Nov 12 - Psalm 14:2-3

The LORD looks

down from heaven

on the entire human race;

he looks to see if there is

even one with real understanding,

one who seeks for God.

But no, all have

turned away from God;

all have become corrupt.

No one does good,

not even one!

Psalm 14:2-3

When you read verses like these, it almost makes you wonder if David was reading today's headlines.

Corruption, murder, scandals, and wars were as rampant on the pages of the Bible as they are on our front pages.

I guess David's son, Solomon, was right, "History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new" (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

So let me ask a question: If the headlines from 3000 years ago match the headlines of today, don't you think we need a worldview that reflects that human hearts and motives and desires are broken ... rather than improving?

The dominant worldview in America today --and promoted heavily in media and academia -- is that people are basically good. The idea is that if we can just throw off a few old and repressive thought patterns, we'll evolve to a higher state.

When one nation recently attacked another nation, a chief American official said, "This is not how we act in a twenty-first century world." The Bible could have asked, "Mr. Secretary, did you miss the last 30 centuries? ... 'Nothing under the sun is new.' ... We were sinful, we are sinful, we will always be sinful and warring."

The Bible says, "No one [is or] does good, not even one!"

And we argue with that! "I can point to plenty of people who do good," the average person says.

Scripture's answer is that we're using the wrong scale. If we compare ourselves to one another, there are certainly levels of better and worse. But we're not the standard. God is the standard. “Good” is as high as heaven. And the best of us are only better than a few other sinful human beings.

Here's the problem with the modern worldview -- If there is no God, there is no standard higher than a nice person. And if we all try to be nicer, we figure that the world will evolve into a better place.

I'm all for niceness! But at the same time, the headlines haven't changed in 3000 years. We sin and keep sinning. We fall far short of God's glorious standard; nevertheless, we keep comparing ourselves to nothing hirer than our neighbors. And compared to the guy next door (or the dictator in a neighboring country) (or the blowhard in the opposing political party), we consider ourselves good.

But that's not the standard. Indeed, we'll never know how good we are (which isn't very), until we know how good God is.

As G. K. Chesterton says, "Our problem today is not that we have lost our way. Mankind is forever losing his way. Our problem is that we have lost our address."

Ignoring that our address, identity, standard, and life are in God, we compare ourselves to other human beings ... which occasionally makes us feel better about ourselves, but never changes the headlines.

If we want to change the headlines, we must put away foolish notions of our own goodness, humble our foolish pride, get down on our knees, repent of our human-focused quests for solutions, invite God to rule our world (starting with our own lives), and very humbly invite our neighbors to do the same.

In Christ's Love,

a sinner, praying for

a dusty knee revival