Dear Editor,
Our modern society likes to proclaim itself to be multicultural and secular, and the direction seems to be a future without old-fashioned religious ballast where science is the tool for constant progress and prosperity, happiness for everything and everyone.

Yes,
science has done a lot of good and made material prosperity, better healthcare,
etc. possible. But, and here a giant question mark needs to be painted, at what
price? And why isn’t man “happier” anyway? Loneliness, mental illness escalates
like never before, drugs and crime, acts of violence and vandalism, unsafe
school environment, etc. Add to that the environmental destruction and
terrorist threats.

According
to statistics, approximately 80 per cent of the world’s people are still
religious. However, in our “modern” country only a few percent of the
population are professing Christians, immigration has brought in other
religions as well, but most do not believe in God. Hundred years ago the
situation was the opposite. But, people still want to get married in the church
and bury their dead there, why?

Traditions
bring security, you might say, well, but why didn’t 70 years of iron-fisted
communism in the Soviet Union wipe out the Christian faith? Why is it estimated
that around 100 million Chinese have become Christians in recent decades, in
the midst of severe persecution? The answer is obvious, science cannot meet man’s
greatest and deepest need for the meaning of his existence, and there also
seems to be a need for “life” that satisfies. To experience inner satisfaction,
and now yet another concept that science does not master, namely “peace”.
Materially rich and successful celebrities take drugs in search of this peace
and life, only to be met with a devastating emptiness.

This
is precisely where the Christian faith steps in and delivers. The explanation
is not scientific, it is “supernatural”, i.e. above the order of nature or
science. Jesus Christ seems to present his heavenly powers, his life in real,
astonishingly effective.

God
as the Almighty Creator does not seem to need to consult science and its
researchers but does what is necessary, and on the Cross the divine blood of
Jesus really flowed to reconcile, cleanse and forgive man so that the way can
be open to this heavenly life, eternal life and a peace “that passeth all
understanding” as the Bible itself puts it. Thus, Jesus can be the answer to
how we can get meaning and life that satisfies, as he Himself said “I am the
way, the truth and the life”. Believe it or not, I am one, like those two
billion others worldwide that have found “the truth that sets you free”.

Peter
Kujala

Sweden