The world is a broken amusement park.
Phil Vischer uses this analogy, but it connected so deep with me, I really enjoy it and like to expand on it. I heard this on the Phil Vischer podcast and I highly recommend listing to it and my favorite person to listen to is Skye Jethani. The Lord is clearly with him and I praise God for using him as He has in my life.
So when God created Eden, He created an amusement park. A place where you could have a ton of fun and enjoyment, and no one would get hurt or ever be sad. The thing is, why didn’t anyone ever get hurt? Was it because it was perfect? Many seem to think of Eden as perfection in form, though I think it was more a perfection in function. God never says the form was perfect, only that it was good, and it was. And many believe that sin ruined it or caused the form to be drastically changed and caused it to lose it’s perfect form, as if it was cursed.
Let’s say that all the rides created had flaws to them, BUT God was always there to avert that flaw from having and functional effect on them. Like one ride they went up the hill so fast, it flew off the track headed for certain doom, but then God would always create a new track or catch them and bring them back on the track and everyone always had a blast and no one got hurt, it was good in function. But this goodness relied on God to occur. It wasn’t the form that was good, but God’s intervention, or our dependence on God that made it function good.
But there was this one ride, and it was broken as well (it had missing bolts in it and was waiting to fall apart but never would if no one got on it), but it looked like a blast, but we were told NOT to ride on it. We decided to get on it, and when it broke, we got hurt. Well, no one wants to go to an amusement park were people get hurt. It wasn’t the plan of the Creator for this to happen, so he had to leave it. He told us one day, He will create a new park, one that will be perfect in form that we can come to.
Some say that “the fall” is what caused our world to be broken like this. As if some curse is some magic that occurred that completely transformed the form of our world. Like fire didn’t exist, or thorns or death and the physical world we know of was completely different. I don’t think this makes sense. It was good, God didn’t need to change it, or allow some curse, some magical power beyond His own to change it. Death was part of creation. New life can’t happen without death, it is the nitrogen cycle, trees grow and die to make room for new ones. Thorns are on some plants, heat, with oxygen and fuel makes fire, fire burns things, “kills” or harms things.
But just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fire didn’t hurt them. Why? Because God was with them. So this curse wasn’t God or some curse radically transforming the world’s form, rather the function of it radically transforming. God was no longer there to catch us when we fell, or to use miracles to hold a frame together without bolts. The “curse” was God leaving us, losing the function of perfection, choosing to no longer depend on God. I don’t think child birth would have been painful, I don’t think it would have hurt to have a snake bite you if God is there. This is what God is teaching us, to learn to rely on Him, and not ourselves or a perfect form. That He is the reason everything He created was good, not the thing it itself that was good.
In heaven, everything might have perfect form, but we won’t know the difference or care. It will be perfect in function, we do know that. I do believe it will be perfect in form, but God taught us to rely on Him, we probably won’t see or know the difference. If we can walk through fire and not be hurt, will we remember that fire would have hurt if it wasn’t for God? Those in heaven desire God’s will regardless, and are dependent on God regardless. So what was the point of it all? From Genesis 1 to now and beyond?
Well we know that all things are created for God’s glory and are done for His glory and He deserves all glory for all things. So how does it seem He achieved this?
When you watch a movie, is it a good or memorable movie if all you saw was the climax or the end? Why was the death star blown up, why are they having a parade for Luke, Han and Chewy? You need a movie, a story to understand, to give it significance. You need to feel connected to the characters, to understand who they are, what struggles they had. To empathize with them, to connect to them. God created us for connection. So much so, that He even wanted to connect with us! He wasn’t some far away God, or a talking voice, He came incarnate Himself to this world to connect with us in person. To feel us to understand us, to teach us.
Why does God get angry? Is anger bad? Why is sin allowed? Anger is not good generally, but it can be the right thing at times. But what is mercy? To not give what someone what they deserve, to withhold suffering deserved from one who angered you. If you were never angry, then you can never know what mercy is. Without the detriments of sin, you cannot know holy God is or how much we need Him. Adam was born always being caught by God on the rides, and no bolts being needed, so that is all he knew. Which was great, but if he never know the perils or this imperfect form, then how would he know the greatness of God who protected Him from it? Contrasting. In a spectrum or continuum of white and black, if you zoom in close enough, you cannot tell the difference between this shade of grey or black or white and that shade, one gradient of color the exact same color as the next when you look at it. It is only when you zoom out and look at the fart left and the far right and see that what you thought was the same was actually opposites! It was the contrast that revealed this to you.
