on me, a sinner."
When that shift happens, God's spirit saves us and changes us from the inside out. We receive the free gifts of eternal life and the righteousness of Jesus as if it were our own. We become people capable of real forgiveness, humility, peace, love, and courage. God begins to conform us to be more like Jesus. Rather than hopelessly contributing to the problem of the world, we now point people to the only solution. And that's really good news.