What's Wrong With Everything

Sometimes, you hear something or say something so often that the meaning is stripped.

Earlier this week, Senator Rand Paul was commenting on the rising fuel prices and the Senate's dispute over taxing big oil companies when he said, "We're going to raise the cost of the oil companies by raising their taxes, which means you'll pay more at the pump. It is economic illiteracy and it is what's wrong up here in Washington."

"What's wrong here in Washington" is a favorite rhetorical phrase uttered by most of our politicians on both sides of the isle. Along with "the American people want..." and "Our Founding Fathers didn't mean…”, claiming that something is wrong with Washington is just something you start saying when you work in national politics.

The irony of Paul's comment (and many others) is that he's a Senator working in Washington and the son of a long-time senator. He is a part of the broken system. He is a cog in the messed up wheel. And by the way, I only single out Senator Paul because he was the most recent guy to say it.

When you look at our language in the church, not much is different. Many pastors (myself included) have uttered the phrase, "we live in a broken world," or "the problem with the world is..." And with one breath and half of a sentence what the politicians in Washington and we have just done is distance ourselves from the very problem we have created.

Paul is a piece of the broken Washington machine and we are a part of the broken world. To say that “the world” is destroying all we know that is good, excellent, and beautiful is to excuse our hearts from their own brokenness and sit atop our own prideful spirit.

Just because you prayed a prayer for Jesus to “come into your heart” (another empty rhetorical phrase) does not mean you are done with brokenness. Repentance is not a one-time show; it is a process, perhaps even a lifestyle of turning our hearts back to God. When you surrender to God, you don’t end your brokenness instantly, you begin the process of being made into the image of Jesus. And that’ll take your whole life.

Until then, you and I are not the solution to what is broken, we are what is broken. And Jesus is the solution. We place our hope in the fact that he’ll go on making all things new - us included.