Welcome to Elementor 2
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What a person understands about God and how they react to Him has an effect on all of life. This is an effort understand Him and at the same time to explore just how that works out in every day life. After all, if God is real, shouldn’t it be logical that His presence would make a major impact on us? So, let’s take some time to understand what the God effect is all about.
There are a few things that need to be said at the beginning of this chapter.
Everyone begins life with things they believe to be true, things that to them don’t need proof because they are so logical. I believe the same principle applies when they decide whether or not to take God seriously. For example, to an atheist, the idea of even talking about the possibility of God is nonsense because of what they already believe.
However, because I know God exists, I will begin differently. There are several things I need to get out of the way. As I mentioned before, everyone has built-in beliefs about God. To prove it, choose any random person and ask them. One hundred percent of the time, everyone will have an answer. Even if a person says, I don’t know, or There is no such thing, they still believe something about God. There is no way to avoid having some kind of opinion.
As I go along, we will find a lot of clues God has left us about Himself, and they should be easy to see. Not only that, since God is so much greater than us, it means that we cannot scientifically or logically test for Him or prove Him because of the way our brains work. To be God, He has to be above that. So, we won’t discuss proofs, but instead clues and witnesses.
10 Witnesses
Nature’s First Two Witnesses
- Nature is a great place to look at clues because it shows us some of the most basic things about how creation works. Nature shows us that things come from somewhere, not nowhere. This is important. Life has to start somewhere and come from something. If we could prove that anything, no matter how small, could suddenly appear all by itself from total nothingness, God would become unnecessary in our minds. But nature shows us the truth.
- There is also nothing in this world that does not have a blueprint. Everything has shape, structure, color, smell, and other characteristics that make it a part of the physical world. Everything in existence depends on a design – from DNA to dwarf stars. The fact of the matter is that those kinds of designs never come out of emptiness or a chaotic cloud of stuff.
There is thought and logic behind everything. Without God, nature would have to have a mind of its own and be able to make decisions about itself for itself. It would have to plan the way the world works and design its own systems. When you stop to think about it, the logical conclusion is that there is someone somewhere who is unbelievably powerful and solidly in control.
History’s Next Two Witnesses
Over the years, I have realized that history is also a skilled teacher. It gives us the next two clues about God. One is that there has never been a time when people have not had beliefs about someone divine and more powerful than life or death. Some will say that doesn’t count because ancient people were superstitious. They got their ideas because of things that scared them or because of their fear of death.
- There are other ways to deal with bumps in the night than to make unknown scary things out to be something like a god. There are also a lot of other ways to deal with grief and death, as any secular psychologist will gladly explain. It was much easier for people to look at the things that they couldn’t control and realize there had to be Someone in charge. Historically, there has always been an awareness of someone bigger than us who can give us something more than meaningless disasters and death.
- What people understood about God formed the foundation of entire nations and their legal systems. Israel has been and still is one of the best examples. It is such a powerful witness that whole governments and cultures have developed based upon their understanding of what a divine Person expected from them. If God were not behind all of that, it has been an unthinkably powerful delusion.
The Mind’s Next Three Witnesses
- Another clue about God is a, which came first, the chicken or the egg, situation that fits well with the clue from history. It is the idea that there is a built-in part of the mind that already naturally has an interest in divine things and has an idea about what God is like. What comes first, people growing up with others around them who teach them about God, or the idea being in their minds first as they work it out and put it into use? Either way, those ideas are there, and many people would say they are there because of the way God designed our minds. I think of it this way: because most people see themselves as having a soul, it would be normal for them to think about a God who could be their spiritual connection.
- There is also the matter of the conscience. If you think about it, the conscience is a mystery for scientists and philosophers. We instinctively understand right from wrong and feel it when we cross a moral line. The thing that few people talk about is that there has to be a beginning for that conscience. There has to be a place that it comes from. So, if we have a soul which has a Creator, surely, He has a connection in our minds with what He expects to be right and wrong. That should be a clue for us that God is indeed out there.