So now we are in this broken amusement park. God promises us that he will make it right some day and to just trust Him. I say make it right and not “fix” for a reason. The word God used when He says “new” is not new like, we have an old busted 50’s truck, and He makes a brand new 2022 extended cab shiny truck. New means to transform the 50’s truck, to restore it back to new. Heaven isn’t a distant new place, God will bring Heaven to Earth. The kingdom of God is at hand. This is what Jesus meant. It is here already. Any place where the will of God is done IS heaven. He will come to reign on this earth and all those who wanted Him to reign will be here and the function will be perfect again. Now He might make it a perfect form, I am not sure of that. But again, we won’t care, as it is not the form we worship, rather the One who Formed it. The difference this time, is that we know the only reason it is perfect in function is due to God and our dependence on Him.
So back to the broken amusement park. There are some who do their best to ignore the hurt of this world. Maybe 100 people just died when the ride fell over, but that is 100 miles away, it doesn’t effect me, and I am having a BLAST on this ride here. That is all I care about. And if I punch people and throw them down, I can get in line ahead of them and enjoy this ride I love so much even more. I have some family members that I hurt people for so they can enjoy what I enjoy and I teach them to band together as a tribe so that our tribe gets the most enjoyment. Some do this until they die, in an ignorant bliss. They never see the hurt, or how much their needs to be a fix, it isn’t broken to them, and they die never believing there needs to be a fix. But sometimes, one of their tribe gets harmed.
“It isn’t supposed to be this way” That is what you hear from many people when a tragedy happens. A school shooting or bombing, a hurricane kills thousands. When one uses that phrase, they are correct, and not an atheist. By those very words, they are proclaiming there is a Creator, and Engineer, a Grand Designer, who made something a certain way, and it isn’t working out as designed. And atheist would simply say, this is nature, oh well. There is no meaning outside their personal feelings. Not to say that they don’t have empathy or feelings towards their fellow humans who are suffering, as I know a many who do. And I don’t have such and animosity towards atheist to think that if they don’t worship my God they are evil depraved humans with no morals. But they can’t say it isn’t supposed to be this way, there is no way it is supposed to be in atheism. They might say, well, this sucks really bad, how can I or we make it better. Because atheist or a Deist religion can all agree that we should try to make it better.
But there in lies the problem, humanity. We are not God. One we are flawed, but even if that human was to be perfect, they still wouldn’t know the best way. Jesus was the only perfect human, and He was God Himself, but even HE didn’t know the right way. This is one (of the many things) of the things we can learn from Jesus. Jesus in the garden didn’t want to be crucified to save us, but “Not my will, but Yours”. Jesus is saying, I don’t even know the right thing to do and I am perfect, so let Your will be done. And that is the only right thing to do, is God’s will. But I will digress to the fact that I don’t think any atheist will claim to be perfect and though they may have impressive knowledge, they still won’t know what is best for all.
So we are now in a broken amusement park, and we see people getting harmed at it, and that is not good, so we decide to fix it. So we gather together with like minded people and come up with at plan. First of all, in the history of humanity, the world has never agreed on ANYTHING and that will probably never happen. Before we can even come up with a plan to try and fix it, we have to agree that this level of fun we are having is worth it. Because some don’t even think this level of fun is worth all the harm caused and just want to sit all day. Are they wrong? Some of these folks hate so much to see people getting hurt, they will actually come up with their own tribe of like minded folks, who prevent people from even riding at all. They might even kill those in line. If they only have to kill 1000 people, that will scare people enough to not ride this that they will be saving millions of lives right? Is it worth it to kill 1000 people to save a million? What about killing 1 to save a billion? Where do you draw the line?
But wait a minute, you think like is pointless if you just sit around all day, you want to enjoy the ride. So your tribe gathers enough that you can go to war against those preventing you from riding. Because everyone might as well be dead if they are just going to lay around and not ride it. So if you are making life worth living for million, than it is worth killing a 1000 over. Or if you can make life worth living for a billion, it is worth killing 1 person over right?
