Problems are the very means by which God drives us forward.
Without problems, there would be no growth.” 6Although these authors are addressing personal problems of
the individual instead of the general problems of the world,
the common thread is the necessity of accepting problems.
In fact, Thomas Merton comments that “a life without
problems is hopeless.” Biblical hope is the confident
expectation that things will be better than they presently
are. Those who yearn for a life without problems – the
esoteric mystic and the social liberal both seem to share this
unachievable objective – thus yearn for an overly-realized
eschatological situation absent of hope.
Until the consummation of the grand experiment of
humanity on earth, when Christ shall return and there will
be a “new heaven and a new earth” (II Pet. 3:13), we can
expect personal and social problems. To think that
Christians are going to solve all the problems of the world
is akin to thinking that a forest fire engulfing our planet
could be quenched by Christians collectively beating back
the flames with their Bibles. It is all going to burn up
eventually, and the fires of hell are not going to be
quenched.