Until recently.
When logic seems to be failing us. And in its place? A void.
Although there are many gains from science, we are seeing its limits: science is not answering questions about why we are here, the purpose of our life, or what happens to us when we die.
Indeed, regardless of measured attempts to control wealth and regulate financial security, the global economy is precarious. Drug addiction is increasing, despite new psycho-social treatments. We are experiencing the impact of climate travail on a planet abused too long and too expansively. We read of horrific killings and torture by Muslim extremists such as ISIS, Boko Haram, and Al Qaeda around the world and in the USA, bewildered by their illogical barbarity. We are living on a planet without solutions to terrorist threats and attacks reported daily as the new reality.
As a consequence, I believe one overarching phenomenon dominates our experience every day.
Terror.
Terror is more than a feeling. It is a cognition, a sensation, and a perception. That's why it can get under our skin and negatively impact our pulse rate, our sleep, our breathing—and our view of the world.
When terror inhabits our souls, it brings its cousins: fear, apprehension, dread, anxiety, panic attacks, paranoia, and even loss of faith and hope and love. The mind and heart, body and spirit: our human nature itself, terrorized.
Where do we seek a solution?
Compass Psychotheology suggests that the Bible offers a larger truth. The Bible views all human beings as sharing a common human nature: our mind and heart; body and spirit, made in God's image. As such, we are universally called to know God and walk in his light. Or, if we refuse God's call and persist in choosing evil, we will walk in darkness.
As the Son of God, Light of the World, and Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ offers the antidote to our experience of terror in two ways.
How?
1) The Peace of Christ.
Jesus Christ, the God-man, knew the terror of death on the cross for crimes he did not commit, so that he could rise again to offer interpersonal fellowship with you and me. Jesus offered his blood to build a living connection between each of us and God, a rock of salvation who overcomes earthly terrors through the inner presence of the Holy Spirit, Christ's most precious gift to every believer at the moment of their conversion.
Jesus' peace that passes logical understanding provides the antidote gifted to John the Baptist, Mary, Peter, James, and John, each tested almost beyond endurance. It's the same antidote that early Christians experienced, even though hunted down by Roman legions in the catacombs or fed to hungry lions in the Colosseum. Even a Caesar could not stop them from singing hymns.
"I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart," Jesus said. "And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid" (John 14:27).
Many of us in the 21st Century perceive a great darkness enveloping humankind, a darkness so great that Billy Graham, among others, sees us truly qualifying as the generation alive at Christ's Second Coming, an event that Jesus himself foretold:
Jesus said:
"People will be terrified at what they see coming upon the earth, for the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then everyone will see the Son of Man coming on a cloud with power and great glory. So when all these things begin to happen, stand and look up, for your salvation is near" (Luke 21:26-28).
Christ returns to judge the living and the dead. The Son of God will transfigure the Earth into a new creation: A pristine and sinless Heaven-Earth in which the redeemed in Christ will flourish and thrive. "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared" (Revelation 21:1).
Now is the hour to read the Bible as never before, not to join the skeptics who mock the promise of Christ's glorious return.
Now is the hour to dig into the living Word of God, personally guided in your reading by the Holy Spirit, taking hold of the inner resources of faith, hope, and love—as a daily, sometimes hourly, antidote to terror.
"But what about the newscasts? What about the disaster movies? What about the worry that consumes the people around me?" Joshua chose to challenge fear-based thoughts, even when enemies surrounded him, by declaring, "As for me and my household, we will follow the Lord!"
"Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows," Jesus said. "But take heart, because I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).
