The strange distortions of secular ideology: My best possible life! (Part 5)

The strange distortions of secular ideology: My best possible life!

Part 5: The mystery of God’s peace

I believe that God has a way of putting everything right. However, I no longer see this as something that is done in heaven – and we will have to wait till then. I believe that the fulfilment that comes from knowing the presence of God has the extraordinary power to put everything right, now. I realise that this is counter-intuitive, potentially ridiculous when you look at the suffering of the world, and that it will be condemned as false and wicked by secularists. I am not saying that our faith in God is some escape from reality – rather my entire message is that it is secular ideology that seeks to escape from reality. I call on us to strive with all our might to make the world into the kingdom of God and not to rest till there is justice and peace and well-being for all. People who are suffering terribly will not feel that God has put everything right. The point I’m searching for is that we do not have to wait on circumstances to receive God’s perfect fulfilment – that makes us the prisoner of chance over which we have no control. We are not demanding that everything must be perfect and that I must be my perfect (or at least my best) self before I can feel whole. Wholeness is God’s gift to us, and he is in charge of that. And the wholeness that God offers – despite the manifest lack of wholeness in the world and in our lives – is complete and perfect. To know God is perfect bliss, and nothing has the power to get in the way of that – certainly nothing can stop God reaching out to embrace us, and if we will stay open to him, then nothing can prevent us from being embraced.

It is the extraordinary testimony of ordinary but grace-filled people that not even their suffering has been able to separate them from the love of Christ. I hope that I am never tested as they are. For now, I will not say more about the intense problem that suffering presents – to everyone of course, but given our focus today, particularly for those of faith who – along with Jesus – are sometimes compelled to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!?”. Yet, somehow, by grace meeting faith, it is the testimony of so many people that God carried them through to where they hold all the weight of their pain and loss, looking steadfastly at it, yet they also hold themselves to be fully embraced in the love of God, and gazing at him, they still find life in all its wholeness. “In Christ, my all in all, I find peace”.