I'm in a large, a very large room, sitting with 40 or so people, all of us forced to be there and no way out. Many of the 40 had feet, legs, and minds missing. One lies on a conveyance completely wrapped, head to toe, in a sheet. Who's underneath that sheet? Male? Female? Young? Old? I have no idea. A 400+ pound man lies on a conveyance, just looking around. A woman is semi-lying in a recliner staring straight ahead with large, unblinking eyes that reveal no soul, just a blank stare that never stops, looking off in the distance. I wonder, "What's she looking at?"
The woman sitting next to me in the large room had no left foot. She maneuvered her wheelchair to get into position to use the computer nearby. She went to some music website, and all of a sudden, Phil Harris was singing from 1947, "Smoke! Smoke! That Cigarette" for all ears in the large room to hear. All heard, but nobody paid any attention.
A woman about 15 feet from me begins to yell, "Somebody help me! Somebody help me!" Another woman shouts at her, "Shut up!" Undeterred, she continues to yell; she's becoming more agitated, loud, and bellicose. She asks for a bottle of water. A member of the staff gives her one. She finishes it or half finishes it and demands a staff member come and take it. The staff member, busy with others, says "No." The woman asks three more times, each time the answer is, "No." The woman starts yelling again. In her disgust, she hurls the bottle several yards. There were so many people, I couldn't see where it landed.
A man walks by. He has no idea who he is or where he is. He sits down at a table in the large room and periodically raises his hand like he's in school. He never says anything, asks for anything, he just raises his hand from time to time.
The woman who's been yelling sees a member of the staff walking by and grabs her by the bottom of her shirt. The staff member tells her, "Let me go!" She grips more tightly. The staff member tells her, "Let me go." The woman holds on. The girl takes the woman's hand and pries her fingers from her shirt, one by one, and, now released, moves on. I'm beginning to think that even Mother Teresa would slap this woman and tell her, "Shut up!"
A staff member puts a movie into the VCR so people can watch something to take their minds off where they are and the heat that's building up in the room. Think of a mindless comedy, one that's loud, stupid, insipid, silly, sophomoric, and insulting. This one is worse. Nobody watches it, but it continues to run and yell it's way through the dumb script.
Another staff member starts the popcorn machine next to me; the heat builds. When the popcorn is ready, she begins to distribute it. I refuse her offer. The woman who grabbed the staff member gets a bag, devours it, and asks for more. She gets it. She consumes it, demands more. They tell her, "No more, you've had two."
What I've described went on for not one, not two, but for 4 hours, 58 minutes, and 29 seconds. I timed it with the stopwatch on my phone. All I wanted to do was to get out and get out fast.
While I was sitting there, trying endure without complaint, I thought about Genesis 3 and how the Fall of man bought all this chaos, pain, and sorrow to the planet. What I was looking at in that room was a microcosm of the earth with its overwhelming pain, grief, incessant yelling, constant demands, and those never satisfied.
What could the staff do? They couldn't make it "work." No one could. That's the way the fallen world is. It doesn't "work." It's broken. Yet year after year, we actually believe that the Republicans or the Democrats are going to fix it. That's what fallen politics is--an attempt on man's part, by man's efforts to fix the unfixable. Politics is the art of trying to fool the people into believing that my party will lead us to Utopia because we'll fix it. We promise.
In Genesis 3, as God delineates the various curses sin has brought into the world; the implication is, "It's broken. You can't fix it." But there is the promise, "One day," God says, "My Son will fix it."(Gen. 3:15; Ps. 2; Rev. 20)
But back to the question: what can the staff do to fix it?
Play a silly movie and serve popcorn! I'm not trying to advise them; they were overwhelmed too. But I am pointing out that it's a picture of the world with all of its sin-sick fallenness--the two things the world thinks of to fix it are entertainment and popcorn, or as Roman historians call it, "Bread and circuses." What that meant was free entertainment in the Colosseum and free food, all at public expense. What a deal! "See how much your politicians love you," It was merely the government's attempt to keep the people fat, happy, and distracted.
But let's not jump all over the world and leave the church unscathed. In the face of all the brokenness, what popcorn are many churches distributing to the masses? They serve sermons, books, and CDs, all masquerading as "Bible studies," on how to fix it--get wealthy, get promoted, get the life of your dreams, a Rolex, and a private jet for 65 million dollars. They distribute self-help popcorn; tell us to think positive, give us packaged popcorn slogans, with the reinforcement, "You can do it!" They promote the idea, "You can fix it, yes you can!" Their sermons are formulaic. If you've heard one, you've heard them all. They have the gullible repeat "Yes, I can," over and over again until they become mindless. "I can fix it! Yes, I can!"
Yeah, right.
Once out in the world with that philosophy, we find that the fallen world chews us up and spits us out. Have you seen those martial arts experts who can crack a board with their hand? That's what the world does to the gullible, the simpleton, and the fool. The self help sermons are edifying until you leave the church building, enter the parking lot, and get on the Interstate. The very real and very fallen world quickly untickles our tickled ears.
On a planet we can't fix, we need to emphasize God's promises for the believer: Christ is coming for us. There is a glory waiting for us. To be absent from the body is to be face to face with the Lord. We will rule and reign with Him. Where Christ is, there we will be. In My house are many mansions.
What we need is a good strong dose of premillennial, dispensational, biblical prophecy. That's what fortifies us to take the aggressive grace of the gospel into the unfixable world around us.
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