A Lost Cause?

Nomodiphas: But the Bible says that things are destined to get worse and worse until the end of time when all will be destroyed and recreated in perfection. If that is so why should we expand our energy on something we can’t ultimately change anyways?

Philosophos: Why do we try, why do we invest our energy in 'earthly' matters if we know things will get worse, not better, despite our work? To begin with, the worse things get the more important, I believe, our work will become. God desires a testimony. God wants to show people His character in a number of ways. As society at large reflects God’s character less and less it is important for Christians to live out this testimony in their respective domains in life—the fields they have passion for and in which they are gifted. Even though God brought the flood everyone was given warning of it, because God had Noah warn the people for one-hundred years before the flood came. God did this because He is just, no one perished out of ignorance. God did not let loose His wrath on the people until everyone had fair warning and ample time to repent and change their ways.

No, I'd go further than that; God’s warning wasn't an act of justice, but rather an act of mercy. People already knew the Truth before Noah. God has revealed His Truth to mankind in an infinite number of ways. No one perishes from ignorance. Even though men knew the Truth and had already rejected it, God sent Noah to them in mercy; He wanted to give man one more chance. That is our function. Though things are bad and will only continue to grow worse, God in His mercy desires to offer the world the truth in a number of arenas. We do this by demonstrating God’s truth in the fields we work within. To do this we must first realize that God cares about temporal issues for through them He may reveal His truth. (Though God values them as more than just means of revealing Himself—He values them in and of themselves. Think of what Christ said. A sparrow does not fall without your Father in Heaven taking notice, and of how much more valuable than a sparrow are you? If God cares for the temporal lives of birds, surely he cares for the temporal concerns of the men whom He has made in His own image). Second, we must seek to know what God says about the issues that we are involved in so that we may be able to demonstrate God’s truth.

I have two other thoughts about your question of investing ourselves in earthy matters when the earth is bound to continue to deteriorate. 1) God isn't necessarily concerned with results. We are to obey Him and do His will no matter what result our obedience brings or fails to bring. 2) When we say our efforts are futile (and this is how many people view them who avoid the public arena altogether), we are looking at things through our own eyes and not God’s eyes. We have a limited perspective, but God's perspective is complete. That is why we must obey even when we don't understand why we are to obey the things that God has commanded. Though we view the results that our obedience produces as failures, they could be successes in Gods eyes. God’s goals are not always our goals. The death of Christ on the cross freed us from sin, but to all those who witnessed it, it appeared to be the tragic end of Christ’s ministry. If the Disciples of Christ viewed His death as a failure (even though it was His central goal and purpose), then how are we to judge whether an action of ours is a success or a failure? Our views are clouded and distorted. We must look to and obey Him who sees all clearly and truly.

Further, like the boy with the loaves and the fish, sometimes our obedience produces tangible results of which we could have never foreseen. It is for these reasons that we must obey God and disciple the nations even though God Himself told us that in the last days things are bound to get worse and worse.

However it is important for us to know up front that we will never create some earthly paradise or utopia. We must remember this lest we fall in with certain heretical philosophies like "Dominion" or "Kingdom Now" or other false models of discipleship that revolve around OUR taking over the world for Christ as a prerequisite for ushering in His millennial reign. Even short of heresy, I think there is another danger. It is what happened to me for a period of my life and it happens to many others as well. It is that more and more common trend of merging Christianity and humanism, with the focus on humanism. This occurs when we make improving temporal things our primary goal and subjugate Christ and evangelism to a secondary or merely supportive role. We make Christ and Christianity the means to improving the world rather than remembering that He is the End. He is our telos, our final goal, the purpose for which we were created. As we talked about before, to be involved in temporal things is good and required of us, but we must always keep them in perspective. We are to place no things above God, not even good things, like works done in the name of God.

Lastly, when we focus on temporal things and make it our end it always leads to weariness and an ultimate disillusionment from involvement, because we cannot create perfection on earth. Mark my words, you will never meet a socialist over the age of forty who is both joyful and loves his fellow man. After years of failure to change man, he will come to hate men.

Nomodiphas: That is a sound and complete explanation. Thank you for answering my question.