PART 2: THE WAY THINGS ARE
5. LEARNING TO GET USED TO IT
I once
worked for a fast food restaurant. One
day, we had a huge group of people coming in for lunch. There was a community function, and our place
was the choice for lunch. They called ahead
and let us know about how many were coming.
The manager gave us a pep talk about what to expect and his plan for
meeting the rush. Someone asked him what
we would get if we did as he planned (like a free shake or something).
His
answer: “You get to keep your job.”
Life
can be that way, can’t it? Tough,
stingy, even cruel. Part of “growing up”
is learning to deal with life “in the real world.” I recall seeing a sign in a break room at a
factory: “Your mother doesn’t work
here. Clean up after yourself.”
As
small children, many of us are exposed to a great deal of fantasy. We may experience these in stories, like
Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up, or Cinderella, whose destiny was changed
by a fairy godmother. Many children
experience fantasy through television cartoons.
In some of those, gravity may be temporarily overcome by treading the
air with one’s feet so fast that one is suspended in air. In some cartoons, life-ending accidents—such
as being flattened by a steam roller—do not really end life: the character returns as good as new to chase
or scheme or otherwise entertain us.
And
even the children who watch the cartoons know that these fantasies are only
ways to entertain them. The real world
has been with them from the beginning.
They have known hunger and thirst, though their parents or caretakers
met those needs. Nevertheless their
needs were quite with them. They have
experienced the power of gravity: their
little muscles worked and developed, along with their nervous systems, to bring
their bodies into the upright position.
They have known deprivation, struggle, chaos, insecurity.
They
have also known the blessings of life.
Most children grow up in the care of loving, generous adults. Those adults guide the child’s life in ways
that bring a certain degree of security, confidence, and wisdom so that the
child grows into a sense that, someday, he or she will enter the adult world
with the ability to live an independent and productive life (listen to the
speeches of high school valedictorians).
During those growing up years, almost all children and youth spend a
great deal of time having fun. They
climb trees, hike along river banks, go swimming, play tag, sneak a kiss with a
girl, play with a dog, catch fly balls, and wait for Christmas.
Life,
from our earliest years, is a strange mixture of harshness and joy. Many young people experience the sadness of a
death in the family. Many know what it
is to be told “We just can’t afford that this year.” Many bring home grade cards with less than
satisfactory grades or know what it is to struggle over homework. Most experience the breakup of a
friendship. Many these days watch on the
sidelines as their parents go through divorce.
For most young people, the disappointments come relatively
infrequently—often enough to bring realism, but not so frequent so as to bring
utter devastation.
As we
settle into adulthood, we continue to deal with this admixture of joy and
sorrow. People develop coping
mechanisms, more or less successfully, that help them to keep their
psychological machinery functioning reasonably well in the face of THE WAY
THINGS ARE. No doubt,
many of these coping mechanisms are the product of how we have been brought
up. I shall not go into detail about these,
nor shall I attempt to delve into what psychologists call “defense
mechanisms.” I shall only list a few of
our styles of dealing with “reality” or THE WAY THINGS ARE.
1. Hard-nose realism
2. Extreme dependence on one or more other
people
3. Worrying and fretting
4. Escape through entertainment, recreation, or
fantasy
5. Extremes of control over other people
6. Chemical dependency
Most
people employ combinations of these and other coping styles. Few people can sustain any one of these styles
(including “hard-nosed realism”) for long periods. We all need some escape from time to
time. We generally lean on other people
to some degree. We often strive to
control our small corner of the universe in order to create some sense of
security. We don’t survive long if we do
not at least occasionally live as hard-nosed realists.
6. PLANS PEOPLE MAKE
In the midst of all of these
coping styles, there is generally very little evidence of a
philosophical-religious perspective. I
find this to be true even among many professing Christians. My observation is that most people live their
lives and cope with life mostly by instinct.
They largely react to life rather than having any sense that there is an
overarching plan for life.
Now, a person may tell you he or
she has a plan, but, when you examine the plan, it generally is focused on two
or three areas of life. A person may
have a VOCATIONAL PLAN. She may become a
doctor and see the medical profession as the vehicle that gives her identity,
security, and fulfillment. He may have a
RELATIONSHIP PLAN. He may plan his life
around the family and friends he has always known. They give him identity, security, and
fulfillment. Or, he may have a FINANCIAL
PLAN. He may understand his life in
terms of income, savings, investments, etc.
These give him security and fulfillment.
The things the money buys give him identity.
These
are the kinds of “plans” that I have seen people build their lives around. They really are part of the coping styles for
life. When difficulties come, these
plans may be tested. In some cases,
people have invested a great deal of energy into their “plans.” If the “plan” comes through in the time of
trouble, there is an even deeper investment in the plan. On the other hand, trouble can shatter the
plan. A woman who has invested her life
into her marriage, in her RELATIONSHIP PLAN, will surely be shattered by
divorce. On the other hand, if her “plan”
was financial, she may draw comfort from the financial arrangement of the
divorce decree.
None
of these “plans,” however, can deal with all of life and bring complete
security, identity, and fulfillment.
Perhaps some “mid-life crises” come about when the “plan” begins to seem
empty and unfulfilling. Moreover, none
of these plans, not to mention the instinctual reactions with which many people
approach life, attempt to view life with a broad understanding. There is an absence of a
philosophical-religious perspective.
