History is filled with the human hope of utopia, an ideal place where so much of the pain, suffering and social ills of human society will be eradicated. Particularly during the first few years of the 20th century, there were these great utopian dreams and promises that science and technology would solve all our problems,; that they would, finally, usher in utopia.
Charles Kingsley, Queen Victoria’s chaplain, had written: “The railroad, the Cunard liners, and the electric telegraph are . . . signs that we are, on some points at least, in harmony with the universe; that there is a mighty spirit working among us . . . the ordering and creating God.” Hans Koning, writing about that time, said: “Men and women, more than ever before or since, felt at home on earth and in control of their destiny. The natural demons of the past had been banished by reason and electricity, and the human demons of the new century were still hidden.” It was Winston Churchill, who, after visiting Cuba where the Spanish were fighting the Cubans in 1895, said (quite racist, actually) that he had to be there because this was going to be the last war in which white fought whites.
Of course, not long after, Churchill got the greatest white -on-white war ever seen, up to that point. No, in fact, he got two wars where whites were fighting not only whites but, it seems everyone was fighting everyone, whatever their race.
Though it’s right and well and good that we, as humans, as Christians, should seek to better our world: feed the hungry, take care of widows and orphans, clothe the naked, we will never create utopia. Only God can, and will, and that will happen only at the Second Coming of Jesus” “Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13). That’s the only utopia we’ll ever know.
