Deep Disappointment and Apprehension. Great Joy and Anticipation. For decades Texas and Oklahoma have been deadly rivals in football. Each believes they have the best team, coach, and playbook to win the game. There are many similar contests in sports: Army vs. Navy; Green Bay Packers vs. Chicago Bears. The games are played with religious fury and zeal. Why is it that the same event can pose such polar opposite reactions? Our commonsense points to the reason.
Ideologies and religious systems are no different. Both proport to have the secret to the game of life. Both are zealous in pursuit of their stated missions. Some, as in some sports rivalry, resort to violence.
What, therefore, do you think would best unite the players in any of these games of life? Colloquially we would say they would be united if “they are on the same page.” How then can people be of the same mindset in order to come together? Another way to pose this question is how can all people, no matter the game they are playing, be reconciled to one another?
Beside reconciliation, there is another problem to be solved. In the course of pursuing the game of life, even nature teaches us we are imperfect individuals in how we think and act- particularly toward other people. How can this problem to solved along with reconciliation? Take racial hatred and animosity. Those attitudes are universally condemned as wrong. Reconciliation also requires somehow paying for our missing the mark in the first place.
When we wrong one another, how do we make it right and become reconciled? I submit that the answer begins with how we see ourselves in relation to God.
I submit the worldview based on the self that denies God is the polar opposite of man created in the image of God. From the beginning wanting to be one’s on God has been humanities downfall. All other systems of religion, philosophical approaches, and ideologies that proport to solve how man should live, in essence, deny God and his revealed way.
How much do parents love their children? Do they give them stones for bread? No. Just as parents love their created children, God loves His creation. Only one system of religion solves both problems of “messing up” and reconciliation of man to man and man to God.
Christ came in the world to reconcile all peoples to Him no matter the ethnic group, language, or previous systems of belief. At the same time, He erased those times when we missed the mark He has set for living the game of life.
The good news of the gospel is one of reconciliation. Through that reconciliation we become people joined together by common goals, beliefs, hopes, shared faith and support.
How do you wish to play the game of life? In constant combat or supported by God.
By Lynn S. Nored. Nov. 8. Website: www.thoughtful-lines.com
One Response
One key is to reconcile yourself to God. He is unchanging. He does not reconcile with us. He reconciles us with him once we are cleansed by the death and resurrection of the unblemished lamb and have faith that we are cleansed. Our reconciliation is individualistic. My own efforts cannot save me nor can my salvation save anyone else. Reconciling people on earth is difficult as noted by Christ when He told the missionaries He sent into the world to shake the dust from their sandals and go to another town when their message was not accepted. Our question in reconciling American society may be how do we return to being “one nation under God?” Especially without leaders committed to a common understanding of God.