The Difference Between our World…and Paradise

My Bible reading today is Jeremiah. It is basically a list of Israel and Judea’s failures followed by a warning of upcoming disaster. The impending disaster is caused by the failure of the Jewish people to manage their country.

Sounds familiar.

The highest heavens belong to the Lord,
   but the earth he has given to the human. race.

Psalm 115, ESV

Heaven and earth are different……..seems pretty obvious. The Bible spends a lot of ink describing heaven. No doubt, much of this description in symbolic. But, the thrust of it is that heaven will be a place where the things that are wrong here on earth will be made right. Not only the things external to me…….but also the things internal to me………all of them will be made right. Sounds great.

But, why do I have to wait? If God is as strong as all of that, why doesn’t he clear up the mess here on earth…….right now. It is clearly within his power. And yet, he seems to just sit there and watch the mess unfold. I often hear people say words to the effect, “I don’t understand why God allows………(fill in the blank).”

In the movie “Forrest Gump”, lieutenant Dan is angry at God. He makes a list of complaints and says ,”God is listening????” Lieutenant Dan is asking “why doesn’t God straighten out this mess?”

Decades ago I read a short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer……”Gimple, the Fool”. It is the story of a simple man, not unlike Forrest Gump. He runs his life by a simple code of honor and collides every day with a thoroughly broken world. I strongly recommend it. This story changed my life.

The conflict between a perfect paradise and this imperfect world has always been difficult to understand.

Why is there such a chasm between this world and the next?

It comes down to ownership.

God created, owns, and actively manages paradise.

God created earth and everything on it. But the similarity ends there. God gave earth to man. He signed over the deed. God doesn’t actively manage earth. We own it and managing it is our job. In many ways, on our earth, God acts like a guest. We invite him over for dinner. We ask him to drop in from time to time to help us with a problem. Then we say goodbye and send him back to his home. We control how much we allow God, our guest, to participate in our world. And the footprint in our world that we allow to God is clearly shrinking. God will drop in……..if we invite him over. He will help us with a problem…….if we only ask. God loves us………but like a good guest, he will not force himself on us. If we do a bad job of managing this world……our world……..and tell God to mind his own business……….tell him that we have things under control………that his input is neither wanted nor needed……..he will honor that request.

We poison our world with carbon dioxide, plastics, and every imaginable toxin. We kill 3000 of our children every day. We tell God that he is not welcome in our schools and most other public venues. We teach our children that their physical and emotional sex……is whatever they want it to be. Then we stand there and watch the wheels fall off. And we tell ourselves that if God was real……he would fix things.

Here is the simple truth.

If we leave a pile of dirty dishes in the sink and go to bed………God doesn’t let himself in uninvited at 3am, wash the dishes, and leave.

After all, we own the world……..we created the problem.

We own the problem.