WHO AM I?

     The honest consideration of what we have discussed thus far cuts right to the heart of where we each are as modern individuals.  The very first hurdle I had to overcome when God began drawing me towards himself, was coming to grips with the idea that all my self-willed beliefs, theories, wants, and philosophies might be wrong and based upon erroneous and self-serving starting assumptions -- that my very definition of such basic things as "love" were rooted ultimately in self-gratification.  The last thing I wanted at that time was for the Bible to be an accurate revelation of the God who is actually out there!  I had too much invested in another life-style, and frankly I felt that Jesus' own claims to be the only way to the Father were the height of all arrogance (John 14:6, Acts 4:12).  I wanted most desperately to be in control of my own life -- to be my own little god (though I would never have put it that way at the time).  But in order to be honest with myself (not a thing I regularly practiced at the time), the possibility had to be explored.  I asked God to show himself to me -- even if he turned out to be the God of the Bible I had so many disputes with.
     As I examined more and more evidence, I began to see just how firmly grounded in fact and history biblical Judeo-Christianity is.*  I also became aware of the logical implications of scriptures like Romans Chapter 3, which demonstrate the universal depravity of humanity -- that if salvation is a free gift, and nobody deserves to go to heaven, then nobody can legitimately claim that God has been unfair to them if they don't accept his terms.  If somebody as schleppy as myself could consider seriously the possibility that all my self-made and self-borrowed ideas, as well as my religious upbringing, might be wrong, and be willing to face evidence to that effect, and actually challenge an unknown God for the presentation of such evidence, than certainly anybody has that capability, no matter what their background!  Many have suffered far more profoundly than I have for questioning their upbringings and personal ideologies in just such an analytical way.