- The third part of mind clues has to do with simple common sense. With any evidence, people can look at all the different parts and put it together to find an answer. It is no different when we look at clues about God. We all think through what is around us and piece it together. If one or two of the clues don’t seem very strong, we just back up to look at the bigger picture to see if it helps clear the fog. That’s what I’m talking about when we put the other six witnesses together. If nothing else, putting them together as one big grand picture gives the idea of God some reasonableness and makes the need for Him crystal clear.
That doesn’t mean the evidence is going to convince everyone. There will always be someone who demands direct revelation or some kind of scientific evidence and will not be satisfied with anything less. And of course, others approach the whole subject and say, It’s not possible to begin with, so I’m not interested in any ideas about it. That is their choice, but it does not have to be everyone’s choice. But there is even more beyond all of this. It is a completely different approach that we’ll talk about in the next section.
Special Voices (3 Witnesses)
Everything we have looked at so far points to at least one big conclusion: If God is behind it all, it means He is not just some cosmic mindless spirit. Everything says that He is more than a power or force. He must be someone who has shown Himself to us through His work. It would only be natural for Him to be a communicator who values His creation and would reach out to us.
The last three clues have to do with how God, after doing everything else, reached out to certain people in certain ways at certain times. The idea is that He was taking the initiative to reach into our world so that we could understand Him and even ourselves better. This evidence comes from various sources spanning fifteen hundred years, describing personal experiences. The situation here is the same as with the other clues. Their value is in what we do with what we’re offered.
- The first special clue is that the most logical, most obvious way for God to communicate is to put down in writing what He wants us to know. There is a record that claims to be from God – the Bible. There are a lot of writings in the world that make the same claim, but we will see later in this journey that it has some unique characteristics. For now, just add this clue to the collection.
- People who doubt the previous clues may find the next special clues ridiculous. But, they are a treasure trove of information for sincere searchers. The clues are prophecy and miracles. Add these to the collection for future reference as well.
Prophecy happens when God gives someone information about what He will do in the future. History is full of people who have claimed to do prophecy. Even now, some groups still make claims. There is only one way to figure out who is or is not a prophet: what they say has to come true 100% of the time in every detail. A perfect God never gives out faulty information.
Miracles operate the same way. They have to happen in a way that is impossible in the normal world. Because God always does everything with purpose to show His power (not human power or prestige), a true Divine miracle always focuses on Him, not people. We will look at how the history in the Bible stands out as we get further along.
- The last witness is just simple personal experiences. This is probably the most dangerous of all the clues for being abused or misunderstood. It is easy to understand why. But if a person gives themselves to a relationship with God, it only makes sense that God would provide a deeply personal sense of His presence in their life. It would also only make sense that such a person would be overjoyed to talk to other people about it. That awareness of God and those conversations are just as important as a way for God to show Himself to the world through people.
The Truth About the Pretti Shooting
on 02/21/2026
at 3:13 PM
and modified on 02/21/2026. at 3:16 PM
In the middle of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforcement operation, Alex Pretti made a decision to insert himself as an anti-ICE protester. The only problem was that he was armed and resisted officers. Sadly, he ended up being shot and killed. The following video Walter Hudson explains “why focusing on abstract rights while ignoring real-world behavior leads to bad conclusions — and dangerous lessons.” He sheds light on what is being propagated by the media and pundits and details what they should be honestly sharing with the American public.
At this point, we need to focus on Jesus for a bit. There are good reasons for this and it is important to know why. The most important reason is because He is really at the center of so much of what we have talked about in the last two chapters. A couple of questions would seem, to me, to be natural: “Why is He a part of it all anyway?” and “What about Him gives Him the privilege of being that important?”
Why Sacrifice?
Have you noticed that sacrifice is a huge part of God’s solution for the problems between Him and us. By sacrifice, I mean actual physical sacrifice. It is in the Bible from cover to cover and not just in the Old Testament. So, the first thing that needs to be talked about is why sacrifice is part of the situation. After that, we need to find out what Jesus has to do with it.