I
shall attempt to give such a perspective.
The first step is to understand how things got in the shape they
are.
7. THE ORIGINS OF THE WAY THINGS ARE
I
believe that the Bible offers explanations for THE WAY THINGS ARE. As a brief summary for the present order of
existence, I offer the following list:
1.
There are many good things around us. Life, at least at times, is good.
2.
There is offered to us the means to live. The environment of natural resources provides
to us a great abundance of food and the means to make a living.
3.
Human society has given to us many good
things. Technology and science,
industry, government, institutions, culture, the arts—all of these provide for
us a universe of joys, pleasures, provisions for order and security.
4.
Life also has dealt to us a lot bad stuff. There is death, disease, war, birth defects,
mental retardation.
5.
We also observe that none of us are perfect in
all our ways. We find ourselves and
others to have strong tendencies to evil behavior. Some of this behavior is down-right monstrous: one could mention pedophilia, child abuse,
the Jewish Holocaust, slavery, etc.
As a Christian explanation of these (very simplistic)
observations, I propose the
following formula:
THE CAUSE OF THE PRESENT ORDER OF EXISTENCE =
CREATION + THE LAW OF SIN AND DEATH
This understanding is based on the witness of the whole
Bible. I shall refer to some important
passages, but many others could be cited.
I might say that this formula, though it is understood by most
Christians, is strangely neglected at times.
I find that many people, even conservative Christian writers, stress
Creation but neglect the second part of the cause of THE WAY THINGS ARE, which
is the Law of Sin and Death. The result
of this neglect is that many people are puzzled about much of what they
observe. Moreover, a second result of
this neglect is that many people have poor understandings of the victory that
God has won and of The Big Picture.
In addition, because this formula is poorly understood, many
people really have a hazy understanding of THE WAY THINGS ARE. That is, they fail to recognize that our
Present Order of Existence is a mixture of the blessings of the Creation and
the curse of the Law of Sin and Death.
This failure of understanding creates problems in understanding
Scripture and in understanding life.
In the next two sections, I shall develop the Scriptural
basis for Creation and the Law of Sin and Death.
8. THE BLESSINGS OF CREATION
The first statement of the Bible is that God created
everything:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis
1:1[1]
This is one of the profoundest of all statements. Everything, in the beginning, was God’s
idea. Everything, in the beginning, came
from God. Everything, in the beginning,
had its purpose and destiny from God.
Everything, in the beginning, belonged to God.
Genesis 1 emphasizes that God’s creation was good:
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was
light. And God saw that light was good,
and he separated the light from the darkness.
Genesis
1:3-4
Similarly, God pronounced the following to be good: separation of water from dry ground (verse
9), vegetation (verse 12), the sun, moon, and stars (verse 17), aquatic animals
and birds (verse 21), land animals (verse 25).
Finally, God pronounced all that He had made to be “very good.” (verse 31)
The last things that God made were human beings, who were
made in the image of God (verse 27). It
is obvious from the whole context of the chapter that humanity is understood to
be the crown of creation. Thus, humanity
is a good creature, at home in the very good creation of God.
As we look around in wonder at this beautiful creation, we
get a glimpse of magnificence of the one who created it.
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the
work of his hands.
Psalm
19:1
The “glory” of God, for the Hebrew, was a manifestation of
the full significance of God. God has
manifested Himself through creation, setting an agenda for Himself as well as
what He has made. When we turn our eyes
up to the stars or see the sun blaze at noonday, we have some idea of the
awesome power and deep wisdom of the great God who is king of the universe and
all of creation.
The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has
made.
Psalm
145:9
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what
you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the
body more important than clothes? Look
at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and
yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are
you not much more valuable than they?
Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all
his splendor was dressed like one of these.
Matthew
6:25-29
These quotations from Scripture—the second quote is from
Jesus—give us a picture of God’s sustaining His creation. So that, not only has God created all things,
but He also continues to care for it. In
Hebrews 1:3, we read that the Son of God sustains “all things by his powerful
word.” The following is another
description of God’s care for creation:
He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows
between the mountains. They give water
to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. The birds of the air nest by the waters; they
sing among the branches….He makes the grass grow for the cattle, and plants for
man to cultivate—bringing forth food from the earth….The trees of the Lord are
well watered….There the birds make their nests.…The lions roar for their prey
and seek their food from God…These all [all living creatures] look to you to
give them their food at the proper time.
Psalm
104:10-27
The witness of Scripture is to a good God who has made a
good creation. Through that creation,
God provides to us the means to sustain and enjoy an abundant life. In James 1:17 we read:
“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father
of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” I think that it is consistent with the
witness of Scripture that the many, many good things that we enjoy are ultimately
from the God who has made us. If humans
have made things or have discovered things, it is because God has given the
ability to do so. Moreover, God’s
faithful sustenance of Creation has made it possible for us to explore our
environment and to develop the remarkable science and technology that we enjoy
today.
What is good in your life?
