Perspective

The sun doesn’t rise, and doesn’t set.  It’s the earth spinning, and since we’re stuck to the earth, from our perspective it appears that the sun moves across the sky.  As the Beatles song says, “The fool on the hill sees the sun going down, and the eyes in his head see the world spinning around.”  This “fool” has the true, accurate perspective.

The wisdom of God is deemed foolishness from the world’s perspective.  And vice versa.  Paul expands on this irony in 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 and 3:18-20, and in the biting sarcasm of 4:8-13.

The perspective of the world exalts money, power, prestige, getting what you want.  This perspective is very seductive, and it seems horribly unjust that ungodly people achieve great success in the pursuit of these things.  In Psalm 73, Asaph laments the prosperity of the wicked.  His feelings are shared by Job (Job 21:7-21), David (Psalm 37), another psalmist (92:5-15), the Preacher (Ecclesiastes 8:11-14), Jeremiah (12:1-4), Habakkuk (1:13-17), Malachi (3:13-15).  If you’ve ever felt this way, you’re in excellent company!

But this is the perspective from being stuck on the earth.  Asaph gets it.  He says, “My feet almost stumbled,” into envy.  He was getting caught up in the world’s perspective.  But then, his perspective snapped into focus on the reality.  Those who do wrong and prosper are in a slippery place, and in the blink of an eye they are gone.  Forever.

The world’s perspective is the right-now.  The perspective of the wisdom of God is the eternal.  The world’s perspective scorns or ignores or pretends there is no other.  Wisdom’s perspective has its eyes open—it sees what the world sees, but counts it as the folly it truly is.

It is so, so easy and natural to look at things from the right-now perspective.  To step onto that slippery slope of envy and resentment, to become one of those who seek and perhaps achieve prosperity.  And then die.

It takes some mental effort to get to the perspective of the eternal.  Those writers I mentioned all wrestled with it.  Jesus wrestled with it.  Bread now, or the word of God?  Jump off the Temple and wow the crowds now, or not put God to the test?  Take all the kingdoms of the world now, or worship God only?

Thankfully, those writers recorded the mental struggle, and how they came to the right perspective.  Thankfully Jesus told his followers about his struggle, and what kept his focus on the true perspective.

Those with the world’s perspective thought the teachers of the gospel “turned the world upside down.” (Acts 17:6)  They just couldn’t accept that it was they who were upside down, that the gospel preachers were trying to get them to see it right side up.

Love, Paul