A Better Future

How you view the future has a lot to do with how you live in the present. So, thinking through what the the future holds can have a real effect on your life today.

The dominant view of the future for a long time has been that of evolutionary progress. This is the idea that over time conditions will naturally get better, and what is necessary to move things along is to provide education, economic benefits and freedom to as many people as possible.

This thinking is common among politicians. As a result, we are continually exposed to one new program for progress after another. But it’s all to no avail, because these programs do not take seriously the fact that humanity has been corrupted by evil, and that this evil needs to be addressed.

To confirm that this is indeed the case, all you need to do is note how all the efforts to provide greater educational opportunities, further economic redistribution, and spread democracy have done nothing to halt the extent to which human beings exploit one another.

This reality has led to a widespread acceptance of another view of the future. This view is that what really counts is not life in this material world, but the spiritual world that is beyond us. With this view is the idea that the world is a wicked place, and our greatest hope is in escaping the confines of it at death.

Those who hold to this way of thinking will show forth the consequences of it in different ways. Some will live as though what happens in this world really doesn’t matter, making a god of personal pleasure. Others will just hang on in this world, enduring the best they can, hoping that life on the other side will be better for them.

In either case, the escapist falls far short when it comes to engaging life in the here and now, and fails to bring the good that can be brought to others in this world.

Fortunately, there’s another way of looking at things.