Easter's hope deals with shattered Utopia
Posted on March 4, 2010 by Pastor Tom
Utopia – “a condition, place or situation of social and political perfection.” Heading into the last century, many believed utopia was possible because of the advance of man. Man could create this world himself. Mankind needed no savior. We would save ourselves and create the ideal world.
It’s a great ideal. But there’s only one problem. It doesn’t deal with the biggest problem – what’s wrong with man. The 20th century shattered the Utopian dream.
I just finished reading a book called Armenian Golgotha. It was originally written in Armenian in 1922 by a survivor of the Armenian genocide. It has just been translated into English. The author was a priest in the Armenian Orthodox church in Constantinople (now Istanbul). He was arrested along with other Armenian intellectuals in 1915. He survived through nearly 4 years of deportations and death marches. Many were deported to northern Syria where it is claimed hundreds of thousands died. Some estimate 1.2 million Armenians were murdered or died during this time. Others claim the number was less and that many thousands of Muslims died.
His sole determination was to survive so he could tell the story. The author tells much of what he witnessed. He also recounts several stories he heard from other survivors.
But as I read this book, I kept asking how can humans do that to other humans? Here were apparently civilized people groups. Yet given the opportunity to act on ethnic tensions, they slaughter each other? How can this be?
Yet, we’ve seen the same story repeated over and over in the past 100 years: The Holocaust; Stalin and the murder of millions of his own people; Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur. The past 100 years shattered the myth of utopia – an ideal world that humans can create themselves by living in harmony with each other.
But God stepped in 2000 years earlier to deal with this. He sent Jesus to die for man’s biggest problem – the sin inside us. That’s what Easter is all about. We no longer have to hope in the unattainable dream of utopia. We have the certain hope of a Savior who came into history.
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