For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23, ESV).
Did you know that every year Collins English Dictionary chooses a word of the year?
I didn’t either until I read it on one of my news feeds this morning.
The new word of the year added to Collins’s dictionary is permacrisis. Yes, I didn’t know this was a word. Each time I type the word, it becomes underlined in red, so my Word© spell-checker doesn’t know it is a word either.
But if Collins anoints permacrisis as a word – who are we to argue?
Let’s get the definition: Permacrisis – a feeling of permanent anxiety and world-weariness! The fatigue caused by the constant influx of horrific events.
Every year Collins comes up with a list of ten new words that speak to current cultural conditions. A couple of the other top ten are:
Vibe-shift: a significant change in the prevailing atmosphere or culture or trend.
Quiet-quitting: the practice of doing no more work that one is contractually obliged to do for having no one notice your efforts or for the purpose of pursuing other enjoyable activities.
The Bible has one word that describes all the above words – sin.
Sin: falling short of God’s holiness with resultant fear, frustration, and despair.
“Fear not” is the most repeated command in the Bible.
The Bible doesn’t gloss over the cause of crisis, but it also doesn’t treat it as permanent. In fact, the Bible teaches that those who endure crises can have a better life than those living a life of ease.
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith – more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:6-7).
The difference between current belief and the Biblical view of crisis is that culture resists the idea of sin. Jesus embraced sin and died so that we could be set free. If we can’t identify the cause of the permacrisis today, there is no hope for a solution.
I don’t enjoy being called a sinner by the New Testament, even though I am.
The perverting nature of our sin debilitates our sensitivity to our real nature. Like a chef who loses taste through COVID, our disease takes away sensitivity. We are left with a problem with no ability to discern ient or to confess it.
We then blame others or ignore it – and fears grow.
Disease doesn’t go dormant when we ignore it. It isn’t helped by false diagnosis. No matter how good we think we are, our illness doesn’t respond to this goodness.
Only Jesus gives hope. In Christ we find peace.
Fear not.
We bind all permacrisis, along with underlying demons, in the name of Jesus.