We always live in a world with utopia peddlers.
All of the "ism's" ... The latest seems to be some kind of tech version.
The key is not to get bamboozled by them. They'll always be around. It gives people with a lot of money something to do.
But utopia, this life is not.
Trying to create utopia ignores the nature of this world and the nature of man himself.
It should be obvious that there's a lot of messed up stuff happening all the time. My job revolves around pointing it out in the political world on a daily basis. I'm never short on material.
The longer we live, the more we tend to realize that the messed up stuff isn't going away. This is because it's not a matter of rearranging atoms and molecules.
It's an inside job -- greed, envy, addictions, wars, sins...etc.
You can't engineer these non-material things away. Neither is it some kind of mathematical equation that we need to answer.
But there is good news. "Gospel" literally means "good news."
Instead of leaving us in a perpetual doom loop, God became man to lead the way out of here. We are called to follow Him.
But what does it mean to "follow Christ"?
Unfortunately, Jesus has often been reduced to a namby-pamby hippie-like figure who simply told people "to be nice to each other."
Yes, we are supposed to be nice to one another.
But God didn't dwell amongst us for this very simple reason. Anyone can tell others to be nice.
God came to dwell amongst us to show us the way. And He made it very clear as to what the way is.
We are to take up our crosses DAILY and follow Him.
We all have crosses, without exception.
And we need to carry them every day.
We are called to pick up our cross (let's say it's drinking too much) and "follow Him" up to Calvary. When we reach the top, we are to plant our cross next to His and climb up!
That's very hard ... and gets harder.
The temptation is to want to climb down from our cross.
Think of the thief on the cross next to Jesus who told Jesus to climb down. He saved others, why doesn't He just climb down and save Himself and the two thieves.
The Lord looked him and said nothing. God does not respond when man seeks to climb down and keep his sins intact.
Jesus knew that by hanging there, He was opening up the gates of Heaven to all who choose to follow Him.
Man wants to climb down. God hangs there.
The thief on the other side did the exact opposite. He chose to hang there with the Lord; and asked that the Lord remember Him when He enters His Kingdom.
Jesus looked over at that thief and spoke. When man conforms himself to God, God responds. On that day, they'd be together in Paradise.
That's what it means to Follow Jesus. To carry our cross and hang there with Him.
Any pain that we feel, He felt for the sins of the entire world, past, present, and future!
If we climb down. We are to climb back up; as many times as it takes until we hang there and crucify that which is messed up within us.
When you hang there and crucify your drinking problem, and it's finally dead...
Back to the beginning you go.
Another fresh cross will be waiting there for you to grab, and carry up to Calvary. This time it may be something like greed, or envy.
As one problem disappears, and new one is waiting to be crucified.
A utopia, this world is not.
Following Him is to wage war (within) on everything that is not of Him.
Daily.