So you originally had a noble desire, and great intentions. You saw a broken ride that was absolutely worth riding, and you wanted to come up with a plan to fix it, but now some of you are sidetracked fighting a war and you aren’t even fixing it what was your noble intent to save others in fixing it. So lets say your “tribe” wins the war finally. And you have been so busy not at war trying to fix it, you actually came up with a great plan.
The problem with humans is perspective. If you stand above this line and you stand below this line and I ask what number you see, you see a 6 and they see a 9. Neither of you is wrong, and you are both right, but for whatever reason, you cannot get to their side of the line, and they cannot get to your side, and they will always be wrong in your eyes.
So lets say come up with a plan to put bolts on the ride. Well, the other person came up with a plan to bind it with a bracket or a strap. Let’s just say that either way will work, but like the 6 and the 9, you cannot see that from your side, and from your side, that is wrong. So now you end up going to war again. You have the bolt tribe and the strap tribe. Both think it is worth killing X amount of people to save XX amount of people. Again, this noble effort is not going very will exactly.
So you see this and take a break from planning and going to war. You decide to gain power. For when you have power, you will be able to scare them enough so that you don’t have to kill them, you will have your way through fear. Again a noble cause of trying to save lives, and even not killing to do it, just using fear.
So you start to get political and get people to join your cause. But they decide to do the same thing and gain power. And you see an opportunity to harm the leader of their cause. Though you were swearing to not kill in a war any more to save the masses, if you just harm this one, it will help you out so much. Then you start blurring the lines and before you know it, you are so far from fixing this ride and people are still riding it and dying on it all this time you are amassing power, and you turn into a very evil person in the process. And you die before you actually cause any change, and you lived a terrible life, harming so many in your quest for power. But it was power to do a noble thing right?
So what is a Christian to do in this broken world? What did Jesus do? Should we try to fix the world? More specifically, should we try to fix the form of the world? If God didn’t create a perfect form, how much of a sin is that to attempt to “fix” it? Do you really think you can do a better job than God? God could, but doesn’t want to fix the form of the world, He wants to fix the function of the world. He created us to rely on Him, the One who can see the 6 and the 9, to rely on Him to have a perfect function and that is why He incarnated Himself to this world and to come and fix it, and He did!
That is the good news! Euangelion! Eua meaning good, and gelion meaning proclaim. It was the word used when a new king was pronounced. There is a new king, a new Caesar! This is great news, proclaim it to all. This is what the Gospel means! Proclaim to all that Jesus is Lord!
But how did Jesus fix it? I still see people getting hurt? You can’t fix something that isn’t broken. If something is made or designed to be incomplete or imperfect in form, you can’t fix it. But He did fix the function of it. “The Kingdom of God is at hand” It is here. What we are called to do as Christians, what Jesus did was to trust God, depend on God and tend to those who are harmed. Don’t try to fix the form, because it isn’t broken, fix the function and trust God. Don’t get wrapped up in arrogance that you can fix it if only, don’t worry about the ends, worry about the means. All sin is, is missing the mark, an archery term. The mark is, to rely on God in all and give God the glory in all and to desire God’s will in all things. When you try to fix the world’s form, you are taking glory from God in thinking that you can fix it. You are not relying on God, but yourself to fix it. And you are not following His will, but yours, that you want it fixed, as if you are in control of the ends.
But we aren’t just talking about death. Many are physically harmed or emotionally or physiologically harmed. Some of this causes them to do more harm and it grows like a cancer worse than death. Because you were harmed by others and you harm others to prevent more harm and teach that to your kids and now this pain spreads and multiplies. This is what God’s light does in the opposite direction. You show God’s love to another, and they see God in that act, they come to know God and show His love to another and it spreads like light uncovering darkness, which reveals the hood which has that cover removed which reveals and spreads bringing light to all. This is what Israel was supposed to be, a shining light on a hill. This is the reason for all of those rules. The problem is, they thought these rules would fix the form. If we had all followed God’s laws, He would return to us and again help prevent the brokenness of this world from hurting us again. But we couldn’t follow His laws, we tried it a bunch of times. We had to learn it wasn’t the laws that would save us, but in following the laws, God would return and it would have been our reliance on God that saved us. But we couldn’t even get to that point as we couldn’t follow all of those laws, even though had we, it still wouldn’t have helped. Then Jesus came, the true light, revealing that it is God that we needed, not the laws. But not to say the laws were bad, had we followed the laws, they would have led to great results. But in following and desiring God’s will, we would still get those results that the laws would have given us. But now we didn’t have to strive to do so many laws which appeared to be impossible. All we had to do was to rely on God. Acknowledge we are flawed, that we aided to the harm or others, and asking for His will. He told us His will is for Him to help us, to help us by sending Jesus to die for us, so that we can be forgiven of our sins. I go into this more in depth on this post God doesn’t hold grudges – Seeking God (home.blog).
