False Assumption #2: The Bad Is Out There

Everyone knows that there is something wrong with the world. That’s why when the lights go out, we instinctively lock our doors and listen for strange noises. It’s why our children wet their beds rather than face the valley of shadow and death lying between them and the bathroom. So where does all this badness come from? Most of us think we know that answer. It’s them. It’s those people out there. You know, those liberals, those right-wing radicals. It’s Hollywood and their gay-loving. It’s the terrorists, the druggies, the whites, the blacks, the hispanics. Christians are hardly an exception to this line of thinking. Ask the average mid-western church goer and they’ll tell you where the badness comes from. It’s the world.

Strategies for Badness. If the problem is those bad buys out there, then the solution is pretty simple. If you’re a democrat, then beat the Republicans. If you’re an American, then kill the terrorists. And if you’re a Christian, then tell the world how wrong they are, boycott their services, and most of all, just stay away.

The Bad Looks Familiar. What makes an Islamic terrorists strap explosives to a subway, wait for hundreds of people to clamor aboard, and then mercilessly send them to their grave? Ask them, and they will tell you. They are doing the work of God. They are carrying out his war against the bad people that are corrupting his world. The bad people are out there, they say, and their job is to beat them. Sound vaguely familiar? The terrorists aren’t bad because they have falsely identified who the real bad guys are. They are bad for the same reason we are. They have never stopped to consider whether they might be the bad guys too.

Same Old Problem. The danger of this assumption is that it always puts me on the side of the good guys. The bad may be terrorists, the rich, the young, the old, the church, the world, the politicians, the lawyers, ad nauseum. But whoever the bad guys are, there is always one constant. They are whoever I am not. There is a problem with the world, and it is always the same problem--them.

Salvation and the Bad. But the gospel says just the opposite. It says the problem with the world is that it is filled with people just like you. Yes, you have been abused, corrupted, victimized, and all of that was bad, unjust, and wicked. But it happened because the world is full of people like you, not unlike you. So salvation doesn’t lie, it can’t lie, in beating the bad guys. At least not in you beating the bad guys. Salvation is God dying for your badness, forgiving your badness, and transforming your badness into goodness. That is the way salvation always works. There are no people on God’s side until he puts them on his side. That is, until he brings them to repent of the their badness and trust in his goodness. If the bad is always out there, then it is never here. And if it is never here, then salvation has never come here either.