By Gustav Kros
We are living in an age where more and more people believe they can be their own saviour. Human ingenuity has skyrocketed over the past few decades in remarkable ways, and with it, man’s trust in himself has also grown.
If we rewind to the time of the Industrial Revolution (1760 to 1840), it would have been a foreign concept for a person not to believe in a god of some sort. Up until then, humans had always functioned with the understanding that there must be some kind of higher being or beings that we need to appease in one way or another in order to have a prosperous life. But with our God-given talents of creativity came the pitfall of believing that we can also be our own saviour.
In the midst of the Industrial Revolution, Europe was rocked by the French Revolution (1789–1799), which brought forth the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. This was a major step in mankind’s movement away from God, as it established the notion that we don’t need God to tell us how we should live; we can decide for ourselves how we should live.
Also, within this window of a changing world, Charles Darwin was born in 1809, and in 1859, he published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, which further paved the way for people to believe that there is no God, and so I can trust in nothing greater than myself.
Fast forward to today, and we find ourselves in a vastly different world from that of 1760, with 16% of the global population being non-religious. That’s more than a billion people. And since the notion to turn away from God and be our own saviour is growing most rapidly in first-world countries, this group of people has major influence over the rest of the world. One dynamic of this plays out within global politics, where governments and organisations like the United Nations (UN), which do not live in the fear of the Lord, hold great sway over nations that are still more religiously oriented.
Another dynamic within this context is the influence of secular media, which has predominantly aligned itself with the non-religious group in society. This influence from governments and the media has an overarching impact on what gets communicated to people, and even religiously aligned individuals are indoctrinated over time with theories that are not Biblically sound and actually steer people away from God.
I was reminded of this reality recently when I read Deuteronomy 11:13-15: “So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul—then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil. I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.”
Within this passage, a very clear correlation is drawn between being in right standing with God and Him providing for us, starting with rain at the right time. The first thought that came to my mind was that climate activists and global warming advocates can do whatever they like in their attempt to save the planet, but if they are not in right standing with God, then it will not matter what they do; it still will not rain at the proper time.
And with this, I am not saying that we shouldn’t take care of our planet. We certainly have a responsibility to be stewards of God’s creation, but that responsibility flows out of our love for Him. We are still expected to first obey His commands, and to love and serve Him with all our heart and with all our soul; from that position, we act as stewards of His creation.
The narrative that governments and the media are driving is that we can save the planet through our own ingenuity and thus be our own saviour. God has no place in their narrative, and without realising it, many Christians are influenced by this constant repetition—that it is our responsibility to save the planet. But what it is actually doing is steering people away from the reality of sin and its consequences.
Our first priority is to acknowledge that we are sinful and that we need a Saviour. If we make the concept of sin and its consequences obsolete, we also remove the need for a Saviour, and thus, we are constantly steered away from God.
Sin is the number one issue in the world. It is sin that brought separation between God and mankind, and it is sin that is preventing us from living the perfect life that God intended for us. It doesn’t matter how good people are, how peace-loving they are, or how well they look after the earth; the proper amount of rain will still not fall on the earth at the right time due to sin.
The first step in addressing sin is to acknowledge God as God and as the only God. The first Commandment states: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me” (Exo 20:2-3). The moment we don’t acknowledge God as God, we are already sinning. And if we don’t acknowledge Him as God, then we are definitely not loving Him with all our heart and all our soul, which means we cannot expect rain at its proper time.
The reality remains that devastation ensues when God is not positioned in His rightful place. May we therefore not get distracted by the world’s agenda that draws people away from God and the reality of sin, but may we rather remain focused on Him and be in right standing with Him as our Saviour. The world can very easily sway us to partake in its campaigns and causes, which may sound good, but ultimately, they are not centred on God and His Kingdom. We then very easily end up using our time and resources to advocate worldly agendas that draw people away from God instead of pointing them to God.
May we therefore be on our guard against being deceived by the schemes of the devil, and may we proclaim that we do need a Saviour—His name is Jesus Christ—and that nothing gets better unless we are in right standing with Him.