I think the best place to start is by remembering what we know about God’s character and His creation of mankind. Remember, it was God acting on His own, using His power and authority to make everything that exists, the most important being mankind. This is important. All of who God is was involved. He created life in us which makes us the human beings we are. That means that life belonged to Him from the beginning and that every life still does. The most basic thing about physical sacrifice is that it costs life.
The next thing to remember is that when Adam rebelled, it ruined everything, and caused the rest of us to inherit the mess that came after. The most devastating result was the ruination of the deepest parts of everything that makes us God’s special creation. It was more than a surface problem. It was the ruination and alienation of God’s most beloved creation – us. It meant that life itself, the most precious thing that He had gifted us with was automatically woven into the whole disaster.
All of this leads to the heart of the sin issue and how to solve it. Think of it this way. Probably the most precious thing to us is being alive! At the same time, our worse and deepest offenses are not toward each other or anything else in the world, but against almighty God, the creator of life. When we look at everything as we put it together, there is only one thing valuable enough to cancel out the cost of it all, to restore our relationship with the One who requires holiness between us – a sacrificed life, a real physical sacrificial payment. Not only that, the person who voluntarily gives himself over cannot have any kind of impurity or offensiveness within him or be offensive to God in any way. Without perfect purity, he would just spend eternity paying for himself, not getting past his faults and sins so he could pay for anyone else’s.
If that is shocking just remember that in this life, sacrifices by people we consider heroes are made for much less. The person who runs into the burning building to save others or the soldier that falls on the grenade to save his comrades are doing sacrifices – a life for a life (or lives). But in the sin situation, the stakes are infinitely higher. We are not dealing with people or governments, but with God Himself.
Think of it as a legal problem. God, being who He is, has all the authority to judge unholiness against Him and prescribe the cost and punishment for it. Hopefully at this point you can understand that God, because of His character, has to respond to make things right.
The Ultimate Sacrifice
In the end, the only possible solution had to come from a man, because we are human as Adam was and sin is a human crime. But the person also had to be God because our offensiveness before God is infinite and eternal. God is the only Being in the entire universe who is infinite, eternal, and holy. There is just no other way
The only person to turn to in order to satisfy everything is Jesus, called the “Christ” (deliverer). I suppose that it might be good to remember the discussions about the Bible that we had in chapters 9 and 10. That testimony is incredibly important.
According to the testimonies in the Bible from everyone that knew Jesus, including His enemies, nobody could find any wrong or sin in Him. In a couple places, God the Father is recorded as having called Jesus His Son in front of witnesses.
In short, Jesus is the only person who ever lived that could deal with our inherited curse of sin and satisfy God’s judgement. The only one qualified to pay for everyone else. It was His personal blood sacrifice of life through a horrible torturous death, His taking to Himself our sin, unholiness, and condemnation that fixed the mess. And, as if to make sure we would all understand it, He traveled around for 40 days after His death to hundreds of people. He talked and ate with many of His followers after His death. His resurrection was the ultimate proof of who He was and what He was able to accomplish for those who would accept Him.
This is the pinnacle of Christianity, isn’t it. That in a cataclysmic act of love, God took it upon Himself to do to make things right for us when no human on Earth had the ability, desire, or right to do it themselves. If you think about it, all of history from the Garden of Eden on was moving toward the climax in Jesus Christ.
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The last chapter ended with what would seem to have been the conclusion of everything. But in a very real sense, for the person that has taken the challenge at the end of chapter 13 seriously and answered the call, it is really just the beginning. This is not a situation where we and God kind of “get together” for a few moments of prayer to settle our differences and then go our separate ways, Him leaving us alone to figure out how to do the rest. Because we now know that God is perfectly holy, loving, gracious, and powerful, it should not be surprising that He has a lot more in store for those who trust Him with their physical and spiritual lives. When a person chooses to love Jesus for what He has done and accept His horrific sacrifice as both God and man, massive resources open up for us.
Newness Starts with Forgiveness
Sometimes people have strange ideas about what it takes to reestablish harmony with someone after something bad happens between them. It’s not unusual to think that if the fighting is over, a treaty has been agreed upon, moving on is just fine, even if the root of the blowup or bitterness is simply buried or ignored for the sake of peace.
