What's Wrong with Our World?
Matt. 15:1-20; Mark 7:1-23

Introduction
Even when I was growing up, it was clear that the world was in trouble. The cold war, nuclear threats, bomb shelters. On the home front, not only in the assassination of President Kennedy during my HS years, but in other ways which impressed a young man in central KS. Mr. Fred Christianson of NYC was beaten/killed in Chicago suburb. Women were accosted on the streets of NYC while bystanders did nothing. Thousands asked, "Why?" Why senseless murders? And our world frankly hasn't gotten better. Crime, Iraq (twice), Iran and American prisoners, ugly American threats around the world, civil war in Croatia, Sarajevo, on and on one could go. All are symptoms of a malignant disease that is spreading through our society and world today. Even the most casual observers senses that something is wrong, radically, terribly wrong.

Lest you think this is just a preacher's talk, the view of the religious right, or a radical, or the religious folk. Listen to this quote from a national magazine (Look, mid-1990s): Most Americans hate to admit we are in crisis, but its bitter fruits are all around us--the...racist, wild kids, price-rigging executive, pregnant HS girl, dope addict, bribed athlete, uncared for aged, poor, criminal." We can add to the list--steroid use, white collar crime, unsafe streets, the breakdown of society reflected on TV as much as any other place.

But the problem does not stop in the USA, our own society. Thoughtful persons around the world realize that mankind faces perhaps the greatest crisis in history, despite the demise of the Cold War, we face multiplied wars on many fronts.

So the question I pose is a relevant one: What's wrong with our world? $64000 question. What is the exact problem? What makes us feel victim to such haunting fear? What plagues this age of unprecedented technological progress so that we face such flagrant problems? Obviously we need to understand the diagnosis before we can find the cure. Illus: Dr. diagnoses you with indigestion, Pepto-Bismol, but the face is that you have acute appendicitis, and are in grim shape by morning. If the cure is not related to an accurate diagnosis, it is worthless. But if I really have indigestion, please do not remove my appendix.

Possible Answers

What then? The one diagnosis of the world's problems, and correlating solution, which is most akin to human experience and realistic in terms of history is the solution advanced 2000 years ago by Jesus. This is the point of view of our text. (Read.) Jesus in conversation with religious leaders who view human problems and the quest of religion and reality as outside the realm and possibilities of individual people. They thus externalize the human problem and solution, they become concerned with ceremony, formulas, how washed, when washed, how often, utensils, etc. In response Jesus put his finger on the heart of the problem, the heart, and said we miss the boat entirely when we externalize the problem in superficial treatments.

Listen to Jesus.

Why have we not seen this text clearly? It is because we have not seen God. In other places, Jesus explains that God is holy, absolutely pure in character. Just as light and darkness cannot coexist, God's purity and our defiledness cannot coexist. Sin separates the sinner from such purity. Such is the basic problem we face. Separation from the Creator, separation from others, alienation by sin. Alienation from the reality of God.

Now at the beginning of the 21st century, we can see a 2000 year diagnosis. We hear the words of Carl Jung as he continues down the path of Freud and Adler: "Those psychiatrists who are not superficial have come to the conclusion that the vast neurotic misery of the world can be termed a neurosis of emptiness. Men cut themselves from the root of their being, from God, and then life turns empty, inane, meaningless, without purpose, so that when God goes, goal goes, and when goal goes, meaning goes, when meaning goes, value goes, and life turns dead on our hands." Interesting diagnosis/analysis, for it echoes Jesus' view of mankind's basic problem.

Society belittles sin, even names perfumes after it. But sin is a human disease--dis-ease. Sin is universal to the human race, although the symptoms vary. But the basic problem is self- centeredness. "The Big ‘I'." Each for self, look out for #1, pull own strings. People who can't get along with one another. Against this background, we see the uniqueness of John 13:35, the nature of the church. In the global community there is tension, people are hard to get along with, there are wars, James 4. But in the Christian community, there is an internal reality which expresses itself in love. Love is not the thinking, but is the action which actualizes the thinking.

The problem continues as long as mankind is away from God, for we were created to be in relationship with God, Gen. 1-3. Sin is the breaking point. God wants us to know purpose and meaning which derive from him, and our likeness to him, our dominion over the world. But in seeking such dominion, we lost dominion over self. We try to control, even ourselves, but we cannot. We have no moral ability. We are cut off from the source of moral power, we are a lamp with the plug out of the outlet. We are separated from the source of power. We find only emptiness, meaninglessness, and boredom. Alienation and isolation. We are wondering how the whole thing fits together, not knowing origin nor destiny. David Reisman, a Harvard sociologist said we are a "lonely crowd." Victor Frankl said we are continuously in search of meaning.

We in the church have not escaped the dilemma except through Jesus. We have no power within ourselves to find our way. We are not here today because we are better than those not here. We have the same mortality, and when that which can be immortal becomes mortal through sin, the only solution is resurrection power, the dynamic solution of Jesus Christ, who is the only way and only true solution.

When he says the words of Jn 10:10, he speaks not of physical life, but spiritual. John 14:6. God intersected human history to tell us what he is like, and to make possible the restoration of relationship. Forgiveness, cleansing, new life in vital relationship with God, what the Bible calls "eternal life."

What's wrong with the world? G K Chesterton put it accurately, "I am wrong with the world." The way to begin to solve the world's problems is within each of us today. Within ourselves where the impurities exist. A better world, beginning with me, with you. Listen to Jesus' words. Then resolve: I must be changed, I must help the world change by sharing the possible potential for change with others. I must find the solution to my own relationship with God, and then transform the relationship with the people about me, family, community, campus. Only then will I begin to understand Jesus' words and find help for the basic problem of the world.


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Last updated March 20, 2005.