About ten minutes north of the town I live in is a home which has, for most of the last twenty years, had a large painted sign in front of it that says, “STOP ALL WAR.  NOW.”  The sign has always rubbed me wrong, not because I love war (who would?) but because I think the sign suggests, however inadvertently, one of the most ignorant and fascist sentiments I can possibly imagine.  The problem is in the choice of words.  If the sign said, “WAR IS BAD,” I think it would be defensible, and I think most people would reflexively agree.  If the sign said, “WAR IS ALWAYS UNDESIRABLE,” I think that sentiment could be argued.  But the maker of this sign has not just made a statement about the relative value of war.  They have suggested that action steps be taken immediately to end it in short imperative sentences.  Not a question.  Not an exclamation.  An order: “Do this.  Now.  Or else.” (And yes, I realize I’m insufferable sometimes about words.)

The questions I have always wanted to ask the sign maker (after asking if what I read is what they meant) are: “What would you do if everyone doesn’t immediately stop war?  What would you be prepared to do to stop them from fighting?  Would you be willing to forcibly stop all fighting by fighting the fighters yourself?”   Hopefully, saying it that way frames the problem in a way that demonstrates my extreme aversion to the sentiment: the sign maker, if they would resort to any sort of force, violence, or compulsion to achieve their goal, would instantly become what they hate, and if they were willing to resort to threats or violence to maintain the peace, what they have created is something much worse that the status quo: at least the currently warring combatants in our world acknowledge some principles which are worth fighting about instead of just a self-contradictory and dictatorial view of fighting itself!

That is the problem with the sign and all utopian fantasies: in a broken world, utopian dreamers fail to account for their own human brokenness, and they also falsely suggest that all people should want their version of the perfect world.  The difficulty is that every utopian fantasy that purports to create a heaven for one group creates, as a matter of historical fact, a hell for some other group.   There is no utopia a sinfully broken human or group of humans can think up and try to administer that will not, in some way, blindly propagate injustices onto another group or groups.

This principle is true across human history and across human cultures.  If you study any sort of world history and look at popular utopian movements, what you will discover is that as time passes (and usually very quickly), the group of utopians (however well-intentioned) will have to become very iron-clad and dictatorial about the mandates of their personal heaven on earth.  Whether you look at a primarily religious version of this like the Muenster Rebellion, or a primarily secular ones like the Bolshevik Revolution or the Great Leap Forward, what you will quickly discover is that human brokenness is inescapable, and that no matter how good a human ideology is in theory, it will quickly fail when those who have conceived of it have to initiate and manage it: both because their ideas are broken, and because their ability to fairly administer it are broken.

C.S. Lewis makes use of a powerful example about what he suggests is the innate human knowledge of justice and fairness by referencing young school aged children jostling for a place in line.  When one child attempts to jump to a place in line that is not rightly theirs, the reaction to eject the one budging in line is not only predictable, argues Lewis, but innate—hardwired in to the human circuitry.  This is arguable, but I happen to think he is right, and that this exists prior to other cultural conditioning.  We humans do have a innate understanding of fairness. (The first chapter of Mere Christianity is wonderfully done in the YouTube video below.)

It is this hardwired sense that is our hint to why all of us desire a better world—one that is fully just, fair, and free in all the optimal senses of those words.  The reason that is the place we are all trying to get back is it is the place we have all fallen from: perfect relationship with God in eternity in heaven, which was first experienced by the people in the Garden of Genesis 1-2, and which the Bible suggests that the faithful will one day return to at the end of days—a place where God himself is our light and where every tear will be wiped from our eyes and justice is perfect (Revelation 21:1-5).

Why am I writing something that suggests such hopelessness on a holiday weekend in my free time?  My activist friends might suggest that surely it is better to try to fix things we know to be unjust, inequitable, and wrong than to simply let them go because there is no hope we can fix it once and for all?  And, to be clear here, of course I believe in attempting to address and fix injustice when it is known and identified.  But my question here is more about why nearly everyone seems to believe we should address inequality.  Why do humans feel injustice so personally, and why do people want to fix it?  Why do escapist fantasies and utopian dreams exist at all?  If we can all agree that human history is desperately sad in this respect, why do people seem to believe that they can fix it?  Why do we keep making the same mistakes in repeating historical cycles trying to escape from our brokenness?

The human desire to achieve this perfect justice without God is one reason why humans never stop trying to escape from the reality of our broken world and to make the next ill-fated attempt to build our own personal utopias.  The path to peace in this life with the brokenness that exists is to find faith in Jesus Christ, the god-man who is both the perfect Law-giver and the only person ever to experience the full brunt of the human injustice of human life after the Fall without having deserved it in any way.  The other reason why humans keep attempting this is because some humans are charged by God with secular governance, but that’s a topic for another day.

The only roads to improving our world in the areas of justice, peace and truth are found in Jesus.  Any path that promises advances in any of these areas without him or without trusting in the power of the Holy Spirit at work in broken people is destined to fail.  Any path that invokes Jesus and the Holy Spirit without actually leaning into the resources God provides is likewise destined to fail and increase human suffering.  It is not in humanity to fix what is most broken in us–the resources necessary to mend it are found outside us in the God who made us.

The tragedy of Christendom is the extent to which human efforts to increase the reign and rule of Jesus Christ have failed to bring anything even remotely resembling the church or world that should be.  That is another entire level of tragedy—to have access to all of the resources to actually make pockets of human community which can function in a way that moves towards heaven—and to fail to bring them to bear for any length of time instead relying on human systems, structures and resources.  But the real and actual failures of Christians historically aside, without those resources, failure is also guaranteed.

Are you in Jesus Christ today for the advance of his Kingdom? Are you committed to His way and using the resources that He gives to improve our world?  If you are a believer reading this, you likely believe you are.  My entreaty to you is to test that assertion.  Think carefully and critically about your life:

• who is suffering because of the way you live your life?
• who is on the receiving end of your attempts to speak the truth “in love”? Are they actually receiving it as love, or are you pouring pain and judgment on them? 
• where in the world was your shiny new study bible made? 
• how about your clothes?  Your shoes?  Your car?  Your home?  Who made them and where?  (A sweat shop?  How were the materials and textiles harvested/made?  By whom?)
• whose pain are you willing to accept if it protects your political values?  Which people are you prepared to allow to suffer as long as your ideology/beliefs win?

Especially if you are a Western Christian, there is an excellent chance that some people in our world are in hardship because of your ideology and way of living—don’t let your own comfort or discomfort deceive you: your attempt to build your own heaven on earth likely is causing someone else to live in a hell of your design.  The journey through these questions is hard…but humbling.  And that humility is one of the primary values of the real Kingdom of God.

If you are not in Jesus today, how are you expecting to solve the problems in our world?  What resources do you intend to use?  Have the methods you are wanting to use been used before?  How will you succeed in the same tried and true methods of world change where so many others have failed?  What is your contingency plan?  Who is damaged by the world you would build?  How will you approach those who don’t want the world you would build?  Will you tolerate dissent?

No matter where you find yourself today, there is no escaping from yourself, or from ourselves.  And that’s the real reason that every utopia is a dream…or a nightmare—because we can’t get away from ourselves, and any place with us in it can’t be perfectly perfect.  Grace and peace to you today as you consider what you can do try and bring healing and wholeness to our world.  May you seek and find the resources for the world’s healing the same place you find your own: in Jesus Christ and in His Kingdom and it’s counter-worldly values.