But, if God is who we understand Him to be, perfectly righteous, just, and merciful, then we know He is not one who just “lets it go” to get along. So, what happens when we earnestly and honestly do our part and come to Christ asking forgiveness for sin against Him and others? A new relationship begins. And, like any relationship, it can only mean something if both parties start with forgiveness. With God, forgiveness is deep and everlasting. The testimony of the Bible is that when we approach Him in a totally trusting way, He actually responds with a legal-type pardon based on the price Christ voluntarily paid with blood by the crucifixion He suffered so that we wouldn’t have to suffer after we die. And, since Jesus Christ is God, that pardon from the Father is forever.
A Closer Look At Forgiveness
If you look a little closer at what forgiveness means to God, it is pretty amazing. The Apostle Paul wrote that it actually involves Jesus’ torture and sacrifice being a “covering-over” of our offenses and crimes against God’s holiness. He literally cancels out the debt we owe Him. Not only that, the author of the book of Hebrews goes so far as to teach that at the moment of forgiveness, God puts the offenses out of His mind – He “remembers them no more”. This is not parole or probation but a full-blown “not guilty” pardon of everything!
Imagine the freedom all of that means for us! Actual friendship with God! There is no need to worry anymore about judgement coming over us when we face God after we die. In the here-and-now, the need to rack up “brownie points” with Him is gone. The idea of having to earn love and acceptance from Him is gone. All that is needed is that we love Him in return and that we do life as His obedient children who try to obey our parent because He has chosen to love us first.
It should also go without saying that forgiveness cannot stand alone as something that has no consequences in a relationship. It just cannot be that way. True forgiveness, either between a person and God or between two people, will always end up restoring something that was lost or creating something new between those who used to be at odds with each other. Maybe that’s why asking for or receiving forgiveness is so hard for people. They hang on to the hope that the problem will just fade away, that “bygones will be bygones”. It takes a lot of courage and humility to face guilt, admit to it, and do the work to fix it.
God Makes It Right
As I hinted at above, if forgiveness has happened honestly with the right motives, it naturally ends in harmony, things being made right, after a broken relationship. It’s what we call being reconciled. If we remember the situation between us and God before He forgives us (chapter 12), the new situation He makes for us is amazing.
For one thing, the Bible says that we actually become a kind of new creation. Jesus said that it is like being reborn. During Jesus’ ministry, He also promised that after that “rebirth”, the Holy Spirit would actually take up residence in every person who would come to Him in the future. The Bible gives witness to the fact that that happened and that it represents a sealed promise of forever life with God. Think of what that means. Our inner person, the old ways of living and thinking, have to start making way for new likes and attractions while the old ones get replaced. Also, in a real sense, we automatically become part of a new spiritual family, made up all the other newly created persons. That’s why finding new friends in a good church becomes more attractive rather than looking like weird religion.
Legally Innocent
Remember, even while God’s holiness makes condemning unholiness a must, He is at the same time perfectly gracious, merciful, just, and righteous. Those things about His character come into play here. God’s perfections mean that because of His mercy, once the legal debt we owe Him because of our offensives is paid off, His deep quality of righteousness follows through so that our situation with Him is settled once and for all. Because God is just, He actually changes our status. Our natural guilty verdict is wiped out and changed to innocence and because of that, there is no more judgement. In the end, God looks at us through Jesus as if we are actually holy. Imagine being holy! That is the most miraculous thing of all.
Unimaginable Future
It is amazing to look at everything we have talked about so far. What an incredible blessing for those who have taken Jesus as their rescuer and master to live in the here-and-now finishing with God at their side through the actual presence of His Holy Spirit. But there is more after the grave!
The apostle John wrote that never-ending life with Christ starts in this life right at the moment of rebirth. One time, after bringing a man back to life (Lazarus), Jesus told those around Him that He was the way to live beyond the grave, that He is life. The apostle Paul made it clear that those in Christ would actually live with Jesus and see Him face to face.