For each person there are many different gifts from God, yet surely all
of us can find an abundance to be thankful for:
family—parents, siblings, extended family, children; friends, community,
country, job, civic clubs, cars, rods and reels, beef stew, microwave ovens,
electricity, pet dogs, swimming pools, forced air furnaces, air conditioning,
Daylight Donuts, giraffes, beavers, largemouth bass, CAT scans, computers. On and on we could go. All these remarkable, wonderful, beautiful,
joyous, fun, intriguing, loving, comfortable, poetic, awesome things come from
God to bless and sustain our lives.
I think we can say the following about God’s Creation and
all the blessing and provision that He supplies:
1. It
is good. It is full of blessing and
enjoyment and brings about our ultimate good.
2. It is abundant. A
lush rain forest is a fitting symbol of God’s good creation. There are
innumerable life forms from the five biological kingdoms (Monera—the bacteria-like
organisms, Protista—organisms similar to the ameba and Paramecium) Fungi, Plantae, and Animalia). (I have just learned that there is a
possible sixth kingdom Archaea.)
3. It
is beautiful. From the constellations of
the heavens to the intricacy of subcellular structures, all the universe is
gloriously beautiful.
4. It is orderly.
From the atom to the galaxies, there are remarkable systems that sustain
themselves through complex processes.
Living things, especially, exhibit such awesome order and control.
5. It is the basis for God’s provision for our lives. Even in our non-agrarian society, we can
recognize that the sustenance for our lives rests on God’s good creation.
6. It is ultimately about life and not death. We can talk of the “law of tooth and claw” or
the need for death to make life possible in ecosystems, but all of creation
carries a message of the beauty and glory of life. Even aggressive instincts are means to
self-defense and the preservation of life.
9. THE LAW OF SIN AND DEATH
A. The Origins of the Human Condition
There
is another principle that operates among us besides the principle of
creation. It is the principle that the
Bible calls The Law of Sin and Death.
The following quotation is given at this point simply to emphasize the
existence of this Law. I shall refer
back to this passage in other places to explore its meaning.
So I
find this law at work: When I want to do
good, evil is right there with me. For
in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the
members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a
prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.
Therefore,
there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through
Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. [italics added]
Romans
7:21-23, 8:1-2
I want
to explore the origins of this situation.
The Bible describes how the human race entered into a condition that is
marked by these twin diseases—sin and death.
This incident is described in Genesis 3, but the groundwork for that
chapter is laid in chapter 2. The
following is a synopsis of Genesis 2: 4-25:
After God had formed the earth, He made a man and placed him
in a garden. The man, named Adam, lived
a simple, peaceful life in the garden, with responsibility for the garden and
its animals. God made a woman for the
man, to be his wife. The two became
husband and wife. They had available the
fruit of all the trees of the garden.
There were two special trees in the garden—The Tree of Life and The Tree
of Knowledge of Good and Evil. They
could eat of the Tree of Life, but they were warned not to eat of the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil.
The key background in chapter 2 is the command to Adam:
And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat
from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, for when you
eat of it you will surely die.” [italics added]
Genesis 2:16-17
The
following are excerpts from chapter 3:
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree [of knowledge
of good and evil] was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable
for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.
She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
[After the Lord discovered that the people had disobeyed
him,] To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the
tree…Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of
it all the days of your life. It will
produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the
field. By the sweat of your brow you
will eat food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for
dust you are and to dust you will return.”
And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of
us, knowing good and evil. He must not
be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat,
and live forever.” So the Lord God
banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from
which he had been taken.
Genesis
3:6-24 (in part)
In the following chapters of Genesis, we are given a series
of snapshots of the human condition.
These stories are given without comment, but it is obvious that the
human condition that began with the disobedience in the Garden of Eden was
being played out. The following are some
of features of those chapters:
In
chapter 4, the first son of Adam and his wife Eve kills his younger brother,
Abel.
In chapter
5, we see a series of “obituaries”: the
descendants of Adam are listed. In each
case, the age of the man is given at his first son’s birth. Then, the total years of the man’s life is
given. The final statement is: “And then he died.”
In chapter
6, the wickedness of humanity has become so great that God decides to destroy
the whole human race except for Noah and his family.
In
chapter 11, the entire human population, descendants of Noah, decide to build a
tower, the Tower of Babel. But God sees
it as only concentrating human willful disobedience of Him, and so He confuses
the languages of the people so that they scatter away from the central location
of the Tower.
It is
evident from these chapters that the sentence of death that God pronounced on
humanity came about. Adam and Eve did
not die suddenly upon eating the forbidden fruit, but they did die
eventually. Moreover, it is obvious that
the human race showed signs of degeneration, not only in the sense of dying,
but also in the general tendency toward sinful behavior, human pride, and
disintegration of human society.
B. The Nature of Sin
This
human condition is called the Law of Sin and Death. It has two components—sin and death.
Sin is
wickedness, evil-doing, transgression of God’s law, rebellion against God, and
failure to trust and believe in God. I
shall not attempt a detailed analysis of sin, but I shall try to give some
indication of what it is all about and why it is so serious.
In Romans 14:23b, we read: “Everything that does not come from faith is
sin.” When we think about the story of
the Garden of Eden in this light, we gain some insight into the nature of the
lapse of Adam and Eve. The following is
part of the conversation between Eve and the serpent:
Now the
serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had
made. He said to the woman, “Did God
really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’”
The
woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but
God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the
garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
“You
will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your
eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
When
the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the
eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.
