21 Oct 2022
As we survey the current time in human history, we see the preponderance of worldviews which focus on achieving our own ‘happiness’, our own ambitions, and own desires apart from God; even as we look at human history, although there seems to be significant progress in knowledge, science and technology, yet history again and again slides back into misery and ruins of civilisations and nations.
In this light, I find what C.S. Lewis wrote as very insightful:
“God made us; invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended – civilisations are built up – excellent institutions devised but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact, the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down. They are trying to run it on the wrong juice. That is what Satan has done to us humans.”
How true these statements are! The preacher in Ecclesiastes can attest to these. There is no real meaning, happiness and peace without God. It is just our ‘running after the wind’ – only God can satisfy and fill the vacuum in our hearts, for we are made by Him to depend on Him for true and lasting happiness. Man can make much progress in various fields but he cannot change the ‘darkened heart’ in his life after the Fall. There needs to be not just an ‘overhaul’ of the ‘machine’, as it were, but a complete replacement and renewal by the Maker. Until the Lord Jesus comes again, history would continue to ‘rise and fall’ over and over again until God makes ‘everything new’.