Medicated Morality?

I recently heard a well-known researcher, Julian Savulescu, suggest that we should use drugs or genetic modification to make us better people. Researchers have found that drugs can make people cooperate better and less prejudiced among other things.

But can drugs make us better? Drugs interact with our brains and alter chemical reactions, but when God created man in His own image, He gave us something beyond our mere chemical makeup. He gave us a mind. If altering our chemical composition to make us "better" would truly work, God would have done that from the start. He didn't because He created us to have free will, not to be robots.

A drug to make people cooperate won't make a better world. We have a very short memory if we think cooperation is always a good thing. One psycopath plus a bunch of cooperative people equals Nazi Germany and the holocaust.

It really would be better if we tried morality God's way.

Breaking Wind

Have you ever put your heart and soul into working at something... only to have it come to nothing? Maybe a gourmet meal where you added too much salt right at the end? Perhaps you repainted a room, only to have the paint peel, or to decide that you hated the new colour? Or perhaps you scorched a hole in a treasured craft with an iron?

Most of us have experienced it sometime - a totally wasted effort. Discouraging, isn't it? In reality, all our physical efforts will eventually come to nothing. One day, we'll die and then rot in the ground and all our physical accomplishments will rot or collapse or fade with us. Perhaps not right away, but eventually. So what is it all for?

In Isaiah 26 in the Bible, God compares all our efforts to better the world to a woman having "birth pangs" and then, instead of giving birth to a baby... breaking wind. Just imagine thinking you're pregnant for nine months, and then, after a long and difficult labour, letting forth nothing but a massive fart. What a horrible disappointment!

Even the Vatican has suggested a solution to the world's financial woes. Governments, charity organizations, social reformers - you name it - are scrambling to fix everything from wage disputes to climate change. Their efforts are huge, but the end result will be no more than a really bad smell.

There is a simple (but very unpopular) cure to this kind of flatulence. It's doing things God's way. But, as the Bible predicts, it's going to take the total collapse of all that we hold dear before humanity will accept God's way of doing things.

We have the chance to do something that will have a lasting effect - if we invest in something beyond the physical. Will we choose to leave behind something more than a bad smell?

To hear more about how current events relate to prophecy and how we should be living, check out the new Beyond Today Daily.

The World Is Falling Apart...

Have you read in the news that Italy is now being governed by technocrats? That means people who were not elected. Europe is changing rapidly. The governments of Greece and Italy have already collapsed. More big changes are in the wind with France and Spain in financial trouble.

Europe is falling apart. At some point it will be put back together, but it will look very different to the Europe my generation have grown up with. I know this because the Bible says so. Don't believe it? Try reading the books of Daniel and Revelation.

When It's All So Broken

Where do you turn when everything in life seems to go wrong?

When life seems to have turned into a trail of destruction and tragedy, how do you cope?

Any number of politicians and spiritual leaders have thought that they have the answers for a broken world. Many speeches have been made about the perfect formula for peace and prosperity for everyone.

There have been countless campaigns to end poverty and disease. Over 20 years ago a LiveAid concert was held to raise money for people dying of starvation. People are still dying of starvation. Despite the money raised at 46664 concerts since 2003, millions continue to contract and die of AIDS. Make Poverty History still hasn't made poverty history, six years after it started. GM crops were meant to be the solution to world hunger, but since the widespread growing of GM rice started, the world has suffered from a widespread rice shortage.

What hope is there for a broken world that politicians, spiritual leaders and charity organizations have completely failed to fix? Maybe occasionally someone succeeds a little bit - but then another (often bigger) problem springs up somewhere else.

The real reason the world is so broken is that we continue to resist the only real solution to every problem we have ever had.

Sometime - maybe soon - a bunch of leaders will come up with a solution to the world's brokenness that seems to really work - an alliance of powerful nations. In the end, though, it will lead to disaster and destruction greater than this world has ever known. Only after that can the real healing happen when Christ Himself takes over the world.

The question is - which side will we be on?

To read about Bible prophecies that explain the future and God's plan, have a look at the free booklet, You Can Understand Bible Prophecy.

I also recommend watching the Beyond Today episode: Calling Good Evil.