Leaders are Readers - Into the Wild

Turn on the 6 o'clock news tonight with a stopwatch. Time yourself to see how long it takes before you get discouraged or anxious about the world. My guess is you won't make it to the first commercial break. If it bleeds, it leads. But it doesn't need to bleed for us to realize something is wrong. Stories of fraud, theft, murder, shootings, extortion, crime, sinkholes, and a late season tropical disturbance all can make our blood pressure rise.

The reason? Life sucks.

Thanks Dan Dewitt for that subtle and profound summary of Genesis 3. And thank you for writing the book Into the Wild to give us a theology of perseverance through a world soaked and crippled by the ripple effect of sin. That ripple effect doesn't just mean we use potty words or look off our classmate's test. It means that everything about our world is deeply and fundamentally flawed and futile. Our cars break down, our crops die, hospitals have morgues, and banks foreclose on our houses.

I think the best way to call this is a "Theology of Suck." I know that'll get me in trouble, so please be kind in the comments.

When we develop a Theology of Suck, we have to look past, present, and future.

Past - We understand the cause of our distress, both cosmic and local. We have a cosmic cause because of Adam's sin. There is, not just a physical but a genetic, imprint of sin. We can't escape it. It's also local because we can look around us at systems, family structures, and more than affect how we live in the wild.

Present - We look at what we're going through right now, and we put it in the grid of what it means for God to fulfill His word in Romans 8:28. I've got this as present and not future because we live in the middle of the wild, and we live in the throes of the wild. Our present difficulty, as Christians, is God's perfect plan of sanctification. He can, does, and will bring all things together for our good and His glory. Even when it doesn't feel like it. To that I really commend Chapter 2 and the freedom that can come from Guilt and Shame in Christ.

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Future - One of the hardest things of the wild is believing that it will get better. But as Dan explains in his last chapter, everything is moving towards a moment where all the things that suck about this life are washed away and replaced with perfect peace. This life is difficult. There is no escaping it. We will live under the weight of Genesis 3 and the pressure of trying to pull ourselves out. But when we find ourselves there, we must look to the future.