WHY?

In the second season of the hit television series, Battlestar Galactica, Captain Adama sits down to have a talk with Sharon who is a former Viper pilot who discovered that she was, in fact, a Cylon that had been infiltrated into the Colonial fleet as a sort of ultimate sleeper agent. Sharon and Adama have history. At the end of Season One, she discovered that she was a Cylon when she walked up to Adama and shot him in the chest at point blank range because her programming (her nature) overcame her and she was unable to stop herself from pulling the trigger. Despite the near death experience, Captain Adama starts talking with Sharon - trying to get information about the Cylons on the one hand, but as a sort of catharsis on the other, working his way towards forgiveness. At the end of one episode, he finally asks, "Why do the Cylons want to destroy us?"

And she responds, "Because you've never asked yourselves why you deserve to survive."

A long time before, in a galaxy far, far away, groups of survivors struggled through the wilderness together moving from clump of brush to clump of brush looking doggedly over their shoulders for pursuing Babylonian soldiers. Jerusalem had been destroyed - its king carried off into exile. The city had been ransacked and burned. Its people had been hacked to death, burned, and, the lucky ones, carried off into exile. Those few who had managed to flee hoped to get as far as Egypt. But they couldn't understand what had gone wrong and why the Babylonians pursued them across the wilderness. "Why do the Babylonians want to destroy us?" they asked. And the prophet might have answered, "Because you never asked yourself why you deserve to survive."

Yesterday, in my church choir loft, surrounded by the few hundred or so remainders of what had once been a thriving church in a once thriving denomination, we sat and listened as our Pastor intoned the terrible news, "If the statistical averages continue to drop, there will be no Presbyterian Church in the United States in 30 years." Our numbers continue to drop. Our new membership classes dry up. We struggle in vain to survive as a denomination and as a church. But we can't understand why we continue to perish. "Why does the world want to destroy us?" And we can't even fathom the answer, "Because we never asked ourselves why we deserve to survive."

Battlestar Galactica is a TV Show and on its flashy surface, you will discover what you expect to see - space jocks, space opera, and great special effects. But at its heart, it asks the tough questions - the questions we each should be asking ourselves. When the world is beating us down and when all things seem gloomy and despair is the last emotion you can find, instead of asking God why He is doing this to us, why He is trying to destroy us, perhaps we should ask God, "How can I deserve to survive?"

What have we done to survive? Our salvation is guaranteed by the blood of Jesus Christ, but what have we done, as a species, to deserve our salvation and our continued survival? We can't feed the hungry. We can't clothe the naked. We can't house the homeless? We can't cure the sick. What exactly have we done to deserve our continued survival? It is only God's love that continues to shield us from extinction. It is only His mercy for which we can hope.

Where does all this doom and gloom come from on such a fine Monday morning? If you saw the way my 49er's played this weekend against the Bears, you wouldn't have to ask. ;)