A Kingdom in the Dust

Meditations on Genesis #34

Genesis 13:16

“I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted.”

We don’t need keen eyes to see that our Modern Western Society is driving at full speed toward a cataclysmic crash like an eighteen-wheeler spiraling down a steep mountain highway with no handbrake. Today’s virtue is speed, not direction. Today’s eschatology isn’t concerned with what happens in the end but only in how exhilarating and comfortable and affirmed we feel along the way. Today’s deconstruction movement is just a destruction of the old and the traditional and the normal and the sacred. But I don’t put all the blame on the young people caught up in the rush, with their heads out the window, gleefully facing the onrushing headwinds like dogs on a summer drive. I blame the so-called expert class of teachers and philosophers and scientists. Those sociological mechanics like Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx who got their hands dirty dismantling the vehicle part by part. It was Nietzsche who pulled out the brakes when he called Christ the disease of Western Society rather than the cure, and when he encouraged men to follow their base impulses rather than longstanding paradigms of virtue. It was Freud who removed the steering wheel when he asserted that faith is just the cry of a soul in a soulless existence. It was Marx who shattered the rearview mirrors when he condemned the very pursuit of Heaven as a dream of mad men. Well, society has nowhere to go after that, does it? Not when the so-called wise men have gutted the vehicle of all necessary operations except the gas pedal. Not when the sum of modern virtue pedaling is nothing more than a guttural imperative to drive. But millions are doing just that right now, triumphantly marching away from God’s word in a mass exodus, waving their colorful new flags, and waving goodbye to the guardrails and safety functions given through Christianity, and just plummeting downward at high speed, with no way to steer and no way to stop.

Ah, but friend, when you gaze out across the landscape of this confused age, when your newsfeed looks like a scene from a post-apocalyptic nightmare, when the devil whispers in your ear that this fallen world is too far gone or that sharing Christ with your neighbor isn’t worth the expenditure or that being a faithful spouse and parent and minister won’t make a difference, start preaching Genesis 13:16 aloud! Start counting the dust! Almighty God’s ongoing, redemptive, incarnational work in this world is our steering wheel and our brake pedal and our rear-view mirror when all else seems lost. Nietzsche, Darwin, Freud, Marx, Hume, Hitchens, and all the like were wrong. They looked at the ground and said, “That’s all man is—there’s no soul here! Only dust.” But God points to the ground and effectively says, “Add it up, Abram—every little speck—My offspring, My people, My little children, My precious creations, My Kingdom, My Church will outnumber the dust in the end!”

Frankly, I woke up today far too early after another sleepless night, in the midst of another week marred by discouragement, waiting for clarity that just isn’t coming, but this word from the LORD is lifting my spirit even now as I write this sentence. God’s picture for His world and for our lives today is a positive one, not a negative one. He doesn’t stuff our faces in the dirt when we wake up to a new day and say, “Look—that’s all you are!” No! He gives us a picture of an immeasurably vast purpose that we can’t even begin to add up even if we spent every second of our lives committed to trying. In fact, go ahead and put His word to the test if you’d like. Accept His challenge. Start by counting all the specks of dust you see on your floors and windowsills and dressers. Then count the specks of dust you see in the rays of sunlight. Then go outside to your backyard and pick up a handful of dirt and let it sift through your fingers till you’ve counted every granule one by one. Then keep going till you’ve covered every last inch of your property; and, after that, move on to another, and then another, till you’ve gone through your whole neighborhood and town and city. Then, if you’re still breathing, keep on going, till you’ve counted every last speck of dust on the entire face of the earth, even if it takes an eternity.

Which—spoiler alert—it will.

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