Genesis
3:1-6a
My
impression of this story is that the woman—and the man after her—began to
believe that God was holding something out on her. This is a rejection of the goodness of
God. The couple had, up to that time, lived
a life of simple trust in God. They
accepted His vision for their lives and enjoyed His provision. But, when they reached out for the fruit,
they reached beyond God’s provision and vision.
In doing so, they rejected the whole basis of relationship with
God: trust in His goodness. And the consequence of that was to plunge them
into a new state of being.
Their
new condition was one no longer sustained by the Tree of Life. It was a condition of limited access to
God. And it was one in which the human
race explored the limits of the knowledge of good and evil. As I have already indicated, the following
chapters of Genesis outline the degeneration of humanity.
Sin,
then, is marked by a severely crippled relationship between God and people, so
that there is enmity between God and people.
Sin is
also marked by specific evil that is relevant to the way we live. In the fourth chapter of Genesis, we find
that Cain, the first son of Adam and Eve, killed his brother Abel. The crippled relationship, and moral darkness
that resulted from the crippling, brought about a crippling of the relationship
between people (this is foreshadowed in chapter 3). The rest of the Old Testament looks with eyes
wide open at the inhumanity of the human race:
murder, enslavement, war, rape, oppression, cheating, lying.
Not
only do we see that sin is an expression of brokenness of relationships between
persons, but also we see that sin breaks human dignity and self-respect. The sad story of Saul, the first king of
Israel is an example. He started as a
champion of the people, one who would deliver them from their foreign
oppressors. But his life degenerated
into weakness, jealousy, and depression (his story is found in I Samuel
chapters 8-31).
Briefly,
sin can be characterized in the following ways:
·
There is distrust in the goodness of God.
·
There is a fear of relationship with God.
·
These “relationship problems” result in false
and inadequate worship and devotion to God.
·
There is distrust of other people.
·
The poor relationships with people result in
personal evil committed against other humans—crimes of violence, theft, abuse,
etc.
·
There also are systemic, societal evils
perpetuated upon peoples—totalitarian regimes, slavery, wars of domination and
hegemony, oppression, terror.
·
Mixed with all of these there are incidental and
systematic systems of false belief systems that perpetuate darkness and evil.
It is
important to recognize that sin is both spiritual
and specific. By “spiritual,” I mean that sin is a
condition of enmity with God that may express itself in many different
ways. It has a certain power of its
own. At the same time, sin must be
understood as specific, and by this I
mean that sin is very relevant to our individual lives. We cannot “spiritualize” the concept of sin
in a way that avoids the specifics.
To
expand on this latter concept, I should point out that the Bible, especially
the Old Testament, details a number of sins and posits laws against them. It does not always explain the spiritual
nature of such sins (nor does it always explain the spiritual nature of obeying
positive admonitions). But it should
still be understood that to disobey these laws has spiritual consequences. For example, to enter into homosexual
practice is both a symptom of spiritual decadence and can lead to further spiritual
decadence (see Romans 1:18-32). So, sin
is a spiritual force that brings about degeneration, and it is the direct
disobedience of God’s moral law:
Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is
lawlessness.
I
John 3:4
C. The Universality of Sin
We also
must report the Bible conclusion: sin is
universal. In Romans 1-3, Paul makes the
case for the universality of sin. In the
following passage, he quotes several Old Testament passages to make his case:
There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who
seeks God. All have turned away, they
have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues
practice deceit. The poison of vipers is
on their lips. Their mouths are full of
cursing and bitterness. Their feet are
swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they
do not know. There is no fear of God
before their eyes.
Romans
3:10-18 (poetic style omitted)
Paul concludes his long discussion of the degeneration of
the human race by saying: “For all have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). In Romans 5, Paul traces this sin back to
Adam:
Therefore,
just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in
this way death came to all men, because all sinned—for before the law [the
Mosaic Law] was given, sin was in the world…
Romans
5:12-13a
In Romans 2, Paul discusses those who sin in the absence of
the Mosaic Law:
All who
sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin
under the law will be judged by the law….[They are governed by the law of
conscience—see verses 13-15.]
Romans
2:12
From
these two passages, together with passages which we have already discussed, we
can construct an understanding of universal human sinfulness. First, with the sin of Adam, the human
condition of sinfulness entered the world.
Keeping the idea that sin is a broken relationship with God, then the
human condition is one of estrangement from God. Second, this heritage which we have from Adam
carries with it a tendency to sin. In
Romans 7:14, Paul says: “We know that
the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.” That is, Paul observes that his condition is
such that he is going to displease God in some way. Third, the result of this tendency to sin is
sin itself. This is true for those who
know the Mosaic Law and for those who are only guided by their own
conscience. The human condition is such
that all have broken specific laws of God and all have acted in ways that have
alienated themselves from God and from one another. Fourth, the result of these sins and the
universal human condition of sinfulness is the universal sentence of death upon
the human race.
D. The Sentence of Death
The
punishment for sin is death. God had
warned Adam that, if he disobeyed by eating of the fruit, he would die. In fact, he did die. It is important to understand the nature of
death. If we follow the narrative of the
early chapters of Genesis, we can see a number of ways that death works itself
out.
·
First, Adam and Eve were expelled from the
Garden of Eden, which meant they were denied the Tree of Life (Genesis
3:22-24). They lost their connection to
the very source of life.
