(Previously: More to Life, Part 3)
So what do we do about this pride? Because it is indeed a problem. It is the root of all the evil we commit, the common denominator we all have. When we feel entitled, we disregard others. Have you seen an entitled human making demands? When we decide we deserve something, we think another does not deserve it. We decide that what we want is more important than what someone else wants, or even needs. We decide that our way is the best way. We decide that our well-being is what matters. We don’t care what anyone else thinks, we want what we want because we’ve “earned it.” We’re the most qualified. We’ve done the most for it. We just deserve it.
Pride is even the original sin committed by Satan when he thought to depose God and was cast out. Pride is what made the first man and woman think they might know better than God, consequently disobeying what He said. Ever since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3), we have all been born with this penchant for pride and instinct to sin. So again, what do we do about it?
Nothing. We literally can’t do anything about it. It is in our very nature and we can’t fix it. We try, and we often think we’ve succeeded, but that is again our pride making us think we’re fine. We make rules and laws, then we can’t or don’t keep them. We set goals, then we fall short and don’t reach them. We create programs and clubs. We pursue and encourage more education. But throughout history humans have always had problems, and they’re the same ones with different packaging.
So, there’s suspiciously more to life than just the physical realm and passing on our genetics. We have deep emotions, high thought, moral awareness, and a sense of some Creator out there bigger than we are. Surely this Creator put all these aspects and all this depth here, as if this creator wanted us to know of them. This Creator also must have had something in mind for us when they made everything, and surely it wasn’t the wreck things have become. In light of all this, couldn’t that someone out there help us?
Wonderful news! That someone can help! We don’t just have a Creator, we have a Creator that loves us and is powerful enough to fix us! He is even nearer than just “out there!” He is omnipresent! He’s even revealed Himself to us more specifically in the Bible, and we call Him God.
So wait, if this Creator God loves us so much and can fix all our problems, why do we still have our problems? That’s a good moral question, and it’s good that we know how to ask it.
Let me start with love. Love requires action, a choice on the part of another. I can’t force someone to love me. If I did then not only would I not be loving, the other person would not actually love me either. So God chose to love us, and gave us the free will to choose whether or not we want to love Him in return. Think about that for a moment: the Creator of the universe who can do anything He wants to do decided that He wanted to love some people, so He made a vast universe for us to be able to thrive in and look at, and then made us and gave us all the ability to choose what we want to do about it.
As stated previously, we see where our choice has gotten us. But God doesn’t encroach on our free will because that would remove it and make Him unloving. But if God doesn’t do something about sin and mete out justice He would not be loving then either.
So God sent Jesus, His Son, and Jesus willingly came. Jesus lived the sinless life that we cannot and paid the death penalty of our sins in our places. Sin was punished and justice carried out. The Son of God – God Himself – died for His creation and resurrected to go back to Heaven to prepare a place for all of the humans who choose to believe in Him and all that He has said and done.
(Hang on, there will be at least one more part to this series coming. It ended up being much bigger and more exciting than I originally thought!)