His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
2 Peter 1:3-4 (NIV)
As I entered one of our office buildings recently and pushed on the lever which dispenses the hand cleanser from the supply just inside the building door, I was chagrined to note that the dispenser was empty. I wondered at that moment how many others had, as I had, placed their less than clean hands on the dispenser, expecting to receive the benefit of its contents, only to become aware that rather than receiving benefit, they had actually increased their need for the product they sought.
The experience made me wonder: How many other things intended for good in our lives become vehicles for contaminating our emotional, physical, and spiritual lives? And how often do we recognize this phenomenon and turn to the Provider so that He may redeem our perversion, restoring the relationship between creatures and Creation to that which He intended?
If all of God's creation is good, and He said it is, then nothing He created is intrinsically evil. Evil arises when we, the creatures, presume that we are minor gods and decide we know better than He how to use His creation.
Food is good. God gave it to us to nourish us, to give us pleasure, to provide fellowship with each other in partaking of it. We eat ourselves into poor health, either through our choice of foods or our total intake. We ignore or give scant attention to those who go hungry because the ample food in the world is poorly distributed.
Sexual pleasure is good. God gave it to us for our enjoyment and to populate the world He had created. We misuse it by objectifying another person as a means, a tool, instead of honoring the unity of spirit in which it was intended to be enjoyed. We mock the example of the Church as bride of Christ through the perversion of God's greatest gift and example of that relationship.
Spirited drinks are good. God gave them to us "to make our hearts glad". We begin there, but we over indulge either by pure choice or by choice combined with genetic predisposition to intolerance. The result is emotional, physical and spiritual devastation, disruption of families, death, and destruction.
Entertainment is good. God gave us creative minds to beautify the world and stimulate the mind, through the visual arts, the written word, music, and the spoken word. We misuse those gifts by creating idols of the art or the artist, by using those gifts to appeal to centers of our mind that lead to lust and evil thought, and by dishonoring the God of Creation in misusing the forms of expression that He gave us to praise Him.
Competition is good. God gave us minds and bodies that derive great pleasure from exercising the abilities He has given us in enjoyment with others. We make gods of bodies, the competitors, and victory; rather than valuing the opportunity to participate, finding satisfaction in the victory, and contentment in the legitimate effort, we idolize the outcome and lose the joy found in the process, robbed of holy pleasure by our pride.
Religion is good. God gave us minds to seek Him, to study His ways, to study His word, to discern our place in His world using our minds, our bodies, and our spirits. He reached out to us, offered Himself in our place to save us from our sins. As in the Garden, we have tried to become our own god, rejecting His overtures, and assuming wrongly that we need to "do" in order to reach up to Him. All false religions, and virtually all the misdirected practices of Christianity have come from man's attempt to overlook God's offer and create our own salvation.
Compassion is good. God is love, and part of His love involves compassion for us, and His love in us compels us to have compassion for our fellow travelers. But undisciplined compassion, truly false compassion, arises out of our desire to please others instead of God. For a myriad of reasons we enable others to do harm, to themselves and/or to others and call it compassion when in truth we would rather avoid confrontation.
Discipline is good. God is righteous and expects obedience to His commands and for us to establish practices which lead to righteousness, including counseling our fellow man. But unmerciful discipline, really false, self-righteous discipline, comes from our need to control. Its purpose is not to help others please God, but is legalism designed to promote our own misdirected image of ourselves as creator, not creature.
Pretty depressing! How do I avoid jumping off a high bridge after considering this corrupt world and my participation in it?
By remembering that real love is good, that God is love and God is good, and that we have no power to corrupt Him, even if we in our self-delusion as "god" fear inadvertently doing so. God knew all of His Creation would be corrupted before He ever contemplated creating the world. He knew the Fall would occur. He knew we would pervert the good, idolize the Creation, deceive ourselves in attempts at self-salvation--He knew we would sin--yet He created the world and all that is in it because He had the plan of redemption that would undo all that we have done.
My job is the daily renewing of my mind to understand my position as creature, as dependent on Him for my sustenance, as forgiven and in need of a forgiving attitude, in need of His deliverance from all my tendencies to corrupt what is good. My job is to be a disciple, to exercise discipline, to wait on Him, to ignore the cacophony of the world and wait to hear His whisper.
Lord, forgive us for misusing Your Creation; thank You for Your redemptive gift in Christ Jesus. Give us all, young or old, regardless of our abilities the discipline to be humble in your presence and to live our lives with the goal of honoring You; not focusing on avoiding misuse of the Creation, but focused on worshiping You and receiving Your forgiveness when we stray. Help us to find freedom in that discipline and joy in that freedom. Amen.