·
Then, too, Adam and Eve lost companionship with
God. Though they still had a
relationship with God, it seems obvious that it no longer was of the same
quality as it had been before their lapse.
·
They were sentenced into a new harshness of
life. Food would come only through the
sweat of the brow. Pain entered their
life.
·
Their son Abel died before they did. They found themselves, by the grave of their
son, faced with their own mortality.
These
consequences of the sentence of death have been the universal human
experience. We could add to it that
death works its way out in as many ways as medical textbooks and forensic
pathologists can describe: miscarriages,
abortions, still births, infectious diseases, genetic disease, birth defects,
cancer, degenerative diseases, autoimmune diseases, blows to the head, knife
wounds, gunshot wounds, car wrecks, bombs, chemical warfare, cardiovascular
disease. On and on we could go.
Moreover,
all of these causes of death have their sublethal varieties, so that every
sickness is a “little death,” just as Jesus pointed out that hate is a “little
murder” (Matthew 5:21-22, see also I John 3:15). I do not believe it is stretching things too
much to add that much of the “negative” of life can be understood as a
manifestation of this sentence of death upon the human race.
Consistent
with the human experience of death is the experience of the non-human
environment. Though we can take delight
in the natural world—its beauty, the delightful variety of life forms, the
awesome vastness of outer space, we also find that nature can be harsh and
random. Sometimes nature is described as
“tooth and claw.” Death is as much a
part of the life cycles of ecosystems as is life. Trees get old and rot out and die. Coyotes run down rabbits and kill them
without mercy. Sparrows lose many of
their young before they reach maturity.
Tornadoes rage through forests and trailer parks. Hurricanes swamp Central American countries
quite regularly. All of nature reflects
the creation, but nature also has a disintegrative character that reflects The
Law of Sin and Death. In Romans 8, Paul
discusses the present condition of creation:
The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God
to be revealed. For the creation was
subject to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who
subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the
glorious freedom of the children of God.
Romans
8:19-21 (italics added)
There
is another form of death which we should be aware of. Jesus said:
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill
the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One
who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Matthew
10:28
I have
not given much attention to the afterlife and what theologians call last
things. I shall discuss many positive
aspects of the Christian understanding of last things in another place. But, in discussing The Law of Sin and Death,
it is necessary to understand something of final judgment. The Biblical understanding is that there is
an accounting that people must face after death:
Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face
judgment…
Hebrews
9:27
You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment
seat. It is written: “’As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every
knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.’”
Romans
14:10-11
All who sin apart from the [Mosaic] law will also perish [in
judgment] apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by
the law.
Romans
2:12
For I [Jesus] tell you that men will have to give account on
the day of
judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and
by your words you will be condemned.
Matthew
12:36-37
Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on
it. Earth and sky fled from his
presence, and there was no place for them.
And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and
books were opened. Another book was
opened, which is the book of life. The dead
were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. ….The
lake of fire is the second death. If
anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the
lake of fire.
Revelation
20:11-15
These
are sobering Scriptures that warn us that an accounting awaits us in the
afterlife. Notice that the sentence that
is pronounced upon those who fail this judgment is to be thrown into the lake
of fire. This punishment is called “the
second death.”
This
judgment and punishment in the afterlife is an extension and culmination of the
sentence of death that has been pronounced upon humanity for its
sinfulness. We can say the following
about final judgment:
·
It places the blame upon humans for their own
sins.
·
It individualizes sinfulness (notice above: “books were opened” and they “were judged
according to what they had done”) and is specific.
·
The relationship with God in the earthly life is
one of estrangement, of a broken relationship based on distrust and characterized
by lack of knowledge on the part of humans.
At the judgment, people “meet their maker,” now in the role of their
judge. This is an extension of the
brokenness of the relationship.
·
The sentence of the second death extends into
eternity the condition of estrangement from God.
This
picture of a God that judges us and sentences us to the lake of fire is not
compatible with modern understandings.
Nevertheless, it is the Biblical understanding. No amount of sentimentalizing will help us
deal with the revealed truth of Scripture.
Keep in
mind that I am telling the bad news first.
It is important to get an accurate understanding of THE WAY THINGS ARE
so that we can understand what God has done for us.
E. Summary of The Law of Sin and Death
·
The human condition is one of sinfulness. This sinfulness includes an alienation from
God, marked by distrust of God on the part of people.
·
This sinfulness manifests itself in specific
sins that affect every aspect of our lives, including our worship of deities and
our relationships with people.
·
This specificity includes things such as
violence, abuse, oppression, property crimes, sexual deviance, and deception.
·
This human sinfulness is a universal trait,
inherited from Adam.
·
God has pronounced a sentence of death upon
human sinfulness.
·
This sentence of death works itself out in a
myriad of ways, resulting in disease, suffering, and death.
·
The sentence of death has even invaded the
non-human world, so that all creation expresses an inexorable tendency to disintegration
and death.
·
Suffering can also be attributed to sin itself
and to secondary consequences of both sin and the sentence of death.
·
The sentence of death extends into eternity in
the afterlife and is finalized at the last judgment.