We will see people hurt in this world. Yes the form is broken (but it was never meant to be fixed), but more importantly, the function is broken (and that was absolutely meant to be fixed). We are to trust that God is good, loving, merciful and just. We are to tend to those in need, mourn with those who are sad. We can use these things to fix the function, we can use these things to point people to God. Then they will learn to rely on God and to tend to those harmed by this broken world. Sometimes, God still intervenes and stops a tragedy from happening, He prevents the curse from hurting us, by being with us like those in the fire who weren’t harmed. Other times He shows Himself to others through us. Remember, He became incarnate to dwell with us! He loves to use us to heal. We heal others by meeting their physical and emotional needs. But once healed, we are still in a world not functioning properly and the only true healing is to know God and desire His will. Then you can stand in fire and not be hurt. You body might still get physical pain, but your soul is healed. You can live a life trusting God, knowing that He can use you to help His will be done, and that one day you will be with Him in His new/restored creation were He will reign and cause perfect function again.
Do I desire to be in heaven right now? NO! I desire God’s will. If God wanted me in heaven, then I would be there. I actually am in heaven, because I am where God wants me to be, for heaven for me is to be in God’s will. For if you are in God’s will, even fire is a great place to be. We can’t be so focused on matters of the flesh. There is suffering of the flesh, but all suffering of the flesh is good. But there is not one time in the Bible I can find where suffering of the soul is ever good. That is despair, that is hell. Just as anger can be used to show mercy, despair is there to show hope! Suffering of the flesh is there to bring hope and salvation to our souls!
Keep in mind that the kingdom is God is where we do God’s will, and God’s will is to trust Him and love others. Loving meaning caring and tending to the needs of others. Helping those who are harmed by this world. Showing them God in us, so they can see God and be eternally helped by saving their soul from the despair of this broken world.
So how did Jesus fix the world? Satan thought Jesus was trying to fix the form and if he could only kill Jesus before it got fixed, he would have won. That is why in the resurrection of Jesus, the powers of darkness fell, Satan was made a spectacle of. It showed that this whole time we were trying to fix the world’s form, when we were supposed to be fixing it’s function. And how do we fix it’s function? By trusting God and following His will even to the point of death, even death on a cross. In doing this, Jesus ascended to Heaven, to become Lord of all, the new King, Euangelion! Some who are trying to fix the world don’t know the gospel. They claim to know that Jesus died for our sins, He forgives us of them, and makes us righteous through Him. The “divine transfer” of Jesus taking our sins and giving us His righteousness. And I am not saying at all that that is untrue. But that isn’t the good news. The good news is that Jesus is LORD! We don’t need to fix the form of this world, Jesus fixed the function of it and revealed to us how to live in it and love others and trust God fixed it through Him! If you know God isn’t trying to fix the form of the world, we will stop trying to fix it. The good news is He fixed the function of the world, so we don’t need to fix the function or the form. We just need to trust Him, ask Him to forgive us for trying to fix it, for all the wrongs we did in attempting to fix it, love others and let Him reign!
There are plenty of people in this world who were not healed when Jesus was on earth. The rides where fixed either. But He did love and tend to those who were harmed by this world. Those whom God placed in His life to tend to. He wasn’t and nor are we here to tend to all and heal all those who had their flesh harmed by this world. Only those who God placed in His life. God only wants you to do , what He wants you to do. And if you don’t do it, it will still get done. But you will lose out on having had an opportunity to have been used by our great God. We must have faith that He is in control and is using others to do their job. The hand is no more important to the body than the eye, and visa versa. The hand can’t do it all, and nor can the eye, but it can do it’s job and trust that God will have all parts work in concert to achieve His will.
STOP trying to fix the world! STOP being hateful and compromising a little to save a lot! Love God, love others, have faith!