Tony Stark is confronting Ultron and remarks about how he's "trying to put the world at peace"
Ultron responds "I think you mistake peace for quiet".
We have a funny definition of peace.
But what is peace truly? Before one determines whether it is or not a time of peace one must define peace. It is not as our contemporary western culture defines it "lack of conflict, namely war". Such is a narrow and feeble definition watered down in meaning. Peace is not just the absence of conflict and war.
Peace is the active presence of the good and the good alone. It is the biblical Shalom. Sin and death are gone, and all is as it should be. Evil is privation of the good and in true peace there is no such privation. There is no privation of the good and lack of God who is the fount of all blessing. Rather there is an abundance of him and his presence. Peace is really the paradise we yearn for and that which God intended. When all is right in the world, then there is truly peace. Wholeness, harmony, a perfect peace.
The concept of shalom is decidedly eschatological as well. This is why in the end we don't look forward to being apart from our bodies. We will not be incorporeal spirits. Rather we will enjoy the new heavens and the new earth .
Revelation 21:1
"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more"
We are a spirit and a body, and in the end death will be put under foot as we enjoy paradise as it was made to be.Sin is decidedly legal in offense to God. It bears a legal punishment and inflicts relational harm. Man was in the garden with God naked and unashamed but cannot be anymore.
What sin is, is a breaking in God's natural perfect order. That which goes against God's design and intention (as a moral decision not morally neutral issues) is idolatry and declaring "I am a better God than you". This includes first and foremost his law, but the consequences are likewise a break in shalom. It is quite the irony that even in how we sin we must borrow from and distort what God has made and intended.
Sin is against not only our design but that of all creation. To take a mechanism that is intended for only one purpose (to know and glorify God in creations case) and turn it for another purpose will make the gears of that mechanism lock/break and wear out the device. Sin is not only legal it is existential in it's ramifications. Sin brought death in as both a penalty and a corrupting of God's original created order. God does actively punish, but The lapse in shalom serves also as a punishment upon us. It is the natural consequences for sinning against God and corrupting the world.
Genesis 3
16 To the woman he said,
I will greatly multiply
your pain in childbirth
in pain you will bring forth children;
yet your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you
17 Then to Adam he said "because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, "you shall not eat from it;
cursed is the ground because of you
in toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life
18 Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you;
and you will eat the plants of the field;
19 by the sweat of your face
you will eat bread,
till you return to the ground
because from it you were take;
for you are dust
and to dust you shall return
Death is a result of a break in shalom, War and slavery are both likewise, and are indeed man's punishment for inventing such things. Just war exists, but only as an extant of God's justice and acts as a check against sinful aggression and further break. There will be no more war, but God's justice will continue hence the eternal punishment for sin. The only Salvation is in Christ.
This is how God can be cause of "evil" as(Jonah 3:10 often translated disaster) describes when God "repents of the evil he was going to do". The "evil" was really a justice, and evil in the sense of a misfortune in the Hebrew as a break of Shalom. It's the same word as evil but it means something different than we are accustomed to. The tie though together with it's variation, should demonstrate quite well to us that evil is harmful and against God's intention because it is a violation of his law and design and therefore a violation of who he is.
In Judgment as in Jonah 3 it must be recognized that it is God's creation and he did no moral evil. In his sovereignty and justice over his creation he could bring about something in Hebrew thought that is thus described as an evil in the sense of being a break in harmony.
This is how I can say utilitarianism is wrong. S and M for example is a corruption of the intimate self giving love that is intended by God to be expressed in sex. Sexual promiscuity no matter what it is (swinging, open relationships etc) whether agreed upon by partners or use of one's own body is wrong since it is a break in the intended purpose. God is always wronged and those who engage in such things harm themselves.
The greatest and central break from which all others flow is sin, which is taking God out of his place
and setting up another thing as God (idolatry). The Garden of Eden demonstrates this. Adam and Eve engage in the first human act of idolatry. The curses in Genesis 3 are all the breaks in shalom that exist today and they are a consequence of sin itself.
Satan may have tempted only Adam and Eve to eat of the tree to be "as Gods". The lie is that as far as we were made to, we already were as God. Bearing his image and exercising dominion we acted as his representatives to and in creation. To try and be like God wasn't only a lie but an attempt to become literally as God. Clearly such an action takes man out of his designed place in an attempt to take a place man could not and definitively should not not have.
All of creation suffers for man's breaking of shalom, but one day God will complete the work he's started in and through the church. One day the kingdom that is now and is yet to be will be here in it's fullness forever.
Now why would I bring up Ultron and run with what he said? To turn it on it's head. The villain tries to make the world his view of peace and perfection. He was a creature reflecting fallenness trying to set creation to the way it should be. Do you see a problem here too? Whether you are an artficial intelligence or a genius played by Robert Downey Jr. you cannot fix what is wrong with the world without breaking it another way. Man broke creation, but it takes God to redeem it.
Every man made utopia ends up as hell on earth. Imperfect creatures cannot even see what perfection is meant to be but will taint his vision with his corruption. This should have implications for everything as we recognize our own fallibilty to fix the world and recognize our need for God and our place in the universe. Imperfect creatures cannot create perfection. It takes someone reigning that is perfection. God alone reverses the curse.
In Revelation we see the tree of the fruit of life returned, in a river setting mirroring Eden, for it is a return to Eden.
Revelation 22:2
1 Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and the lamb, 2 in the middle of it's street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding it's fruit in every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3 there will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the lamb will be in it, and his bond-servants will serve him, 4 they will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the lord God will illumine them; and they will reign forever and ever.
Death, a consequence of the fall is put under foot.
1 corinthians 15:24-26
24 then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to the God and father, when he has abolished all rule and all authority and power.25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 the last enemy that will be abolished is death.
And we will reign and dwell with him forever.
Revelation 21:2-4
2 And I saw the Holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying," Behold the tabernacle of God is among men, and he will dwell among them and they shall be his people, and God himself will be among the, 4 and he will wipe away every tear fom their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away"
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