10. THE CAUSES OF TROUBLE AND SUFFERING
We all encounter trouble and
suffering. It is helpful, at times, to
understand the cause of our trouble. The
following analysis may be somewhat incomplete, but I hope that it is
helpful. Many times, our reactions to
trouble is because we misdiagnose the cause of our trouble. Sometimes we feel guilty about things that we
should not feel guilty. Sometimes we are
unwilling to take responsibility for (and feel guilty about) things that we
should take responsibility. Sometimes we
fail to realize that we live in the present order of existence and that it
brings with it pain and suffering.
The
following is a summary of the causes of suffering. Keep in mind that all of these causes originated in The Law
of Sin and Death.
1.
I cause my own suffering.
I do this when I do foolish things.
For example, if I do things that are harmful to my health, like smoking
or excessive drinking, then I very likely will suffer the consequences. I also may do evil things for which I
suffer. If I commit a crime, then I may
be arrested and spend time in jail or prison.
If I am cruel to my wife, then she may leave me. The sinful tendencies within me can lead me
into evil that brings consequences to my life.
2.
I live in this Present Order of Existence, which is under a
sentence of death. As a consequence, I
may experience suffering. For example,
sinful people may bring harm to me. The
destruction of the World Trade Center was the result of the fact that there
were evil people in the world who were willing to do such a terrible deed. We also observe that the sentence of death in
the world often acts through nature, so that nature brings suffering. It may be a flu virus, a tornado, or
cancer. The natural world can bring good
and blessing, but it also can be hostile and destructive.
3.
I am persecuted because I do the right thing. Whereas I may do things that bring suffering
upon me, I also may experience suffering for the very reason that I am doing
what I should be doing. I see two
categories within this category. First,
I may suffer simply because I do good things, without any particular
“spiritual” connections. For example, a
person may be a “whistle-blower.” She
may observe that her corporation is engaged in illegal activity. She may confront her bosses about it, and
they ignore her warnings. So, she goes
to the government with the information.
She then is promptly fired. She
may, in fact, experience a vicious smear campaign against her. She is suffering for doing good. The second type of suffering for doing good
is when I suffer because of my identity with Christ. Chinese Christians in the “house church”
movement experience imprisonment, torture, and even death. Two young women were in prison in Afghanistan
because they taught Christianity along with giving out humanitarian aid.
This final point brings us to a
topic which I have not discussed yet, and that is the existence and activity of
the devil.
11. THE ROLE OF THE DEVIL
The Scripture depicts a personal
devil or Satan. This subject is
difficult because the Scripture does not give us a lot of detail to help us
understand who the devil is and what his role is.
Many people have difficulty
believing there is a personal devil.
However, people who have “been around” for any length of time eventually
have to admit that there is some sort of organized evil in the world. But I believe that the Bible teaches that the
devil is a personal being with the capacity of decision and emotion. He (the Bible refers to him by the male
pronoun) is depicted as having considerable power.
There are two passages that many
believe refer to the origins of Satan:
Isaiah 14:12-15 and Ezekiel 28:11b-17.
The first passage is taken from a longer passage about Babylon and the
king of Babylon. It is an integral part
of the longer passage. It uses poetic
exaggeration to refer to the king of Babylon as a “morning star” who has fallen
terribly. The Hebrew word, roughly
transliterated helel, was translated “Lucifer” in the Latin. That name has stuck in reference to
Satan. The term is not used elsewhere to
refer to Satan in the Scripture.
The second passage is from a
longer passage about Tyre and its king.
It is similar in its extreme exaggeration about a cherub, beautifully
adorned, who lived in Eden, but who also fell morally and was destroyed by
God.
I do not believe that these
Scriptures can be proved to refer to Satan.
It may be that they are referring
both to the subject at hand (Babylon or Tyre) and to the fall of Satan from
moral purity as an angel, but it is difficult to establish that.
In Revelation 12, the devil is
described as a dragon. The chapter
begins by describing a woman who is about to give birth. Then, John the Revelator, introduces the
dragon as follows:
Then
another sign appeared in heaven: an
enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his
heads. His tail swept a third of the
stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who
was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was
born. She gave birth to a son, a male
child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to
his throne….
…Then I heard a loud voice in
heaven say: “Now have come the salvation
and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses
them before our God day and night, has been hurled down…But woe to the earth
and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that
his time is short.
Revelation
12:3-12 (parts omitted)
This passage describes much
about the nature of Satan. First, he is
not like any ordinary earthly creature.
He has enormous power and cosmic influence. A third of the angels follow him. Second, he had or has (placing this passage
in a chronology that we can understand is difficult) access to heaven, even to
the point of accusing God’s people before God Himself. Third, he opposes the people of God and
Christ. This seems to be the focus of
his activity.
I John 5:19b says: “The whole world is under the control of the
evil one.” Ephesians 2:1-2 says:
As
for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to
live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom
of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.
And
in Ephesians 6:11-12 we read:
Put
on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s
schemes. For our struggle is not against
flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the
powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the
heavenly realms.
Thus,
we get a picture of Satan as having a great deal of power and influence in the
world, even reaching toward heaven. His
activity is organized, seemingly with considerable strategy, opposing the
people of God and Jesus Christ.
First, Satan is active in
temptation to sin and to false religion and heresies. He tempted Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew
4:1-11). He inspired Peter to oppose
Jesus’ mission of the crucifixion (Matthew 16:21-23). He is certainly the same character described
as a snake in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:1-24).
