Overkill

Would you say the world is less corrupt today than it was in the days of Noah?

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth. - Genesis 6:11-12

When it comes to judging how well we are doing as children of God, if we are honest with ourselves, we might find that we come up short on our own expectations of what it means to be faithful and good.

But if we look at the whole world and have to make a judgment, despite all the corruption and evil we see and hear about, we might just be a bit reluctant to throw in the towel and call the whole thing corrupt.

One example of good is all we need to say the world is salvageable, and in the story this morning, that one person was found.  Noah represents the good in us.

With a salvation view of things, we might say that God was being hasty in wanting to start over, and later on, he tells Noah he won't do that again.  He leaves that to us, I guess.

Many today would like to cleanse the world of evil and start over, but the problem is we don't all have the same view of evil and corruption.  It is one thing for us to be disappointed in our politicians and civic leaders who put their own desires above those of the people they serve.  We call them corrupt and we deal with them, eventually at the polls.

But when someone outside our community judges us because of that corruption, we take offense.  We must, therefore, be seeing the world and humanity as basically good, needing minor correction now and then, but worthy of life.

It is that part of us that sees God's action in the Flood as overkill.  But if anyone else did that, we would say it was evil.  So, is God the source of both Good and Evil?

Given the fact that evil acts are possible by all, that each of us can be influenced to do something others perceive as evil, even if we do not, leads us to an interesting conclusion.  It is a Yin/Tang view of the world as existing in the balance between good and evil, both necessary for the fulfillment of life.

If we fail to see that, we run into all sorts of confusion.  Once I start labeling people as evil, rather than seeing the potential for evil in all, I build bigger prisons, justify capital punishment, start wars, plan counteracts of evil.

So, I think the Flood is a message for us to judge ourselves.  What is it we seek to do to bring harmony to the world, and how do we define harmony?

If we see it as a balance, if we acknowledge that good and evil are vital to survival, then we might just strive to understand each other, rather than destroy each other.

That's a tough one, isn't it?  When I am looking into the face of evil, I might just let the whole idea of balance go right out the window.

So, God, what do we do?  How do we find a way to get along?  And how do we show others we are like them and they are like us?  First, I guess, we need to believe that is true.

More to come...