I can be light-hearted. Really. You might not believe it if you just read the posts from the last couple days. Atomic bomb book reviews. Kent State. And just wait until you see my post on the book I am reading right now on genocide (Samantha Powers’ A Problem from Hell). Sobering is an understatement. After I finish, I think it is time for a baseball book or a good mystery!

My problem is that the world is a mess! I know there are times when we’d rather not think about it, and perhaps times when it is good to remember what is good and beautiful and true in the world. But that doesn’t make the mess go away.

G. K. Chesterton was once asked to contribute to an essay to a collection written by famous people of his day opining on the subject of “What is wrong with the world?” His was by far the shortest contribution of all. He wrote just two words, “I am.”

It is easy for me to distance myself from things like making atom bombs, participating in campus riots and shootings, or genocide. It is easy for me to blame the mess on others, and perhaps to be a bit smug and self-righteous about it. But I’ve paid taxes that support our nuclear arsenal. I may even owe my existence to the fact that my dad never needed to be redeployed to Japan in World War 2 because of the bomb. I stood aside and watched the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia and too easily accepted the explanations of complexities and national interest while people died. The only way not to be part of the mess is not to exist, it seems.

I’m not just a part of others’ messes! I’m very good at creating my own. The careless word that leaves wounds. The indulgences that waste time, money, and the opportunities that can never be retrieved. The addictions and compulsions that I might suppress in one place only for them to pop up in another.

I can hear someone out there saying, “come on Bob, lighten up. We’re all like that!” And that’s my point. We are  all like that. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it this way:

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” 

Paradoxically, I have good reason to be both serious and light-hearted at the same time. Tim Keller, a New York City pastor has written, “We are more flawed and sinful than we ever dared believe, yet we are more loved and accepted than we ever dared hope at the same time.” My faith is about a God who didn’t wring his hands over the problem of evil but rather invaded our world to take it upon Himself so that I could stop pretending that I am better than I really am and stop despairing that I’m worse than I care to admit. God did this so I would stop running away from Him and instead run to be embraced by Him and live under his care.

So don’t be surprised when whimsy and joy crop up in these posts. It is not a denial of the ugly stuff. It is simply that it doesn’t get the last word.