Creating Utopia?

If I was in charge of an important section of the world’s population and I had come to believe the way it was proceeding was untenable, in my view; I would get together with other world leaders and discuss what could be done.  How could the population be persuaded to give up their wasteful life style? Surely people who enjoyed three holidays abroad a year, spacious homes, evenings out, meals out, coffees out and drove large cars ; could not be easily persuaded to give up this lifestyle just because someone in authority thought it would be for the best. I wouldn’t be in a hurry to do this.  First with other world leaders I would get scientists involved and make sure that they were seen on news programmes explaining the ways in which the population’s lust for pleasure was killing the world, whether it was or not.  Congenial, smiling scientists would bring their statistics before the population night after night on T.V., often having whole programmes devoted to their often imagined extrapolations. I would also make sure that world leaders appeared to be at loggerheads, although really we would be working together.  We would be creating a Utopia for ourselves while limiting what the people were allowed to do. But how could we persuade the populace to live a simpler life? There would always, of course be lots of propaganda about the state of the planet and the need for frugality and a smaller carbon footprint; all very worthy notions.  But somehow this would need to be done rapidly, over night, if it was to succeed and whatever magical circumstance it was that would do this must have a hold on the population of the entire world and must bring everything to a standstill until the wonderful plan of how things were going to be done from now on was rolled out to the grateful populace, some of whom had now been saved from the terrible thing.  But we are not at the mercy of such an imagined threat.  Nor even of a real one.

Our true leader is Jesus and He will rescue us if we will come to Him and repent of the years we have ignored him.  He is gentle and kind and gave up heaven’s glory to die for us on the cross.  He is not seeking to subjugate us for His own glory but wants us to come to Him for salvation. If we belong to Him nothing can have a lasting harmful effect on us.  All sorts of terrible things might happen to us in this life but ultimately we will reign with Him in heaven. He does not call us servants but friends once we have put our trust in Him. This is the only king worth following.