In truth, my keyboard’s faulty performance probably has much to do with my diminishing keyboard skills, which have never been good. I never took the typing classes that were offered in my high school because I saw no need. That decision came back to bite me in my first full-time job. I worked for Canadian National Railway and occasionally was required to work at a computer in the regional headquarters. With my hunt-and-peck technique, I was never able to keep pace with the workload. Later, in full-time ministry, my keyboard skills improved by reason of use and necessity such that, when I later pursued a Master of Divinity degree, I could take lecture notes on a laptop. Over the two decades that followed, a laptop has been an essential tool that I use daily. But laptop keyboards wear out, and so do laptop users.
We can thank Adam for the presence of entropy in the physical world – everything eventually wears out, even our bodies. Because of the curse on Adam’s sin, the created world is subject to the corruption of sin. Physical matter wears out, it rusts, its structural integrity fails. Our bodies age, our strength wanes, our minds become cloudy, and eventually we die. Sin also produces a moral degradation. Mankind is separated from God and pursues sin with no restraint. We are compelled to please ourselves, doing what seems right in our own eyes. I was surprised to hear a liberal pundit, lamenting the lying and cheating he was observing in the world, conclude, “Let’s face it, people aren’t good.” The measure of goodness is God, and by that standard, that pundit is right, no one is good. But on our own, we’ve never been “good,” and we are not getting “gooder.”
Flowing against this dismal current of degradation is the promise of God in the gospel. Through faith in Christ, the believer becomes a new creation in Christ Jesus. God the Spirit comes to dwell in them and to transform them increasingly to be like Christ. When Christ returns, the believer will be made perfectly like Christ with an incorruptible body that will endure undiminished for eternity.
As my body ages, I take great comfort in that enduring promise.
