"Do you want the 'good news' or the 'bad news'?"
Click here for audio.
Do you want the bad news or the good news? I wonder how you normally answer someone who gives you that option! I think normally we want to get the bad news out of the way so that we can be cheered by the good news.
Christianity contains
both bad news and good news. I wonder what your version of the bad news is.
None of us can be in any doubt that there is something seriously wrong with our
world. Sickness, wars, natural disasters, politicians being shot in front of
crowds of thousands and their murder watched on screens across the world by millions.
What’s the bad
news? Is there a root cause? There doesn’t have to be a root if you
think everything is a bit meaningless, but for those of us who think that
things should have a rhyme and reason, what’s the bad news?
Many people
think it’s political. In our polarised world where the algorithm tells
us the news that we want to hear, it’s the other people’s fault[1].
Other people
think it’s educational. If only people got a better education, they
wouldn’t do such terrible things.
Some think
that it’s emotional: a result of the lack of love that people had when they were
growing up that they react with violence or hatred. That may be part of the
story, but even well rounded well educated people still do stupid things. We
all do.
Jesus Christ
was very clear on the bad news. And it’s quite sobering because he was talking
about the entire human race. You can read about it in Mark 7. Jesus said “What comes
out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a
person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder,
adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.
All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”
You and I are what’s
gone wrong with the world, so the problem is not “out there” on our news feeds,
it’s inside in my heart and yours[2]- a killer virus called sin
that each of us has. The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human
heart. If we don’t understand the bad news, we’ll get the solution very wrong.
But it doesn’t
end with the bad news, the good news is that God has provided a perfect
solution to the problem of the human heart, when he sent his only Son Jesus
Christ to die forgive the human heart, and his Holy Spirit to transform the
Human heart. Do you want the bad news or the good news?