As we edge closer to 2014 in the remaining two months of 2013, the world has already passed the turning fork at the crossroads. There were two paths (or more specifically mental perspectives) that we faced: the road to a better future and the road to a darker future regardless of our personal disposition. These two choices reappear into our vision every time a chasm or crisis emerges.
Somehow, I get the intuition that the Rubicon has already been crossed but my question is which road have we taken in 2013. Are we walking on the road that leads to global disaster, a perfect storm of economic disintegration and political chaos interspersed with periods of outer calm and stock market bullishness? Or are we on the more difficult and narrower road that leads to truth and a lasting peace, a divine kingdom built not on sand but on the victory of good over evil? My intuition indicates that there will not be any true light in the world until after the darkest hours have come to pass. And that time is upon us.
Everywhere we look today, we find rising crimes, disorder and high levels of public anxiety about our personal safety. The world, both on the local community level and the global level, seemed to have entered a new time zone of greater ruthlessness, more intense ideological delusions and political change that is running out of our control. (A police inspector quietly shared with us his anxieties, advising us to take ownership over our own safety by being alert and taking precautions.)
There is an increasing price to pay if we continue on the path that we take. Man's first impact on his world is his heart condition and his thought life. If he harbours selfish ambitions, his actions will follow according to script. If he takes a more measured and thoughtful assessment of himself, his actions will be more measured and rational. But rationality cannot overcome irrationality especially when law and order appears to be eroding by the day. Like a criminal who has started his criminal activity, he is on an automatic path of self-implosion, triggering a series of events that will lead to his incarceration, physical, mental and spiritual.
The Narrow Path of Redemption and Sanctification
When Jesus said let the one without sin to be the first to throw a stone at the sinner, He shed light into the human heart. Not only is the episode a lesson for us not to judge others, He is in fact saying that we are all born with a criminal gene inherited from Adam. That genetic code that impels us to throw stones at others (not only in judgement) is embedded in us and can only be reprogrammed by the blood of Christ wherein we cleanse our hearts and minds with the righteousness of God through acceptance of His Son's sacrifice and redemption.
So there is still hope for those of us who have taken the wrong path but the window for change is getting narrower by the day. We can't look back any more at the pristine condition of our innocent youth when we stood at the crossroads of moral action. But we can decide to step out of the current path and move quickly to the right path of personal redemption. In doing so, we move from a path of self-condemned stone throwers to the only path that can overcome the stone-inscribed law of judgement through the power of the Holy Spirit and the abounding grace of God.
