We live in a fallen world. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3.23) Nobody in the world is capable of doing enough good to pay for their sins. We need to recognize this, not pretend that it's fine actually, and humans are basically good. We are not basically good. We all want to be in charge of ourselves, to pursue happiness as the ultimate goal, to follow our feelings. We don't deserve salvation; we don't deserve anything. It's only by the blood of Jesus that we are able to come into His presence.
We live in a fallen world.
When God created the heavens and the earth, He declared it good. He created humans and He placed us in Eden. We lived in direct communion with Him there until we fell.
We fell for the lie that we could become gods. We fell for the lie that our own desires trump the commands of God.
And those lies drove a wedge between us and God, and we lost access to Eden. We lost that direct link to God that we had in the beginning.
I don't think it's coincidence that when we say someone was deceived by something we often refer to them as "falling for" it. The Fall of Man was precipitated by deception. We fell for lies and it's been a problem ever since.
Because the world is full of deception, we fall. We fail to recognize Truth because the lies pushed by the world are so tempting, so alluring.
It is human nature to desire control. Power is attractive. We want to be in charge of our own lives, to make our own decisions, to be free to do what we want when we want. The problem with that is, there are always consequences for our actions, and sometimes those consequences are things we like and sometimes they aren't. (Note that I am using the definition of consequence that is used in behavioural psychology, where a consequence is simply the result of a behaviour. The way society uses it, as a synonym for punishment, is inaccurate and unhelpful.)
This base nature makes it really easy to stray off that narrow path. It feels good to go off on our own, to do what we want to do, to satisfy whatever desires strike us in the moment. But that good feeling doesn't last, and we end up chasing it further away. Before we know it, we're feeding pigs and eating the scraps right alongside them.
We need boundaries on our behaviour. God loves us, and so He has given us those boundaries. It's so important that we hold onto His Truth.
The Truth is that we are created beings. God made us in His image, but that doesn't mean that we are (or can become) gods. We are humans, angels are angels, and God is God. These are different orders of beings, and God is the greatest.
The Truth is that God loves us because He made us. He wants to be in communion with us, but when we aren't observing His primacy there is a break in our ability to connect fully with Him. That's why Jesus came. He came, He lived among us as one of us (still fully God, mind you), and then He died and rose again. Why? So that we could have a way back to God, a way to approach Him even though we have fallen.
It's time to recognize that the world is fallen and that we are also fallen because we are in the world. It's time to accept the saving grace of Jesus and come back to God. Surrender our desire for control and give it over to Him. Refuse to accept the lie that we are all basically good and accept the Truth that sets us free from bondage to those lies and the resulting sin.
It sounds contradictory, but living under God's rule is far better and more freeing than living according to our own desires.
What lies have you fallen for, and how can you reject them moving forward?
Peace & Blessings.
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