Stop projecting negativity! Think positive...

Hurricane Sandy has done a number on the Northeast.  The latest death toll I'm aware of is 98 people.  Staten Island is completely cut off from help.  Anger is boiling over.  People are getting mad at the Red Cross of all things because it's not helping them quickly enough.  Prior to the hurricane the actress Lindsay Lohan tweeted "WHY is everyone in SUCH a panic about hurricane (I'm calling it Sally) ... ? Stop projecting negativity! Think positive and pray for peace."  Had Sandy blown over like a bad thunderstorm I doubt the tweet would have made news, but due to the path of destruction left in Sandy's wake the tweet seems pretty naive.

There's a deeper problem in the world than hurricane Sandy--but like the hurricane most of the world is in denial about it.  If there's one thing I hope Sandy communicates to people is that the world we live in is fallen.  Who could have imagined New York City or the Jersey Shore would be the target of perhaps the largest storm to ever hit the United States?  And yet, it happened.  The fact that anyone has to keep a death toll is evidence to the broken world we inhabit.

While we live in a broken, fallen world where the only certainties are "death and taxes" I am grieved by the number of Christian pastors whose message is the same as Lindsay Lohan's.  They are effectively tweeting "WHY is everyone in SUCH a panic about SIN (I'm calling it Silly) ... ? Stop projecting negativity! Think positive and pray for peace."  Rather than leveling with people about their desperate need for the only Solution to our fallen nature they pad their church attendance with positivity, entertainment, and self-help band-aids to cover our mortal wound.  Is there a place for positive thinking?  Absolutely.  But only when positive thinking doesn't ignore or hide the underlying problem.  As C.S. Lewis said in The Great Divorce, "Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured: but we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on still having jaundice".

There is a Solution to sin.  His name is Christ, and when we embrace reality we will run to Him.  Paul embraced reality, and he said, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:24-25a)