“Let’s Talk about, ‘Utopia’ by Pastor Rodney Tilley, Van Horn Community Church

This week we will begin the election cycle and we will hear both political parties proclaim that if they are elected, America will flourish and a just and lasting society will prevail. We will become that beacon on a hill, that place of near perfection, a “Utopia” that will be of impeccable excellence. It will be that place that mankind has sought for the ages but now we will be able to find; a “utopia” for all men, of all races, of all gender, and for all classes.

     “Utopia” was first mentioned by Sir Thomas Moore in 1516 in a novel where a fictional society was born on an island in the Atlantic, where a union of men and women co-existed in complete harmony and governance. It came as an idea that was sought but never found.

      Many in America have tried to make such a society. There was Rugby, Tennessee, and Ephrata, Pennsylvania, and recently New Llano, Louisiana. Our family once owned the headquarters building of the New Llano Colony, only to see it burnt to the ground and the grand society follow suit. Nirvana ceased to exist and the grand experiment failed to produce the lasting effects.

     We forget and so do politicians that there are other “topias” that also exist. There is the “utopia” that we have just mentioned; that fictional society in middle of the ocean, but there is also “eutopia,” which is a perfect society, and “outopia” which is an unrealistic society of perfection.

     Once in America, we wrote in the Preamble to the Constitution, that we desired to create a “more perfect union,” a eutopia, only to find that we had created a utopia, a fictional place of perfection. In fact, how could you have a “more perfect union,” which is a contradiction in terms, for if something is perfect, nothing more is needed?

     But something more is needed for we know that perfection cannot rise out of imperfection. We cannot just change a letter or two, a phrase or a sentence, and life changes overnight. No, we must start with perfection to have perfection, and since I have not met a perfect person, man cannot make “heaven” on earth. Heaven can only begin in heaven, and only when heaven touches earth does perfection prevail. There must be a start, a beginning in perfection, and that is exactly what we find in the Bible, for it begins in Genesis 1 with, “In the beginning God…..” and that is where we must begin. That is where we take the first step. That is the beginning of all things created and without God, it matters not if socialism or capitalism prevails, it will be a “utopia,” which by definition is an unrealistic view of mankind. There are no Tibetan sanctuaries, no native sweat lodges, no retreat centers that can produce lasting perfection in mankind, but there is a perfect God that by his grace, and his sacrifice produces a “more perfect union;” a union of man and God, based on a sinless God forgiving a sinful man.

      So today as we begin our election debacle, let us go back to what will make America great, South Africa great, and France great, and the Navaho nation great, and that is a great God. “In the beginning God…..” and that is where we must start and remain, and then just maybe we will get a glimpse of just what a real “utopia” could be.

For more information on the perfection of God, please contact Pastor Tilley at 432-207-0015.

      

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