The otherworldly orientation is the only one that makes any sense given the full truth of things.
A major element in the online chatter about the mosque shooting in New Zealand is the repeated question: How do we stop this kind of thing?
The answer is easy: You don’t. At least, you don’t stop it by any of the means commonly proposed. All the standard efforts guarantee only that the murders will be more shocking and terrorizing. The world contains badly broken people, so these things will happen. The mere notion that they can be stopped is part of what provokes them in the first place, because the goal of terror is herding people into Utopia. It’s that false assumption that aggravates whatever makes humans stupid.
There is no hope for stopping them. There is hope for diverting them or restraining them — just barely. We already know that the bulk of humanity rejects those diversions and restraints, so there’s not much point in discussing them in detail. Divine revelation is the only possible hope, and that revelation warns that such things cannot be prevented. Instead, revelation says we can reduce the provocations that result in fallen humans doing such horrific evil. There aren’t many folks interested in that path.
All of the blaming and finger-pointing is useless. Every solution generated from human intelligence will fail. Get used to it. Get used to the idea that, no matter how traumatic and tragic a death may be, it’s not the end. Life is not precious. There may be some joyful things in this life, but life itself sucks and we need to keep that in front of us. We need to invest ourselves wholly into that mindset. The New Testament teaches quite plainly that this life is awful, a thing to be endured while serving Christ, and then getting out as soon as He tells us we are done.
One more time: Biblical Law is its own reward. It gives us hopeful glimpses of Real Life outside this prison existence. We pursue God’s glory and justice for its own sake, not because it works. Granted, it does work, but only in the sense that it works better than anything else humanity has cooked up. But nothing will bring us the longed for ideal existence in this life. Biblical Law brings us as close to Eden as we are going to get, and that’s still outside of it. Our best hope is to live like we belong in Eden so we can gain samples of it here and there.
We were not designed for this life. This existence is accursed. Eden is our eternal home and you can’t go there without leaving this world. This life is nothing we should cling to, as if death is somehow a tragedy in itself. Death is our reward, but only when Christ says He’s finished with us here.
