We live in a broken world. From physical suffering to a shaky and crumbling Western (Christian) culture, it can be overwhelming and unsettling to hear the news nowadays. People know something is wrong, and they are grasping at answers. The efforts range from sincere to sinister. Power-brokers sinisterly foment fear to make people look to them, thinking that they will bring in a utopia once they rule (that is, at least for the leaders themselves). Many prominent people are telling blatant lies to create a narrative that will transform our society into an anarcho-socialistic state, convincing people that paradise is just around the corner if we deconstruct the entire law-and-order system and give everyone access to the possessions of others through individual or government looting.
People, having deceived themselves or been deceived by leaders, sincerely seek healing of society at every level, believing that they genuinely are fighting for physical health and social justice, equality for all. While many are wickedly driving this bus as well as many consciously wicked people on it, many are culpably naïve, believing they are doing good. However, what has happened, whether sinisterly or sincerely, is that problems have been assessed incorrectly and, therefore, their solutions are non-sensical and quite dangerous. We all know that there are problems. We all know that there is brokenness at every level of society. But where is it? What is the source? What are the answers?
The only way to answer this lying or these lying narratives is with the true narrative; the story of how God created, redeemed, and healed the creation through the exaltation of Jesus as Lord. That narrative is woven into every episode of Jesus’ life recorded in the Gospels, emphasizing various aspects of the story.
The story is all about a kingdom. When God created man, he gave man a mission to take dominion or establish a kingdom in the world. Everything in the creation was to be ordered under the lordship of God’s son, Adam, and was to reflect God’s throne room, heaven. Everything in the world was to exist in a proper, healthy relationship with all other aspects of creation so that there would be peace and joy.
Sin entered the world through the man who accepted a false narrative about God, his own existence, and how the world ought to be. With the entrance of sin, decay and death at every level of our existence became our reality. Not only would man experience all forms of bodily death in disease and eventually having breath leave his body, but we would be cut off from one another in enmity.
The only answer to this problem of brokenness in the world is to set the original plan back on course: establish the kingdom of God, the entire created order arranged under the lordship of God’s faithful son. Unlike the first Adam who began with a pristine, unsullied creation, the second Adam needed to deal with the problem of sin first and then progressively heal the world from sin’s effects. This is what Jesus did and continues to do.
When we read, for instance, the story of the ten lepers in Luke 17, we get that story.
Scriptural leprosy (which is not equivalent to Hansen’s Disease) is described in detail in Leviticus 13–14. Leprosy, in many ways, embodied the corruption and effects of sin. Leprosy was a skin ailment in which the skin became white and flakey, dusty, you might say, indicating that a man was returning to dust. He was the living dead. This was no minor inconvenience. Leprosy cut you off from drawing near to God and isolated you from the people of God. Leprosy was a problem in the body that ripped you apart from others and, thus, distressed a person psychologically through isolation. The family of the leprous loved one also suffered his loss. Leprosy quite literally embodied the effects of sin.
The way Luke records this story tells us that the whole world is leprous. There were ten lepers. God created heaven and earth with ten words. God created Israel with ten words (cf. Ex 20.1ff.). These are ten lepers, made up of Jews and Gentiles (an implication that Jesus makes when he distinguishes the one who returned as a “foreigner” (17.18). He was a Samaritan (17.16)). The world before Jesus was a living death, needing her true king to come and heal.
When the kingdom comes, healing comes; from our physical bodies that will eventually be resurrected to societal order in which men are not isolated from one another through enmity but enjoy true justice, peace, and joy.
Jesus’ kingdom has been established. He is Lord of all, seated at the right hand of the Father until all enemies are put under his feet. The entire created order has benefited from Jesus’ work in some way, but for individuals to experience eternal healing, each of us must do what the Samaritan leper did: fall before Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks for what he has done. When we do, he will tell us as he did that Samaritan, “Arise … your faith has saved you.”
Yes, many serpentine people in our society are trying to create a counter-narrative that tries to reframe the understanding of our existence, relationship with God, and how society/relationships ought to be ordered. They know that they themselves and society as a whole are broken, but they keep telling the story of the created order incorrectly, locating the problems in the wrong places, and giving the wrong solutions. The only answer is to submit to God’s narrative–reality–so that we not only understand why we and society are broken but how God has provided healing through the exaltation of Jesus as Lord.