I know this is a lot to take in, especially if a person is on the outside looking in. But if we follow everything as it has built up along the way from the first chapter to now, this is really the only place we can come to in our hearts and minds. The only thing left is whether to commit or not commit.
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A good part of the last chapter was fairly grim, but it ended with a much-needed note of hope. The relationship between mankind to God was ruined a so long ago but the situation is not a dead end. If God is all that we have found Him to be, He is not one to leave us stuck in the darkness that was caused by our first parents (Adam and Eve). So, this chapter is not only going to wade into the darkness and everything it infects and ruins (what the Bible calls “sin”) but will also pull everything that we have talked about over the last 12 chapters together so that anyone who decides to follow through will know the path to the end of the tunnel, the God-given way into life in the light.
Anemic Answers, Disappointing Results
I am sure that there are all kinds of ways to explain the miseries and malfunctions that all of us live with from the first day we are born. A lot of them sound pretty good. What’s not attractive about the claim that loving yourself will radiate love to others? Or does it not sound logical that the weaknesses and disfunctions in us can be solved if we can map out the offences against us by parents, stepparents, foster parents, or guardians? Maybe it is just a matter of finding your true self.
Now, even if, for the moment, we go with one of these explanations, there are still huge stubborn problems. How did my supposed self-love get messed up? If others in my life ruined mine, how did they get in such bad shape themselves? If you believe that you don’t know who you are inside, how did you get so disconnected? The truth of the matter is that anything the world offers as an explanation never really gets to the root of the sicknesses and evil.
The Depth of the Darkness
So how bad is it? It is bad. The corruption of our bodies is probably the thing that feels the harshest to us personally and death is the worst part of that. It is a strange situation. Death is a normal part of life, but we never get used to the pain of it.
According to the book of Genesis, we were actually originally created to live forever physically. It makes perfect sense. If the Creator of life is Himself eternal, why would He not make our bodies fit for eternity in a material paradise? Clearly something went wrong and that is where sin comes in. It was at that point of the rebellion against the holy and eternal God, because of the break from Him, the creator of life, that the power of physical eternal life in us was broken.
The results didn’t end there. From the day we are born, we begin a journey toward death and along the way it is spiked with sickness, injuries, and deterioration. Before Adam and Eve’s fall, there was not even the possibility of such things. Behavior and relationships didn’t escape either. With the alienation from God, all of the problems that “The Most Basic Problem” section talked about in chapter 12 became the stuff of everyday existence on Earth. The first murder happened between two brothers not long after our first parents were evicted from paradise.
But there is something else we live with that is a little less obvious. The death that we inherited included the spiritual part of us – our souls. If the Bible is to be believed as we talked about before, it means that that brokenness includes our spiritual side. The great spiritual relationship our first parents began with was lost when they rebelled, sinned against God, and we all inherit the same condition. To put it bluntly, the spiritual relationship we could have had with God became dead. Yes, everyone still has their spiritual part which gives life to the body, but having a soul does not bridge the divide of spiritual death between man and God.
Rescue – If You Want It
Let’s get personal now. It is a heavy weight and an impossible-looking situation to think that God is out there, watching and waiting for us to figure out how to deal with our hidden struggles and corrupt heart, not to mention our outward failures and offenses. The good news is that there is a rescue, if anyone wants it. It centers on Jesus Christ. Because, according to the Bible, He was both God and man sent by the Father, He has to be the way. For now, I am going to deal with the absolutely critical results of that. A later chapter will get more in depth about Jesus Himself.
This is where, once again, God’s character (chapter 5) and His reaching out to us (chapter 8) comes into play. He works it all together (chapter 6). Because He loves perfectly, is perfectly righteous and just, and the only one with the power (chapter 4) to step in, He made the first move. Since the case has been made that the Bible is God’s communication (chapters 8 & 9), let’s use it (chapter 10).
The Bible says that there is only one mediator between us and God, Jesus Christ and that God’s love caused Him to send Jesus to pay for the sin of mankind in general and for our individual sin in particular. The shocking thing is that even Satan knows all this. There is certainly a big difference between him and us!
