Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Cornelius Plantinga on Self-Centeredness

"A proud person tries to reinvent reality. He tries to redraw the borders of human behavior to suit himself, displacing God as the Lord and boundary keeper of life. At bottom, the fool is out of touch with reality. For, of course, our wills are not sovereign. We are not really our own centers, anchors, or lawgivers. We have not made ourselves, cannot keep ourselves, cannot ultimately oblige or forgive ourselves. The image of ourselves as center of the world is fantasy -- perhaps, in its sheer detachment from reality, even a form of madness. This is especially clear at the most ruinous levels of evil. Only a fool, Milton believed, would rise from the flaming ruins, look out across a 'dismal Situation waste and wild,' filled with 'huge affliction and dismay,' and declare: 'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n.'"

Cornelius Plantinga Jr.
Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin

When Everything Just Works

In his book Not the Way It's Supposed to Be Cornelius Plantinga Jr. writes:

The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom.  We call it peace, but it means far more than mere peace of mind or a cease-fire between enemies.  In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight – a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights.  Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.

This is the type of existence we are created to live.  Compared to this beautiful functionality though, our lives and our world are a complete wreck.  This has come about as a result of sin and Creation's subsequent Fall, and is a fact with which we are all far too familiar.

Today at his blog Head Heart Hand, David Murray posted a fun video.  He prefaced it by speaking of how a recent trip to a scrapyard left him depressed as the crushed and broken down cars which had once been so beautiful and so functional reminded him of the fallen condition of the world in which we now live.  He goes on to say...

My spirits were lifted yesterday though when my son pointed me to this video (below). What precise perfection! It reminded me of how integrated the original creation must have been, and how everything must have run so smoothly.

And it also made me hope and long for the day when God will take our scrappy lives and world and make all things new. And everything will "just work."