How Should We Think About 2020?

One of the most common things you heard in the last days of 2020 was the glee of being done with that horrid year.  2020 wasa trip.  But was it really?  When you are thinking about something you have to work hard to think about it rightly;thinking can go wrong on so many levels.  You can think about things with the wrong information or with a lack of information.  You can think about things from a certain perspective and no other perspectives.  Or you can just think about them little or not at all.  

Clearly we are called to use our minds well, so thinking little or not at all is an act of laziness not open to us.  And thinking about things with the wrong information is becoming increasingly more likely with so many streams of information coming at us.  Though the job is harder now, we should be thankful for the access we have to information, and weigh it carefully.  But just as important as the right information is the right perspective.  The right perspective allows you not only to see a thing as it is in itself, but also how it relates to the whole.  The key word here is “relative.”  Something can be bad, but bad relative to what?  A splinter is bad relative to a hiccup, but it is not bad relative to cancer.   

So 2020 needs some perspective, and there are some competing options for that perspective.

The easiest option is the perspective you have out your window.  America went through a pandemic, some social upheaval and a wild presidential election.  The perspective out your window asks how well you are doing compared to your neighbor.  The pandemic brought changes to us all, but health-wise some did better and some did worse.  Financially, some did better and some did worse.  Relationally, some did better and some did worse.  Besides riding the rollercoaster of pandemic response, there wasn’t a universal experience among Americans.  This immediate, all-things-close-to-me perspective is usually least helpful of all the options.

A harder perspective is the global perspective.  Our world is getting smaller, but it is still a big place.  The situations around the world are still harder than what most of us reading this bloglive with.  Most everyone around the planet had to deal with a pandemic, but many had to do it with harder conditions and harder restrictions.  Our social upheaval is tiny compared to the upheaval many have been involved with.  And our election, as wild and problematic as it was, is still a dream situation for many.  

Harder yet to achieve is the perspective of humanity over the millennia.  We are all prone to chronological snobbery, thinking that the here and now is all the experience that matters.  But the long-term view will change our perspective again.  Concerning pandemics, the world has seen quite a few before this, with results far more devastating than we can understand.  While there have been some more recent pandemics, the Spanish Flu in 1918 has a lot of similarities to our present one.  What is not similar are the results.  The Spanish flu killed between 50 and 100 million people globally due to lack of medical advancements and no vaccines, and this when the global population was only 2 billion.  And that only concernspandemics.  When you factor in the social uprising and political turmoil that people have seen in the past, 2020 looks small on the scales of significance.    

Clearly, the broader your perspective, the more clearly you see how something stands in relation to the whole.  This means there is one final and ultimate jump you must take when it comes to perspective.  Above all you need the Biblical perspective.  You need God’s eternal perspective.  To have this is to have the whole in totality.  It is to hold the truth absolutely.  To do this, your greatest need is not to be well-traveled or have a good grasp on history.  Your greatest need is to know God’s word, and embrace it by faith.  The Scriptural tapestry is so big you cannot see it except with the eyes of faith.  But with the eyes of faith you can trust God when he tells you about it in its whole and its parts.  

So what do the eyes of faith see when looking at 2020?  First, we can see much to be thankful for.  God has sustained us, kept a functioning government, provided sunshine and rain, given us vaccines, allowed us more technological advances and a host of other blessings, here and around the world. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 “in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”  Second, we can see much to encourage us.  God has advanced the church, spread the gospel near and far, grown believers and brought us a little closer to his second coming.  Jesus is building his church (Matthew 16:18).  Third, we can see the hopelessness of worldly power.  The arm of man and the strength of the horse is not a sure hope for victory.  No matter how much money or people we employ to solve social ills, societies keep embracing idolatries of death in all manner of ways.  Advancements are always paired with declines because the human heart cannot be fixed by anything short of new birth. If God does not build the house, the builders build in vain (Ps. 127:1).  Fourth, we can see God preparing all things for Jesus’ second coming.  While we have no idea how much longer we have to wait, we do know things now that we have never known before.  We can see the global nature of our future.  We can see how the whole world can communicate instantly.  We can see how people can be prevented from buying and selling.  These are things that were the realm of science fiction just a generation ago, but now are actually happening around us.  Romans 13:11b “salvation is near to us than when we believed.”

So thinking about 2020 should cause us to be thankful, encouraged, hopeful in God alone and preparing all the more for his coming.  Don’t get dragged down or vainly self-exalted by the tiny perspective you have looking out your window.  Open your Bible, and look at the big picture, beginning to end, with the one true interpretation of all that is happening.