The difference is submission and allegiance. In other words, it is one thing to know that Jesus is the way, that His sacrifice is the payment, and that He was resurrected to finish the process (even Satan knows those facts and hates them), it is quite another thing to personally accept what He did and ask Him to take over our life.
God only asks a few things of us so that the blood of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for our offenses (sins) can give us peace with Him and an actual living relationship with Him. The crazy thing is, all anyone has to do is ask. Prayer, just talking to God, is the way to ask. The Bible says that we need to tell Jesus that we understand and accept what He did for us. We also need to ask Him for His forgiveness for our sin. Finally, we need to tell Him that we want Him to take over our life. It sounds so simple, but for a lot of people it can be hard to do if they really mean it.
Now, anyone can say words and pray, but it is important to understand that, as the Bible also says, it is only the prayer of a sincere heart that God will answer. We know that we can’t play games with God. He knows the hearts of men and, as the Bible says, judges their intentions.
Life On the Other End
There is beautiful fruit from sincerely praying to Jesus the way we have just talked about. At the moment of that prayer, there is, in our souls, what Jesus called being born again and what the book of First Corinthians says is the making of a whole new inner person, a “new creation”. Also, the book of Romans says that at the same time as that, the judgement of God over us that would have condemned us is paid for forever. Then, as new “creatures”, the Holy Spirit starts helping with the power to fight and win over sin.
But the blessings are not done. The promise of God through Scripture is a life after our physical death that will last for all eternity. Our Heavenly home will be in the very presence of God with no more “tears, death, crying, or pain!
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It’s great to realize that I and everyone around me actually has the purposely created “image of God” built into us. But is that how everyone behaves, always making the right decisions or acting with totally pure motives? Does anyone we know always act as if they did everything in line with God’s character? We all know that people are not perfect and in a lot of cases are just plain corrupted.
If chapter 11 is true, there has to be an explanation for the world we actually live in. That’s what this chapter is about – figuring out what the problem is, what it looks like in real life, and how it started in the first place. I am predicting that a lot of what we talk about will not go over very well. But if it turns out that it fits reality, it should actually be a big help in understanding life.
I suppose that there must be hundreds of ways out there to try and explain the problem of evil in the world or how every single person on Earth has ended up with less than perfect records of clear thinking, pure motives, and stellar behavior. One way to go is to leave God out of the picture. That way of explaining wickedness is what modern psychology is based on. It really boils down to believing that the dark side of humanity comes out of things like a messed up society, traumatic experiences, or bad genetics. I will admit that all those things can help explain how we behave at times, but none of them explain the problem of evil.
It should be pretty obvious at this point that we can’t leave God out of this. We know too much about Him and too much about how He made us. To cut Him out at this point would make no sense. What makes a lot more sense is to use everything we have learned, including the character of the Bible, to look at the problem of evil from God’s perspective.
The Beginning
God has a lot to say about how the world got into the sorry shape it’s in. If we take the Bible at its word, the problems started in paradise! According to the historical record, and I know of no reason not to believe it is recorded history, it began with our first parents, Adam and Eve. We could get into a lot of discussion about Adam and Eve themselves, but for now let’s take the first book of the Bible at its word and see if in the end, it makes sense.
According to the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve gave in to Satan’s lies and temptations. He claimed to give them the chance to take over for themselves “the knowledge of good and evil” so that they could operate morally without God. Satan’s deception was crafty. He didn’t tell them to outright disobey God but instead offered them all the attractions of the world and put doubt in their minds about God’s integrity and His motives for the rules for living in Eden (paradise). But probably the biggest part of the whole temptation was Satan’s claim that if they took him up on his claim, they would “be like God” Himself. There could not have been a more horrific challenge to God’s holiness, and they fell for it. At that point, that act of rebellion, was the first of what the Bible calls sin.
The result of what they did was catastrophic, not only for them and everyone that would come after them, but also for the rest of creation. God had trusted them to take care of everything and they blew it and defied Him in the process.
The Fallout
The world we live in now, and all the weaknesses, ailments, and struggles we have to live with came out of that whole mess of sin. The effect of that “fall” hit every part the special ways that God made us (chapter 11). It is not hard to see it every day, if not in every hour of every day.
