One of the shared family experiences we had when our sons were growing up was Star Trek: The Next Generation and the Star Wars series.
As I recall, Joseph and I attended a midnight showing with a friend of his of one of the Star Wars episodes.
There were many compelling features of Star Trek, including a story line where the human race has moved beyond war and violence. We witnessed a world that has done away with poverty, the hoarding of wealth, and injustice.
Michael Chancellor
For just a few minutes, at least in the Next Generation, you can allow yourself to consider the “what if?”
Sadly, that is not our time, nor shall it be our time now or in the future.
I would not say I see the world from a “Christian worldview” because that terminology has been spoiled by rigid interpretations that trap folks in gender roles, marriage roles and a hierarchy dominated by males.
I choose a different view.
My view begins with a perfect world shaped and created by a perfect God, who lavished on the world beauty, diversity and harmony. Having traveled literally around the world, I have seen up close waterfalls in Norway, fjords and pristine creeks one could still drink from. I have seen beautiful beaches in Brazil, amazing animals roaming free in South Africa, and pandas in China. I have enjoyed sitting on a young yak in the foothills of the Himalayas. I have watched whales surface at Half Moon Bay. So powerful was the scene, everyone stopped what they were doing to watch in awe.
And all that is just a tiny drop of this creation still vibrating with beauty and diversity. In those moments, we can catch a glimpse of what a great world God created, the remnants of which still remain.
In my travels and in my life, I carry an understanding of both my own brokenness and the brokenness of the world. With that understanding, I also see that world as well.
I saw it as a pastor. I saw it as a mental health manager in one of the two worst prisons in the United States, this one located in Texas and housing Death Row inmates. I saw in the faces of clients in the prison who suffered from serious mental illness and in the sometimes inadequate medications available to control what dysfunction was present. I saw it in the sex offender whose mother was a druggie and a prostitute and who pimped him out at 5 years of age.
“In my years hammering out my work in the care of souls, I have seen how compelling a world washed clean of meanness, inhumanity, greed and hate can be.”
I saw it as a therapist whose clients were veterans who had bravely served a nation that sometimes did not appreciate their bravery, sacrifice or service. I saw it in clients who had been raped or violently assaulted by a spouse or stranger. I saw it in the faces of adults whose childhood trauma still plagued them.
I saw brokenness in the face of my wife, when I had to tell her her only two brothers had been murdered.
In my years hammering out my work in the care of souls, I have seen how compelling a world washed clean of meanness, inhumanity, greed and hate can be.
However, that is not my world, that is not my experience. Instead, my world is one where we continue a legacy of choosing poorly.
So, where does that leave us as we live our lives today?
We choose good over evil. It always begins there.
We choose to help, not hurt, whether it is people, pets or the world God owns and has made us stewards of.
We choose kindness, because we know kindness always is an option and always a choice.
We choose faith over doubt or unbelief, knowing the expanse above us, around us and below us did not just happen.
We choose to leave people more encouraged than we found them, more secure than we first met, more encouraged than when our paths crossed and more hopeful and secured because we chose giving instead of hoarding, dispersing instead of amassing.
That will not change the world, but it will matter now and for eternity.
Michael Chancellor served 33 years as pastor of four Baptist churches in Texas, six years as a mental health manager in a maximum-security Texas prison before becoming a therapist in private practice in Round Rock, Texas. He now lives in Taylor, Texas.