Second, Satan is the author at
least of some of the suffering in the world.
Jesus healed a woman who had been bent over for 18 years. He said that she had been bound by Satan
during all that time (Luke 13:16). The
book of Job describes the activity of Satan to bring great suffering on Job
(Job 1-2).
Third, Satan accuses the people
of God (see the Revelation passage quoted above and the passage from Job). The idea is that Satan constantly undercuts
the position of people with God by accusing them of sin.
Fourth, from the passage in
Ephesians 6, we can infer that Satan interferes spiritually with the work of
the church (see II Corinthians 10:1-6 and I John 2:18-23,
4:1-6).
Fifth, Satan is said in Hebrews
2:14-15 to have the power of death. One
interpreter believes that we should understand that Satan’s power of death is
the power that he has to lead people into sin, which has led to death. (Kenneth L. Barker, General editor. The NIV
Study Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan
Bible Publishers, 1985), p. 1861.) I have already made the case that God’s
sentence upon sin is death. Hence, it
seems to me that Satan does not have the ultimate power of death. Satan does have a powerful grip on the world,
and this holds people in their sin and destines them for death.
We should not infer that Satan
is the one who is the stoker of the fires of hell. I cannot find that idea anywhere in
Scripture. There was a comic strip years
ago that depicted hell as this place run by little demons who made life
miserable for the residents. But, in
fact, the Bible is clear that hell is a place that is reserved for the devil
and all his demonic helpers (Matthew 25:41, Revelation 20:10).
The New Testament refers to
demons or evil spirits or unclean spirits.
These are described as possessing people and causing them to bring
misery to those persons and to others (see Mark 1:23-27, Luke 6:18, Matthew
12:22, Matthew 8:28ff). In some cases
these demons caused illness, and in other cases they caused the person to speak
or do mad and self-destructive or gospel-opposing things. It is evident that these beings are in
concert with the devil, or Satan, and do his bidding.
In II Thessalonians 2:7, Paul
refers to the “secret power [or mystery] of lawlessness.” He is referring to the future Antichrist, but
he indicates that there is a complex and mysterious scheme of evil that is at
work now and will continue until it is completely overthrown.
How
do we reconcile these understandings of spiritual evil and the suffering that
comes from it with the idea of The Law of Sin and Death that I have already
described? I believe that the two are
compatible.
·
I do not believe that evil was God’s idea. Evil is a potentiality that exists because
authority, goodness, and love exist. It
is always possible to resist and oppose these.
·
Satan seems to be the originator and pioneer of evil. He “has been sinning from the beginning” (I
John 3:8).
·
Human sin was in cooperation with the Satanic
rebellion. It may not have been
originally an idea to join with Satan, but it had that result.
·
The nature of evil is to bring misery. Because Satan is forever busy doing evil, one
of the consequences of his activity is to bring about human misery.
·
The sentence of death, which is part of The Law of Sin and
Death, removed the blessing of God. That
loss of blessing included a removal of protection from the evil of the Satanic
Empire. Hence, Satan has been free to
harass the human race with all sorts of evil.
·
Thus, The Law of Sin and Death must be extended to include
the work of Satan both to entice people into evil and to inflict evil upon
them.
·
Satan and lesser devils work in concert with The Law of Sin
and Death to bring about human suffering.
Related to these ideas is the
understanding that Satan has, to some degree, this present order of existence
as his territory. In Matthew 12:25-29,
Jesus described His own work to be in opposition to Satan. He described His work as plundering Satan’s
goods. The inference is that as Jesus
brings life and hope into a person’s life, He overcomes and reverses the work
of Satan. In order to do that, Jesus
disarms Satan or “ties up the strong man” (Matthew 12:29). So, God’s work through Jesus Christ is not
only a work of rescuing us from the consequence of human sin but also a work of
extracting us from the grasp of the very originator of sin.
12. IS THERE A “PURPOSE” TO EVIL?
Sometimes people try to justify
suffering as serving some sort of higher good.
I call this the “chess match” mentality.
When something bad happens—someone dies of cancer or someone loses a
job, then someone tries to explain this in some way: “Well, if she had not died, then her husband
would have never come to the Lord.”
There are some Scriptural bases
for this sort of thinking. Joseph was
sold by his brothers into slavery. He
ended up in Egypt, and, through a long series of events, he eventually became a
high Egyptian official who was able to supply his brothers with grain and was
in a position to give his family the favors of Pharaoh. At one point Joseph told his brothers,
referring to their evil deed and the fact that it led to Joseph’s position of
favor and power: “You intended to harm
me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the
saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20).
Then, there is a favorite of many people:
And
we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who
have been called according to his purpose.
Romans
8:28
These two passages must be
understood in the light of God’s redemptive work. Joseph’s story is the culmination of the book
of Genesis, which takes its major turn in chapter 12, when God calls
Abraham. That is, in the call of Abraham
is the beginning of God’s great redemptive work. That work continues to the end of Genesis and
includes the life of Joseph. So, Joseph
is an instrument of God. The evil scheme
of the brothers was used by God to bring immediate good but also to advance the
history of the people of God.
Romans 8:28 is part of a passage
that is a panoramic view of the work of God in redemption, and that verse
should be understood to be part of that big picture.