The best way to think about it is by looking at the results as being torn apart from God and everything He made us to be. For example, when we die, it is really a separation of our souls, the spiritual part of us, from our bodies, the one leaving the other. We are also obviously separated from God too. After we die, that separation is carried on into eternity with no way to reconnect again unless He steps in. After all, if we are unholy, why does it make any sense to think that death would just automatically fix the problem between Him and us? How would that even work? Finally, we are now forced to deal with living in the physical world with all of the good and bad that goes along with it. In a real way, even creation is spoiled and separated from how it was meant to be.
The fallout from all this gets personal too. The stresses and conflicts from unholy people trying to live with other unholy people create all kinds of problems. Even in the best families, spouses irritate each other, and siblings argue, sometimes, sadly, to the point of being alienated from each other. At work, conflicts and challenges show up everywhere, from the lowest people on the totem pole to the highest.
The bottom line is that the damage from the first rebellion infected everything and everyone from then on.
The Most Basic Problem
When evil invaded the universe through the actions of our first parents, the worst damage was to mankind’s conscience, his ability to make correct decisions between right and wrong. We lost the ability to be pure and that means that our minds and even our souls are spoiled. This is the most basic problem between us and God, between us and other people, and is one of the hardest things to accept. No one, including myself, likes to think that we are not mostly good, or are at least able to always think clearly and live righteously. But that’s just not real life and, if we are honest with ourselves, there is just no way we are that holy. The evil in the rest of the world proves the point even more.
It is easy to call out the sins of the rest of the world with its violence, perversions, injustices, and abuses. But what about things closer to home? What about the things we have personally seen or been a part of ourselves? As it turns out, the Bible has some pretty good lists – “strife, jealousy, angry tempers, selfishness, slander, gossip, arrogance, immorality, indecent behavior, rebelliousness, envy, drunkenness, carousing, blasphemies, and evil thoughts”. Jesus said that the most dangerous ones are hidden in our hearts and that no one else can see them but God. By the way, that includes anything that violates our own consciences. When we look at this list, it is much too easy to deceive ourselves into thinking that we have never been part of any of it or, for some of us, that we are still there.
The Cost
So, is there a cost from all those imperfections and, as the Bible calls them, sins? Here is another hard thing to understand; there has to be! Think back about God’s character again. Everything we know about Him leaves us with no choice. God’s faithfulness to His holiness, righteousness, truth, and goodness demand that the things on the “sins list” and more, must be reacted to. Remember, right now we are not talking about vague “out there somewhere” kinds of stuff, but about things in us that are offensive to God Himself and a lot of times to other people. We are talking about real people, including ourselves, that carry those darknesses and therefore have to face the alienation they cause, both between us and God. This is not just a matter of keeping or breaking rules, it is about being offensive to God because of who He is.
There are only two ways for God to deal with these assaults on His character and on His moral standards that are a part of His character. Both of them come out of His holiness; the need to have righteousness and do justice. God cannot just wait for us to show up after we die and say, “Oh well, I’ll just call Myself loving and ignore all the crimes against me”. That’s not how justice and righteousness work. Instead, in a legal kind of way, He has to judge us in some way or another. There simply has to be payment in order to set things right.
The two choices are pretty obvious. Either He has to condemn the offender forever since the offences are forever against an eternal God or the second way, He could pay an eternal payment Himself to cover the sin. It sounds unimaginable, but that means God Himself would have to be the payment! We will talk about this later on, but that is exactly why it is so important to understand who Jesus Christ is how He was that payment.
Justification and Healing
After all of this, a very bright future is possible, but it hinges on owning up to the sin we carry and willingly accepting God’s plan and payment so that things can be made right. The results of the fall of our first parents are devastating in the here and now and into eternity. How can it be anything else? Everything is based on accepting eternal principles from an eternal God. It makes perfect sense that God would, for the sake of righteousness, use judgement and justice against the sin and at the same time exercise His mercy, grace, and love to offer the payment, forgiveness, and new life to those of us who act on it.
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