In his work, The Book that Made Your World , author Vishal Mangalwadi quoted a young grunge rocker: “I belong to the Blank Generation. I have no beliefs. I belong to no community, tradition, or anything like that. I’m lost in this vast vast world. I belong nowhere. I have absolutely no identity.”
What identity could he have, at least in the world as it is presented by many of today’s cognoscenti? You know, billions of years ago, out of nothing, the universe popped into existence, and thanks to gravity, globs of molten dust coalesced into what we know as the earth. And then, by chance alone, some chemicals not only turned into life but into life that could replicate itself. Next, over billions of years, with no planning or forethought, this life evolved, creating humans, nothing but advanced African apes who, sooner or later, not only die but, unlike other evolved life, know that they’re going to die.
So, in the end, what are we but, merely, blobs of highly evolved protoplasm that, somehow, in the vicious survival of the fittest motif, managed to become thinking, creating, loving beings whose thinking, creating, loving ultimately end in death, eternal death.
What a contrast to the biblical model, which teaches that not only are we beings purposely made “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27) but that this God so loved us that He died for us (John 3:16), and promises to resurrect us to a new life, in new bodies, on a new heaven and earth that will exist forever, without sin, suffering, and death (Revelation 21:4).
No community, no tradition, no belief, no hope. That’s what the grunge rocker faced, and knew it. In Christ, we have all these things—and know it, too.
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