Hope, part 1
(The conclusion to Reactor and Wasteland)

It’s a big word isn’t it? It carries so much meaning when those four letters are pressed together, yet our story seems so hopeless. Isn’t that why people attack Christianity? The hopelessness of the world? The brokenness that they see? They want to know why. They want us to explain how a God of love could allow such devastation.

I respect and appreciate their question. The question is asked by people who want answers. People who want to know why. Our world is broken, the core has melted down. The question for believers is not why, we know why, but what can we do. People who ask the question want us to fix it. They want God to fix the problem, repair the damage and we know deep within that He is and will. That Jesus is the answer.

How many of you have read these entries and been frustrated? How many have wondered when I would get to the point? As believers we know the ending of the story and yet because we know the ending we tend to skip over some very important information. I know that I to many times want to get people to Jesus without giving them any reason to want, need or even like Him.

The story of a Deli

There is a deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan called Zingerman’s Delicatessen. I read about Zingerman’s in an issue of Inc. Magazine several years ago. I just want to share their concept of training in hopes that it can bless you as we talk about this important story we believe.

There’s a concept taught in ZingTrain’s seminars concerning the mastery of a skill. When you know absolutely nothing about a skill, you are unconsciously incompetent – that is, you don’t know what you don’t know. As you learn more, you become consciously incompetent: you know what you don’t know. With training and practice you become consciously competent, while total mastery makes you unconsciously competent, meaning that you use the skill so effortlessly that you’re not even aware you’re doing it.

Here’s the kicker: in order to teach a skill, you have to go backward, from being unconsciously competent to being consciously competent. Until you can teach it, moreover, you don’t really know what you know. Inc Magazine Jan. 03, page 72

I hope you can understand why that article has stuck with me all of these years. I mean what really is the answer? No, not the ten second answer. I mean the deep meaning answer, the story that lives and breathes at a level for those who want to fully dive in?

The funny thing is the deep answer is actually the shallower. Why? Because it more adequately explains the story. The surface level question, do you want your sins forgiven, is actually very complex because it fails to tell people who know nothing what they don’t know. It seems simple because the believer who shares it is unconsciously competent. They know what they know so much that they assume everyone understands. To explain the deep truth of our broken core is actually the most elementary because it assumes that they don’t know anything.

In this final post of the series I want to look at how the hope that we know and understand fills the questions that all have with meaning. Creation and humanity are broken, cracked at the core, and yet there is hope.

The Creation

Paul tells the church in Colossae that Jesus is, “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:15-17)

This is no small verse, no insignificant statement that we can use to say that Jesus is important. This helps to explain everything. Jesus answers all of our longings. Not just our sin but for our broken core, and more importantly, our broken creation.

When the new heaven and new earth come we will see the final answer to the broken core. We will witness the solution to our desire to see things made right. Isn’t that what the environmentalists want? They want to see things made right. They want to see things as they should be.

Shouldn’t we as Christ followers agree? Shouldn’t we second the idea? We understand why it is all broken. We can understand that no matter how much work and effort is put in, everything still seems broken.

What if we can tell the person who longs to see the oceans clean and the forests flourish that there will come a day when everything will be made right? What if we can tell them that the deep hope that they feel is legitimate? What if we can agree that their desire is noble?

We have the answer and it is Jesus. He holds all things together and they have been broken by sin. The core has cracked and no matter how hard we try it can never be fixed. As believers we do our best to model our desire for reclamation. We seek to be responsible with our

belongings. We seek to treat creation better. Because we believe we can fix it? No, but because we know who can and will. We model hope for creation by trying to be hope in every area of our lives.

How about justice? We believe that one day God will repair all of this and make it right. We see the AIDS epidemic in Africa and we seek to show we care. We want people to see that they matter to God, that they are redeemable, that they can have hope.

Why is our solution superior? Because we can all see that no matter how many laws we pass, no matter how much money we raise. The world is cracked and broken. No matter which party rules the White House things go wrong and creation suffers. We have hope because we believe that Jesus will come again and make it right.

What other answer is there? That all humanity has this deep hope without any way for it to be realized? That we desire creations repair, that we long for justice only to find that it is hopeless? I don’t believe that. I believe that I have the answer. That Jesus is the answer. That He makes sense of all of this mess, this brokenness. That we seek to model Jesus in his desire to fix what is broken but that we ultimately fail because we live in a wasteland. That in the end Jesus is the ultimate answer for what burdens us inside.

I don’t believe in Jesus simply because Christianity is the most popular religion in the country of my youth. I believe in God the father, His son Jesus Christ, and His Holy Spirit, because it best explains my experience. It explains why everything is such a mess, the core is broken, it best explains why everything breaks down, I live in a wasteland, and it is the only one that gives hope for what I long for that never seems to come.

To be finished…