But it is a mistake to extend
these ideas by seeing God turning every evil into a good. God does not get His way in every
matter. I realize that that concept is
foreign to some Christians, but I believe the Bible plainly teaches that God
does not want anyone to perish in hell (II Peter 3:9), and yet many will. Jesus wept over Jerusalem because the people
had rejected Him (Luke 19:41-44).
I believe that God is opposed to
evil, which is not His idea. I believe that God has a plan to bring an end to
evil. But that plan is not to be engaged
in some sort of secret, behind-the-scenes chess match that somehow creates a
little evil here in order to advance His plans there and eventually everything
works out for the best. In the next part
of this essay, I shall present what God has done and is doing about evil. That great plan is powerful and will be
ultimately victorious. But we need to
understand that, in the meantime, we live in This Present Order of
Existence. That order includes
evil—horrible, devastating, and ugly.
It is a deception and an attempt
to grasp at straws to try to explain every calamity as only a temporary setback
that God will eventually turn into good.
That sort of thinking is not consistent with the message of the
Bible. Therefore, whereas it is intended
to reassure people and increase their faith, I think that it only ultimately
leads to their disappointment. I believe
there are better ways of thinking about evil and about what God is doing about
it. But it will require that we understand
The Big Picture of God’s redemptive plan.
13. THE ROLE OF GOD IN EVIL
What
is God’s role in trouble? I have already
indicated that the devil has a role. It
may seem counter to all that I have said, but we also need to understand that
God does have a role in evil.
There are a number of places in
Scripture that are somewhat troubling, because they seem to portray God as the
author of evil and trouble. For example,
King Saul was troubled by an evil spirit sent from God. (I Samuel 16:14) God is depicted in the Psalms as the God who
sends frightening storms. (Psalms 18:7-17, 77:16-19, 107:23-32) Our temptation is to dismiss these as ancient
understandings of God that are not appropriate for today. But I think we should understand that God
does have a role in evil.
First, God is the judge of all
the earth. (Genesis 18:25) The Law of
Sin and Death is part of God’s judgment on sin.
That Law works itself out through the various means that I have already
described. In many cases, those means
are impersonal, random assaults on our well-being. Someone gets cancer or a contagious
disease. That person is experiencing The
Law of Sin and Death, the judgment of God.
If that person is a Christian, we understand that he or she is
experiencing The Law despite his acceptance by God. We know that ultimately a Christian will not
suffer eternal death, but, in this present time, we are not totally immune from
the effects of The Law.
Second, God is the One who
sustains the universe. (Hebrews 1:3) He
maintains a universe with consistent physical and biological laws. Those laws, I believe, have been altered by
The Law of Sin and Death. Nevertheless,
they are consistent, and, in general, good laws. For example, the seasons cycle around. They include deadly processes, such as the
loss of life potency for vegetation in fall and winter, along with the ravages
of ice and snow. Yet, the fallen leaves
provide food for decomposers and detritus-feeders the next spring and summer. The ice and snow provide moisture for the
next year. And the ice and snow can
serve to break up rocks and renew the soil.
Ecosystems are complex interdependencies, in this present order, that
depend as much on living things’ dying as they do on the vigorous life
processes of those same living things.
God is the One who sustains all of that.
Thus, we must understand that God sustains processes that bring death as
well as being the author of life.
But, having said that, I believe
that the Scriptural understanding of God’s ultimate plans and purposes do not
stop with complex ecosystems and “the law of tooth and claw.” I believe that when the final, eternal state
is reached, there will be no more death, even among the animals. (Revelation
21:1-4, Isaiah 11:6, 65:25)
So, in this present order of
existence, we must understand that God has an ultimate role in evil as well as
good. I say that with great caution,
because I recognize that there is a heresy that distorts that understanding. It is called Monism (from the root “mono” for
“one”). It is the idea that all things
ultimately have a single origin. Thus,
good and evil ultimately come from the same thing (that is, God). This is a false understanding. We must understand that the Scripture
understands things from the viewpoint of directional time. That is, there is past, present, and future
in the purposes and dealings of God.
There was a Fall of humankind. That is to say, evil began at some time
in the past. There has been a decisive,
redemptive victory in Jesus Christ.
There will be an ultimate expression of that victory. We are living in the time between that
decisive victory and that ultimate victory.
We still experience the effects of the Fall, but we have experienced the
beginning of the victory and live in anticipation of the final victory. When that final victory comes, evil will be
punished forever and good will shine forth.
(Matthew 13:36-43, Revelation 19:10-15)
14. THE PRESENT ORDER OF EXISTENCE OR
THE WAY
THINGS ARE
Life as we know it is a mixture
that results from the blessings of our Creator God combined with The Law of Sin
and Death. We find much that brings joy
and happiness. We also experience
loss, pain, suffering, and death. The
natural environment reflects and is consistent with this same mixture of beauty,
life, and joy mixed with randomness, disintegration, and death. We find ourselves and those around us to be
fallen creatures trapped within our human condition. We cry out with Paul: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of
death?” (Romans 7:24)
The answer to that question is
another law or principle that has come into being through the action of God in
Jesus Christ: The Law of the Spirit of
Life.
[1]
All quotations from Scripture are from The
Holy Bible, New International Version, copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by
International Bible Society.
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