I once attended a lecture given by Dr Patrick Dixon who has been described as a ‘futurist’. That means he is someone who studies present trends in society and attempts to show how they will shape the future. He has a background in science, medicine, technology and business so it was a lively and stimulating lecture. At that time he had written a book called Futurwise which he described as ‘A personal and corporate guide to survival and success in the third millennium.’
This kind of thing is not new. I remember being blown away in the early seventies by a book called Future Shock by Alvin Toffler which raised him to the heights of being described as a modern ‘guru’ such was the impact of his thinking. And there are of course numerous writers of fiction who have sought to describe where they believe the world is going. Not many are particularly optimistic and some have been alarmingly accurate in their speculations. Novels about pandemics are flying out of Amazon’s warehouses at present many of them set in the future.
All this came to mind when someone asked me recently if I thought the world would be a better place when we emerge from these days of Covid-19. There are certainly indications that we can be optimistic. The news bulletins and journals are full of stories of how the best of us is being shown in the way people are responding. Those willing to place their own health and safety on the line to care for the most vulnerable. A new appreciation of the environment as we see the difference lockdown has made to the air we breathe. If these positive waves can be sustained then we can go forward with hope for the future.
There are just enough shadows, however, to make us wary of being too confident. Online scams have increased, the elderly and vulnerable are targeted with fraudulent schemes to make their lives easier, there is increasing evidence of profiteering. And this is apart from the normal course of criminal behaviour.
A minister friend of mine was once warned against accepting a call from a certain congregation by its last incumbent. ‘That place almost destroyed my faith in human nature,’ he said. My friend replied: ‘Well, apart from the grace of God I have no faith in human nature.’
Now that needs a bit of unpacking and I don’t have the space here to do it full justice. But the point was being made that placing faith in human nature will always be perilous and bound to be disappointed. Even the most prominent Christian in the history of the Church confessed to a conflict within himself that sometimes led to failure. In Romans 7: 14-25 Paul confesses to the power of his sinful nature to the extent that:
‘I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing.’ (verses 18-19)
The point is that even this man who was powerfully possessed by the Holy Spirit, who had received revelations from the Risen Lord, whose inner being delighted in the Word of God - sometimes he failed, got it wrong or didn’t do the right thing. Paul’s inner life could be civil war. And he needed the grace of God to come through the struggle to a place of peace. You can hear his pain in these words as well as the assurance:
‘What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ (verses 24-25)
God has sent us a Rescuer who has made it possible for sins to be forgiven and to show in us that pattern of behaviour He has established with love at its heart. My friend’s point about the grace of God being that this cannot be achieved on our own. So if we are talking about the future and the possibility that we might emerge from this time as better people with a fresher world in which to live then we need the help that Paul craved. He saw Jesus as the prototype of a new humanity, ‘the firstborn among many brothers’, the One God wants to show in our lives. That is God’s project in our lives, God’s way forward, the way to a better world.
