Futility
For reasons I do not know, the word futility has been floating around in my head this week. It was exemplified by a Matt cartoon in the Daily Telegraph, which showed a wind turbine and a CCTV camera pointing at each other. The caption said “the wind turbine provides all the power for the CCTV”, in other words the one existed merely to prevent vandalism of the other, whose only raison d’etre was to run the camera watching it and both were a blot on the landscape. I feel there is quite a bit of that type of rationale around today.
At work we spend hours filling in forms just to allow records to be kept that only exist so that we can see if we have filled in our forms – it is called meeting NHS targets. The basic underlying principle of good healthcare is subsumed by the need to keep records so that in the end the time spent on the one does not leave time for the other, the real purpose of the organisation. I constantly hear that the same is occurring in other professions and I wonder if it is creeping into church life too.
Are we getting so tied up in running the church that we forget the purpose of having a church? What is the point of a wonderfully appointed building with a well-organised ritual if no one actually remembers that we would have none of it, were it not for God’s love and provision? Bob and Mark have been preaching recently about forgetting what we owe to the Lord when times are good and there are many examples of this happening in both the Old and New Testaments. Moses, Hosea and St John all spoke of or wrote to rebuke various groups that had become complacent and forgotten what was due to the Lord (Deut. 6:10-12, Deut. 8:7-17, Deut. 31:19-21, Deut. 32:15, Hos. 13:4-6, Rev. 2:1-5, Rev. 3:1-3, Rev. 3:14-16). As hardship drifts into the past man forgets that he did not achieve his good life unaided and stops praising and thanking God.
As we look around us we see the “you have never had it so good” generation assuming they managed it all themselves, doing exactly what they please and thinking they are happy but when we look beneath the surface it is all a flim-flam, there is no substance to anything. Those who exist to party, drink, use drugs and so forth need more and more of the stimulants to keep them happy and when they surface from the false dream they realise there is nothing in their lives. They do not believe in the existence of God so they have no hope of eternal life and no expectations of the future. When they see little point in life they see no reason to preserve it and murder, euthanasia and abortion follow. They do the easy things that seem to make them happy, things that need no discipline and no conscience but that also have no substance and no long-term fulfilment. When we accept God into our lives those things that seemed a chore become easy, the longer they are practised the lighter the load and the more the reward.
When we stop worrying about what other people will think, second guessing all our actions and watching our backs, life becomes a pleasure again. As children have no worries beyond today, so too do those who truly believe in God. He alone sees past, present and future. For us the past is done with and cannot be altered, but when we ask God’s forgiveness our transgressions are forgotten. The future can be affected by what we do today but we cannot know how so we trust the Father. We have confidence in a life eternal in the House of the Lord so we do not need to live for instant gratification. When a person smokes cannabis or injects heroin, drinks to oblivion or carries out a daredevil exploit they achieve a short sharp thrill of pleasure but there is no long term satisfaction, hence the futility. Only walking with God means true life.
