Information Related to "Chaotic Start to a New Century: What Does It Mean?"
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Behind the Headlines |
In many ways 2000 was not a good
year.
What does that tell us about where the world is headed?
by John Ross Schroeder
As
1999 wound down to its final days, observers around the world kept a close eye on
air traffic, the stock markets, the Internet, in fact everything governed by electronics.
Would the millennium bug strike after all and grind the world to a halt? Thankfully,
it did not.
Yet as 2000 drew to a close and another year began, most of us were glad to see 2000
pass from the scene.
Good years and bad years affect the salaries of professional baseball players. Two
or three bad ones in succession spell a salary cut or, worse, a trip down to the
minor leagues. Someone asked Babe Ruth why he made more money than the president
of the United States. "I had a better year than he did," quipped the legendary
baseball star.
Britons found 2000 disappointing in more ways than one. In the United Kingdom, where
I live, 2000 was a period of frustrating and expensive railway and motorway gridlock
for parts of England, Scotland and Wales. Rail transport had its worst year in living
memory. Serious accidents spotlighted structural problems in the nation's network
of railroad tracks. Protesters staged massive demonstrations over skyrocketing fuel
prices.
Elsewhere, 2000 focused us on a range of dispiriting images: the lingering uncertainty
of the U.S. presidential election, the Mideast peace process in tatters, the rising
presence in Austria of Joerg Haider and his Freedom Party, mayhem in Zimbabwe, even
a threat to democracy in fabled Fiji. Many other cumulative problems similarly plagued
the world in 2000.
A world of chaos
As a newspaper columnist put it: "World 2000 is a misshapen creation demographically,
economically, culturally." Planet earth must feed more than six billion people
while 800 million suffer from chronic hunger and malnutrition. We probably have enough
food to feed the world, but politics and greed prevent its proper distribution.
Part of our problem is that we live on the edge of chaos. Periodic threats such as
the millennium computer glitch emerge out of the global woodwork. Our lives revolve
around computers, mobile phones and other technology. The more complex our world
becomes, the greater our uncertainty. When things go wrong, such as a computer virus
or a glitch in the stock market, a damaging chain reaction can begin.
Usually when a problem occurs we know about it. Thanks to 24-hour news coverage,
the Internet and mobile phones, we can react instantly. A corporation's chief executive
officer is almost never out of touch with the head office, whatever his location.
Yet sometimes when you try to fix a problem two or three others emerge unexpectedly.
Minor hiccups can quickly turn into major problems. This is the way our world works.
We lurch from crisis to crisis. One problem fosters another, and the potential for
planetwide meltdown seems always to lurk around the corner. Ours is an age of perpetual
uncertainty. No wonder our medicine cabinets are full of pain relievers, tranquilizers
and other drugs.
Order out of chaos
Of course, some degree of order and stability constantly corrects and counteracts
the changing levels of chaos. The Bible reveals that God created human beings in
His own image (Genesis 1:26-27). Though Satan struck at God's original creation,
resulting in massive chaos, God restored a degree of light and order to an earth
of perpetual darkness. (For details please request our free booklet Life's Ultimate
Question: Does God Exist?)
Given this wondrous legacy by our Maker, we know, to a certain extent, how to restore
order and restrain chaos. The Scriptures
tell us "God is not the author of confusion" (1Corinthians 14:33), and
God tells the Church to do all things decently and in order (verse 40). Yet, to fulfill
His great purpose for human life, God has temporarily allowed a surprising amount
of chaos to stalk the earth.
An unseen influence
Satan is the prince of the power of the air, the unseen ruler of the world (Ephesians 2:2; John 12:31; 1John 5:19). In due time Christ will depose him, and the restitution
of God's government will soon follow.
But for now the devil influences people to produce all types of destructive chaos,
not only in the world at large but in their personal lives. For instance, members
of warring, dysfunctional families attack each other, both verbally and physically,
in front of mass audiences on television shows. Their lives are in disarray.
Yet God is the Sovereign Ruler over heaven and earth (Matthew 11:25). He inspired
one of His servants, the apostle Paul, to write: "The whole created world is
waiting with eager expectation for the Sons of God to be revealed ... The created
world itself would be freed from its enslavement to decay and receive the glorious
freedom which belongs to the Children of God ... The created universe is waiting
with eager expectation for God's sons to be revealed ... The universe itself is to
be freed from the shackles of mortality and is to enter upon the glorious liberty
of the children of God" (Romans 8:19-21, Revised English Bible).
This means the Creator masterminds and fashions something undeniably worthwhile out
of the chaotic behavior of mankind.
God promises to bring us a peaceful and prosperous new world, ending the present
confusing chaos (Acts 3:19-21). God knows what our era is like. Jesus told His disciples
that "in the world you will have tribulation" (John 16:33).
The world awaits major change
Few chapters in the Bible explain the human condition better than Romans 8. Read
verse 22 with the chaos of our age firmly in mind: "For we know that the whole
creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now." How much more
applicable are these words now than when Paul wrote them!
A new world is being formed out of the old. The Jerusalem Bible grasps the meaning
of verse 22: "From the beginning till now the entire creation, as we know it,
has been groaning in one great act of giving birth."
In a sense civilization is experiencing the pangs of childbirth. Ultimately God will
liberate our planet from every disaster, every act of irrational violence, every
contrary force that harms and holds humanity hostage.
|
Recommended Reading What does the Bible reveal about
the condition of the world and its future? Request the eye-opening booklets The
Gospel of the Kingdom, Are We Living in the Time of the End? and You Can Understand
Bible Prophecy. |
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United Church of God, an International Association
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