All we are is all we are

There are some areas of my life that have been bad for so long. Now I have good things happening and I don't trust it. I'm suspicious of beauty, happiness. I try to enjoy it--and I do--but sometimes I'm just waiting for someone to pull the rug out from under me. I'm gun shy.

In small doses, this probably isn't so bad. Keeps me from taking the good things for granted. Trouble is, this isn't small doses.

Really, I've always had plenty of self-doubt. It's served me well: I'm not often overconfident, always trying to improve, and I listen more than I talk.

I guess I'm just seeing that there are unhealthy sides to this, too.

I don't know if this ties in, but it's something else I want to talk about. This is my arbitrary segue.

Segue.

Why don't we believe in good? I was talking with some friends about what heaven means, what it means to advance the Kingdom. We can believe in God, but not Good.

We can believe in alot. There's no issue for some people in accepting a literal 6 day creation, a many-headed beast, a moon made of blood, stars falling out of the sky, and so on.

These are things I have trouble believing literally. Fantastic stories taken literally, philosophically justified and scientifically emasculated. We take these beautiful, colorful stories and imprison them in the monochrome bronze of fact.

I digress.
My point is this: so many people can take the most unbelievable things as literal fact but when it comes to taking Jesus at His word, we just won't swallow it.

He talks about making the world a better place. "Oh, come on. Are you serious? Look at this world. You really think it's going to get better?"
What if I do? I know it's a bad place. I've seen ugly, terrible things and I know I have a relatively good life.

But I've seen beautiful things. There's good here, too.

The Bible. Christian history. Human history. Our history has always been about creation, redemption, rebirth, rescue. Never escape. Never waiting for destruction so we (or God) can start over. God hasn't given up on us. We've given up on ourselves.

We sit in our ivory towers and lament the fall of man. We do nothing. At best we busy ourselves with some good deed, some token gesture of love. But we hold on to our defeatism: "Sure, we may do some good here, but this whole world is lost. We can only hope to touch a few."

And so we only touch a few.

Nietzsche wrote that "The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad."

I couldn't agree more.

But how can we undo this?