New and Improved

Image via Wikipedia

Focus Scripture: Isaiah 65:17-25 

Have you ever gotten a little excited when you heard that something was “new and improved”? Sometimes that wording can be deceptive. On more than one occasion, I have rushed out and purchased the latest gadget only to find that it wasn’t so new after all. As a matter of fact, as I began to grow older and more perceptive, I also began to realize that no thing is really new under the sun, for the ability to create something out of nothing belongs to God, and only God has the power to bring into existence that which is truly novel. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth – an ideal kingdom – and God pronounced that it was very good! Now there was creative genius! But we know what happened after that.
.

Reading today’s text brought to mind a movie I saw back in 1996 – the movie was called “Multiplicity” and starred Michael Keaton and Andie McDowell. Keaton played Doug Kinney, a devoted husband, father, and construction worker. Like so many other people, Doug had too much to do and not enough time in which to accomplish it all. Not only was he barely able to keep up with the demands of his job, he soon found out that he had little time to enjoy his family and savor his life. In fact, he rushed through existence at a frenzied pace. And he was miserable in the process.

Now just when he was about to go off the deep end, Doug met a geneticist who offered him a solution – he gave Doug the ability to have himself cloned – to have himself made over in his own image! Doug jumped at the chance and before long had crafted a clone to share the work load with him. The plan went along just fine for a while. But soon Doug decided that if one clone was good, more than one would be better. So he produced clone number two and clone number three. He finally ended up reproducing four clones in all, each one displaying different aspects of Doug’s initially faulty personality, each one being a little more quirky than the one that preceded it, each one being a clone-of-a-clone. Corrupted, weakened, and defective, clone number four had capacities that were discernibly inferior to those of his predecessors. Needless to say, over time, Doug’s life became extremely complicated and troublesome. Although he eventually stumbled on a workable solution to the problem he had created, he could not make the underlying cause of the problem go away. You see, once these clones had come into existence, there was no way to undo the process and make them disappear. So Doug and the clones ended up living in tension with the mess that they had made. 

When one considers the notion of tinkering with God’s good creation on a broader scale, what are the long-term effects? The effects described in Isaiah are similar to the effects we feel today. Rather than being satisfied with God’s good creation, God’s chosen people made things up as they went along and in many respects made copies of copies of copies of what God had pronounced to be “very good.” Each copy was a little more faded and washed out than the one that preceded it. Consequently, the world became a mess. Isaiah 65:19 tells us that the world had become a place where weeping and crying were commonplace (v 19). Apparently in that ancient day infant mortality was occurring at a high rate (v 20) and people were dying before their time (v 20). The people didn’t have decent housing (v 21a); nor did they have enough to eat (v 21b). The end result was that God’s chosen people simply were not enjoying life (v 21c) as God had intended them to do. 

Similar circumstances exist in the present. For example, today homelessness is at an all-time high. The ranks of the working poor have grown at an alarming rate. And millions of people go to bed hungry each night. Furthermore, there is no justice for the poor and the oppressed; as a result, a permanent underclass has been established, and it is populated with souls who have abandoned hope. Not only that; today our country finds itself divided along political, racial, and economic lines.  That which was once defined as well being for all has now become a copy of a copy of a copy as it has trickled down through the ranks and has lost sight of what was initially good and right and true for all people. In Isaiah’s day, there was general strife in the land (v 25). Likewise, in the contemporary setting, we don’t have to look very far to see strife hovering all around.

In the modern day, we have decided too often that we are capable of improving on God’s good work. We have resolved to make copies of copies of copies of morality and reproductions of reproductions of reproductions of the truth until we have lost sight of the original goodness that God had initially created and intended for his chosen people. As a result, we have fashioned with our own hands a world that is in trouble, a world that needs salvation, and a world that cries out to be made new and improved.

Upon realizing our folly we have cried out to God. Because God desires to be in relationship with us and loves us with an everlasting love God is willing to step in and fix the messes we have created as the result of choices we have made. The Isaiah text opens by announcing “Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind” (v 17). What a relief to know that God intends to provide for us a new and improved kingdom, an original work of artistic genius, a new creation!