     I have become convinced that really knowing Christ is impossible unless we begin to realize that God is not a late 20th Century American.  He is not bound by our conventions or our cultural prejudices (or lack of them).  There are specific Bible promises that all who truly seek God will find him (God will get somebody to them with the gospel of Christ like he got Peter to Cornelius in Acts 10).27  But the Bible is also replete with descriptions of the scarcity of such people -- "There are none who seek after God..." (Romans 3:11); Jesus' own words that, "Wide is the gate and broad the path that leads to destruction, and many there be who go in there at, but strait is the way and narrow the road that leads to life, and few there be that find it." (Matthew 7:13-14) come to mind.  Even those who do seek after God can't take credit for having an honest heart, for in John 14 Jesus said, "The Holy Spirit draws them."  I have no cause to be proud.
     Jesus insisted that the basis of evil comes from what is in the human heart, not what we allow the world to see of ourselves outwardly -- "From out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts..." (Matthew 15:19)  We do not need God's forgiveness so much for the things we have done as we do for what we ARE on the inside!  At age nineteen I didn't know what was in the hearts of men like Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot, but I knew what was in my own heart -- that if what hid there continued to be fed and brought out under just the right circumstances, that I would end up as some creepy manipulator who used people and then threw them away when I was finished with them.  I had already traveled a long way down that path.  I also had good reason to suspect that my heart was ultimately no worse or no better than most anybody else's -- at least when stacked up against the righteousness of Christ.  The same hypocrisy I tolerated within myself everybody else seemed to tolerate within their own selves also -- though few of us would ever tolerate it in each other.  Romans 3:4 states, "Let God be true and every man be found a liar..." and then goes on to describe the universally corrupted nature of all human beings -- not men as God created them, but men as they became through the sin nature they inherited from Adam, who freely chose to sin.
 In considering whether or not God's assessment of the human condition was a fair one, I had to face the fact that I had overwhelming evidence from my dealings with other human beings that every one of them had lied to me at one time or another -- even if it was just one of those "white lies" that spared my feelings but allowed me to go on in certain behaviors that I unwittingly made an ass out of myself in.  Why, I even lied to myself!  On the other hand, I had absolutely NO evidence that God had ever lied to me.  I had a choice to make -- to believe God's assessment of the human heart in Jeremiah 17:9 ("The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked...") and Romans 3, which isn't pretty; or to believe human assessments, which are consistently shallow, hypocritical  and unrealistic.
     If anyone doubts that human nature is now basically corrupt, and that each child is born in a sinful state, consider that parents must work tirelessly over their children to teach them kindness, unselfishness, truthfulness, and respect for others.  I know of no parent who has had to teach their child to lie, or to be selfish, or cruel -- that comes naturally!  A secular study done by the Minnesota Crime Commission once made the following observation, a portion of which I have paraphrased:  Take any temper tantrum of any two year old.  Were the child not so weak and tiny, and were it given the strength and coordination of a twenty-five year old man with an assault rifle, the same rage would be a killing spree at MacDonalds!  Even the fact that adults require a reward-punishment system of laws to embrace morality shows that our nature is basically depraved.  Those who live by law, order, kindness and gentleness do so because of their training -- not because it is their nature.  This is what is described by the Bible doctrine of Original Sin.
     To put it in a nutshell, the Bible teaches that the first man and woman, before they had any children, followed a real Satan into rebellion against God's order by a combination of being deceived and acting in willful defiance.  This was an historic event that produced far reaching consequences -- every bit as much as Hitler's invasion of Poland was an historic event with far reaching consequences.  The Genesis account is not written in any Hebraic style that would suggest an allegory, and the early narrative segments make smooth connection into text that is clearly meant to be understood as historical, and can be archaeologically verified as such.
     As a result of a real Adam's choice, real sin entered creation.  This must not be understood simplistically to mean that a no-no had been committed and now God was going to rub our noses in it.  This disruption changed the order of everything God had created in the cosmic realm and previously pronounced as “good” right down to the sub-atomic level.  Much of what a scientist today calls "entropy" came into being -- things decayed, motions wound down, stars began to collapse, erosion, sickness and death in general entered into the cosmos because of sin in general.  Adam and Eve now passed on to their children a corrupted nature that was in automatic rebellion mode against the order of God.  Their environment also reflected this nature, retaining much of God's orderliness, yet gripped now in a dysfunctional back-up mode of continual survival cruelties and natural disasters, as we currently observe.  This inherited tendency in Man behaves much as a genetic trait does, and who knows but that there is not some genetic side to it also -- though such would not absolve us of our responsibility to receive God's solution for our crisis and then fight our own bent predispositions with his help.  Some call the idea of Original Sin unfair, but I have found it to be the most realistic and practical, brass tacks teaching on human nature there is, fitting to the last decimal point everything I have ever observed about my own kind.  (And it has nothing whatever to do with the bizarre Medieval idea that unbaptized babies go to “limbo.”)
     Through bringing me to understand the harsh reality of Original Sin, Jesus revealed to me my need for him and his love for me personally.  Training my outward person to do good things against my nature could never be enough -- I needed a new nature.  We were able to get that most basic of foundational starting assumptions settled -- a right relationship with God based upon what Christ has done on the cross to redeem us, and not upon what we do to try and redeem ourselves.  This is the foundation of the Biblical Judeo-Christian world view; both the need defined in historic Genesis and the solution defined in the historic gospel.  Since then I have not always been a shining example of what a Christian ought to be -- I still have that fallen nature to fight -- but God has never allowed me to stray for any period of time without getting me back on track.  He has placed in me a new nature who is growing and developing and actually WANTING to be the kind of person God would like to hang around with.  He has been faithful to his promise and kept me in his love.  He will do the same for anyone who seeks for him honestly, and is willing to accept what he reveals, even to the point of rejecting old life-styles and cherished beliefs that conflict.
      Yet, even so, we are not asked to blindly believe; but rather to examine the available evidence and embrace an educated faith.  The problem is, so often this evidence has been suppressed, sometimes by accident, other times deliberately as described in Romans Chapter One. 

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