Issues of human tragedy represent common patterns mankind faces daily. We may not form adequate perspective on the larger context pressing on society. Life includes more extensive tragedies than the immediate dramatic ones. We tend to lose perspective. The witch trials of the American colonists are turned into great evidence for anti-religion. The affected few were badly treated, but the rage was not extensive, The good people who mismanaged the whole context apologized and made clear the biblical direction they wanted to follow. In a month or so the good people of society kill as many Americans on the highways as were lost at Ground Zero in 2001. Grief and cost are much greater for those who live tenacious daily losses – not heralded. Family difficulties and abuse is, by far, greater than the news of the unusual. What would happen to us if these stories of domestic and premature death were told in the media to validate their meaning – and seek solution? Perhaps the massive news production would cast the nation into constant gloom. However, better reporting might focus on the larger context of death and sorrow – toward solutions. Mankind’s daily life is marked by relatively undramatic events in contrast to single dramatic ones, especially related to deadly conduct and consequences – in the amount of food eaten, and of the wrong kind; in the habits we follow that depreciate life and values; in the evasion of truth and abundant life – just to name a few of the follies. A great loss is the omission of responsibility and discipline that would give us lives of peace and service for good. All persons, whether perceiving God or nature only, are called to responsible life, and seek both formal and informal education for duty. The Christian is called, additionally to help heal those who miss the objectives. Society can find the beauty of God’s common grace that makes responsible persons – even if God is not included. Not including God is a fatal mistake.
There is a choice to be made. Either we find a life nurtured by a relationship with nature and God, or we find a life nurtured by nature. If we choose to make a good life of nature without God, we have the right of that choice, even if we do not wish to meet the necessities of spiritual participation. Those necessities are seen as onerous by some persons, and even by many who may choose to follow God’s prescriptions. Some follow reluctantly, but are persuaded they need to take at least minimum precaution than to risk the losses of omission. They may find Christian life a mixture of profit and loss for what they want out of life. That is what they get, profit and loss, never learning the righteousness and freedom context offered by God. We can find many lives well lived by pagan persons who, if they are consistent, find pleasurable and useful life contexts. Some have extensive problems and tragedies, but they know devout persons who also face the same or similar experiences. Since both groups get through, if they do get through, in about the same way the pagan sees no compelling need to give up personal time, the only real treasure he or she possesses, to follow a mysterious God. Even Scripture acknowledges that God is alive in a mystery context. So it is that God permits us to find our chosen way during the earthly interlude. There are no denials. All are treated with equity, as closely as nature can provide equity. Each individual is permitted to make of it as he or she wills, given the resources available, the energy to live experience, the mind to guide, and a few years to work through each scenario made by the individual with whatever is available. The point to be made from the beginning is that the individual is free to proceed within the boundaries of nature – until death.
In that understanding the Christian, in faith, relinquishes independent life and rejects it (penitence that self-proves the decision), accepts the plan of God in Jesus Christ to redemption that offers acceptance by God in a new birth for another citizenship, a citizenship that promises immortality in the place of mortality. That mortality taken as valuable by persons is surrendered either in martyrdom, or consumed with life until death lived in the order of the new citizenship. The vast majority of God’s children will live out mortal lives in more years than the pagan, but those years are taken up with the formation of the persons to live in a different environment than that of earth. Christians may enjoy natural life in that it offers opportunity to be God’s servant to mankind in the world. There is addition and subtraction even in perfection *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020