If everything is great and cancer has been cured and hunger eradicated, are we all the rich man squeezing through the eye of a needle? Riches are as much health as wealth, if not more.
If we have everything we could want, why would we want God?
Isn't peace all we want?
All this "chasing the almighty dollar" and "worshiping mammon" is ultimately for the feeling of security and happiness--in other words: peace. I don't think most people actually want more money, they want what money brings. Having enough money (but not too much) actually does bring security and happiness because it can be traded for food and shelter. Once we have enough food and shelter, we can concern ourselves with creating art and medicine, which makes us happier and healthier when we share it around or trade it for money.
Money also brings power, but only when traded for guns or the time and efforts of other people to do things for you. Going even further, a gun doesn't inherently have power itself, only the power that's given to it by people who recognize that a gun can quickly and irrecoverably make our life worse. We don't give that same power to the money used to buy the gun, and only tangentially to the person holding the gun. If a child is holding a gun, you worry more for the child's safety than your own. If a monkey is holding a gun, you might even laugh at it unless it hits the safety button with a rock or something like that.
When we think of "riches" we often think of money, but really, money is worthless on its own. Only Scrooge McDuck would use money for anything other than trading for goods or services. Therefore, I submit that "riches", despite what the name may conjure, is actually just health, safety, and happiness.
If this health, safety, and happiness is what makes it difficult for someone to get to Heaven, what does that mean for our affluent world where Polio is all but extinct, and we can send cat pictures to anyone around the world instantly?
If this health, safety, and happiness is what we tell others that God can offer, why would anyone choose God? They already have most of those things, and they don't have to wake up early on Sunday or stay sober or celibate to get it. The only thing that I can see God offering that the world can't is a purpose in life.
Purpose is big and important to us humans, so it shouldn't be discounted. The closest thing to purpose 'the world' can offer is making life easier for yourself and others. This sounds good, but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Life can't exist exclusively to make life better, that's tautological (my favorite word). If anything bad were to happen ever at any time in human history, then the purpose of 'making life better' will have--at least partially--failed. Wouldn't it then be better for all of life to have not existed in the first place?
It seems to me that every step we keep taking towards world peace is another step away from thinking we need God. The purpose of existing to worship God isn't detracted from, but its appeal is when that's all He seems to offer, right? Well, that and salvation of course.
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Reading over this, I think it's true, but I don't think it's a problem. Our primary goal in evangelism is not to make God more appealing, that's just a common means to the end of spreading salvation.
How many souls were saved during the fire-and-brimstone days? Surely someone was saved during the popular "Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God" sermon, right? God was not gussied up and made appealing with His love and mercy, He was gussied up and made frightening with His wrath and riotous fury.
The spread of the word of God may be hindered by peace, but that doesn't change the Message or the goal, only the approach. If our carrot isn't as tasty, we can go back to the stick.
Personally, I think all of this world peace business is great. As a self-described "professional problem solver", all of this perpetual and drastic improvement to life and our world is bad for business, but I'd rather be a blissfully unemployed policeman than live in a crime-ridden world with a steady paycheck.
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