A tired refrain

It's been a while, but I'm back for a moment to toss out a thought I've had bouncing around for a bit- a thought that was finally pushed out after this past Sunday when we visited and ultimately decided against joining a particular new church, opting instead to stay with MBCC. But that's another post.

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My eyes tend to glaze over a bit whenever I hear a preacher or someone utter, often with exasperation or some knowing condescension in his or her voice, "Well you KNOW how dark the world is," or "People these days," or some other variant of a reminder of how the world is so staunchly unfriendly to their Christian principles or something like that. Is it supposed to be news, shocking breaking news, that "the world" is a "dark place?" I think the Bible made that pretty clear. And yet, with every development in the world that appears contrary to some Christians' woefully narrow-minded worldview[s] (there, I said it), it inspires some major lamentation of that vein.

On one hand, I don't disagree completely with what is said-- the world *is* a dark place (again, newsflash!) filled with broken people (me included). I get it. And yes, broken people do some pretty incredibly depraved things (oh, here's another one: "Have you seen the news, lately?"). But just what else were you expecting? If you "expected better of people," that strikes me as a bit of crummy hypocrisy; if to you, it's "just another example of how [insert hyperbole] bad people can really be," again it strikes me as whiny (though to be fair, I find myself wandering in this direction most often).

In a similar way, it's an interesting and, in my not-that-humble opinion, rather skewed world perspective when someone talks about how some other part of the world is "filled with darkness," or "the population is only X percent Chrisitan!" Take a look around- you live in a country (let's go ahead and assume this is the good ole US of A here) with an enormous population of "professing Christians," and yet I truly doubt it's any less dark here than Wherever-you're-singling-out-istan! It's disconcerting to hear something like this preached out in the open. Your so-called or so-deemed Christian nation (oh, please) needs grace as desperately as the rest of the world. Own that. It should be one of those "welcome to reality" moments.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure that my attitude is wholly right on this, either. You shouldn't completely downplay the "depravity of the world," because I do actually believe it's a very real condition... but I'll admit, perhaps I underplay it by a lot.

My point is more about the folks who, to me it seems, haphazardly overplay the point like it either makes them feel better about themselves or feeds some obsession over it. It often seems, as Sharon has often noted with great distaste, suspiciously like an excuse to go proselytize in said faraway land rather than deal with the darkness just outside of your front door or of our suburban limits. The sooner you quit whining about what a terrible place this world is and get used to it (the horror!), the sooner you can move through it and be moved through it, I think. I trust and believe that is true.