Devotions this week based on the Message: “BELIEVE: Week 7: Humanity”
(NOTE: This sermon series and devotional series is based on a book by Randy Frazee entitled, “BELIEVE.”
You may choose to download or purchase the book as a supplement to your worship and devotional emails.)
What do you believe about humanity?
Perhaps this is a question that you really haven’t paused to reflect on. Yet, underneath some of the prominent issues of our day is really a belief about humanity. Consider some of issues that come up often in the news:
Racism…Abortion…Gender issues…Class “warfare” and more.
Do these issues all have an underlying belief system? I propose they do.
My belief about humanity is a key indicator of my worldview. How do I view people and their value are dependent on what set of worldview glasses through which I am looking. In general, there are two worldviews: Humanistic and Biblical. A humanistic worldview sees the world without God. A Biblical worldview sees a world with God. A humanistic worldview allows humanity to define their world. A Biblical worldview allows God to define our humanity. The differences are stark and the impact large.
Perhaps you have never considered the underlying cause of the above issues. However, consider what happens when a culture embraces a humanistic view of humanity versus a biblical view of humanity.
Again, perhaps over simplifying, but a humanistic worldview perpetuates these three tenets about humanity.
- All humanity is a product of random chance. Billions of years of random reactions have brought from goo (primordial slime and energy), you (a highly evolved animal). This instills the reality that humanity is an accident, perhaps even an invasion on other parts of nature. Their value is equal to that of a tree or a frog.
- The purpose of humanity is to survive. Charles Darwin made popular the evolutionary theory and natural selection. This perspective inherently says that death is a good thing because it cleanses the weak and allows the strong to prevail. Survival of the fittest is the purpose of life. You must (in the words of “Survivor”) outwit, outlast, out play everyone else.
- Every other person is your competition. If the strong must survive, I must inherently feel threatened by every other human being. Some will be victors and others will be victims.
Again, perhaps over simplified, but can you begin to see themes that are playing out in our world today? Racism promotes one group of people is better than others. Life is random and cheap. An unborn child is competition to the life I want to live or simply a reality that the weak will not survive. Nature issues become more important than human life issues. Gross atrocities such as the Holocaust come in an evil struggle to be the superior race.
The list can go on.
The reality is the sinful nature…our sinful nature desires to live apart from God. We think that life apart from the constraints of the divine is better than with the order of the Lord. The apostle Paul recognized that this was a conscious decision that mankind makes. It is not that God is absent, it is that sinful minds choose to try to explain life and humanity apart from God. (Romans 1:18-21; 28-31)
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
We see this reality in humanity…but is it the way to see humanity? Tomorrow through Friday we will explore humanity as God sees it…it presents a much brighter outlook!
Apply: What results of a humanistic worldview do you notice in the world around us?
Prayer: Lord God, thank you for making your perspective on humanity plain in the pages of the Bible. Lead us to embrace and live your view of life and not a humanistic view. AMEN.