The Clock is Winding Down

I can't believe it has taken me this long just to think of God's righteousness without flinching inside. I can't believe its taken me so little time either. How many believers have spent their entire life just getting to this one point? How many people have lived their entire lives without even getting close to it?

Ever since I became a Christian I struggled with the idea of self-sacrifice. I don't mean the idea of laying down your life for what is right, I mean taking captive your thoughts, your pride, for what is right. I mean being able to build the greatest cathedral ever built and rejoice in the fact that it has been built at all and that it glorifies God as if any other person in the world had made it. For a long time I was living in a humanist world, one where its all about how you feel and following your heart and just being yourself. In this world the primary virtue is pride (just as long as it doesn't step on the toes of anyone else's pride, which it always will, no matter how tame) and yet before God pride is the fundamental sin, the one that all other evil comes from.

I wanted to keep all my other gods, all the ones that were of this world and all the ones that I could own and could bring into submission to me, or at least in my life. I wanted to cling to my humanist beliefs that God might be the center of it all but in my own life so was I. But that's not what God calls for. God wants us to go out like Constantine and paint the cross on everything everything that has been given to us and then we get the absolute victory.

Its taken me until this year to get it. This year with those anxious steps on the straight and narrow path that I took in ministry. This year with all that reading of C.S. Lewis and J.P. Moreland and all their clever sayings. This year with all its study of government and world history.

The whole foundation of this government is a distrust of human nature. The Framers believed that politicians had a weakness for power and that the common people had a weakness for mob rule. This entire government is designed to act as a gladiatorial pit, a place where all the self-seeking politicians and all the short-sighted voters and all the villains in between can fight it out without there ever being a clear enough winner for either anarchy or totalitarianism. And all the dirty moves and backroom deals and other filthy things you could ever think of have been thrown in there too. You can't even get elected without being funded by someone who is very interested in your voting habits.

Meanwhile there's also world history. There's Alexander the Great, the perfect humanist hero. He went out into the world and refused to be told no. He spread Greek culture (the most advanced at the time) throughout the known world. But he also killed a great many people. He crushed those who opposed him, established a hegemony over all nations he came upon, and showed absolutely no interest in human rights. He died at an early age and his empire crumbled in his absence. His homeland was swallowed up by Rome and then Rome was swallowed up by chaos.

And then there's China, perhaps the most ancient civilization still surviving today. Every dynasty in China begins with a revival of Confucian practices and the scholar-gentry and ends with a decline of them. The problem that all empires run into is that if you don't assimilate the conquered people into your culture the disunity of your empire will be its downfall. China, which has never expanded beyond its own cultural boundaries, is the one exception and yet its governments still rise and fall just as those of any other empire.

And what of the people of history? So many people have set out believing that they could lead humanity into greatness and righteousness. Of all the villains of history, it is those who fit this description that we look back on with most contempt. Hitler of Nazi Germany, Robespierre of Revolutionary France, Lenin of the Soviet Union. And do not think that the other who trod that path were any better, they simply were not in such drastic circumstances.

The heroes we look back on and quote and monuments to and marvel at are the ones who arose only out of necessity. The Founding Fathers, Winston Churchill, Ghandi, none of them became heroes simply because they were born heroes but because the situation demanded it of them. In an age of peace and prosperity could any of them stepped up to lead humanity on the path of moral truth? Could any of them become so great if they had not endured conflict?

And then there's me. Am I righteous? Am I any better than the rest? NO! I am lazy, hateful, envious, and given over to pride. I have a desire to be moral, a sense of what virtue is, and some tendencies towards certain forms of goodness but what good is that? I am good enough to know what righteousness is not good enough to actually be righteous. My very best is not good enough.

This whole world is just a giant wound-up clock. We dance around on its gears and we pull the levers and live all our lives in rhythm with its incessant ticking. But this clock is winding down. It is not of such a nature that it can just keep going and we are not of such a nature that we can repair it. In fact we're in the exact same state as it is and we are winding down just as it is winding down. It is rusting and crumbling and slowing and ticking and ticking and ticking...and so are we.

Each and every one of us has a chance to slow down the decay, even to stop it altogether. Each and every one of us has been given the chance to make right what is wrong. Every now and then someone will listen to that other ticking, the pocketwatch that was given to us but does not belong to us and they will slow down the process a little, or at least contribute a bit less to its advance. But most of us just try to fix it on our own and instead what we get is either business as usual or something even worse. We have all been given the chance to do right and we have all failed utterly.

But there is something else. There is one man in history who broke all the rules. By all accounts he was a hero and yet he did not rise up to fight the Romans or the Pharisees or any other evil. He was one of those people who claimed to be righteous all on their own and yet he did not seek earthly power. He had a great many followers and yet there are no reports that he ever abused his power. He claimed to be the Son of God, that is of the same nature and substance as God, and yet he viewed that that were by his own claims below him with compassion and love. He preached an absolute, unbending moral law. He showed no paranoia even as his enemies conspired against him. There are megalomaniacs and heroes and lunatics and prophets and common men and then there is Him. He has evaded each and every one of the categories and labels that worked for every single other person ever born.

Every person and human institution in history has failed. All the things of this world have been proven inadequate. For all its glamour and all our lusting after it, pride is unsatisfying. He has succeeded. He is not of this world. He is enough. Jesus Christ. Messiah Yeshua. The Slain Lamb. The Outsider.

He was set apart, living according to a different beat than this ticking and he came to make us the same. He came to give us a new life, a new home, a new rhythm. All our lives we search for meaning and joy and virtue because we are made with meaning and joy and virtue and it is in Him that we find it.

This whole damned clock is winding down and when it is done He will not try to save it or simply leave the ruins lying there. He will come as the ticking slows to fulfill the role of the Messiah, the only role that has ever fit Him. He will come back as the conquering king and He will smash and burn and obliterate this world of evil and pride and selfishness.

Finally, I can look on the prospect of a pride which is put to death with something besides fear. Now I understand the beauty of utter selflesness. Now I understand and even go so far as to believe C.S. Lewis' description of a truly humble man: a man that is cheerful and good humored and full of love for everyone he meets; he does not talk about how he is nothing or how small or pathetic he is because in fact he is not thinking of himself at all.

It is a man for whom this world has no category except perhaps "outsider".