From 'An Essay on Man'

 "All Nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good:
And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear: Whatever IS, is RIGHT."
--Alexander Pope.

Dear Mr. Pope,
You've got some flawed theology.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am an artist.
I love painting. It's one of my absolute favorite pastimes. Right behind breathing and sleeping.

Much of today's modern art is full of discord and chance. Splatter painting is common, along with the seemingly random line drawings like Kandinsky. What does it mean??
As a culture, we paint what we think matters, what it is that we think is beautiful, what is important.
So we value.... lines.

This is not really where I have beef with Pope however.
The last line of his first Epistle in 'Essay on Man' is the last line quoted: "Whatever IS, is RIGHT."

The New York Times headlines are as follows:
Qaddafi's Army and Jets Strike at Rebels
U.S. Readies Military Options on Libya
Poll Shows Support for Embattled Public Sector Workers
Jane Russel, Star of Westerns, Dies at 89
Government Presses Fight Over Lesbian Employee's Benefits

Now that's what I call truth and beauty!

According to Pope, all of these things must be right, because this is how our world IS right now.
It follows Nature's rules that people should be at war with their neighbors; it is right that war should break out in a once calm area. The earth should always have death creeping across the land.
And we should accept this as good; this is Right.

Yet this contradicts how we react to our surroundings.
We seek to correct the "wrongs" around us, to fix the problems and set people at peace with their fellow man. It is a bad thing that there is a need for a military and government to keep people free and having equality.

The Bible has something very different to say about the matter:
Jeremiah 8:11
"They have treated superficially the brokenness of my dear people, claiming: 'Peace, peace' when there is no peace."

The Bible has a lot to say about how man is born sinful, and that the world is full of evil. Not only is today's vision of reality incredibly skewed from reality, but is incredibly distant from a Biblical perspective that says that man needs to be righted, rather than be "right" like Pope says.

It confounds me when I try to understand how people can think that the world is right.

Maybe you think TRUTH is objective?
Perhaps you disagree, you believe that man is not born sinful.

I've never seen a parent sit their child down to teach them how to lie, yet I have experienced a young kid look me right in the eye and tell me a blatant, obvious lie.

What you believe doesn't make sense.