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If G-d who is perfect in all ways made us, how come despite our best efforts, we screw up so much? We make mistakes even when we try as hard as we can not to. The answer is in our inherent fallen nature.
Hello! You’ve started reading the first of a four-part set of posts about our fallen nature, sin, reconciliation and its meaning. After reading this series of posts, it is my intent that you understand the basics behind your fallen nature and what sin means to you, others, and to G-d.
We begin with our fallen nature. G-d creates us to be inherently good beings. All human beings will intend to do the “right thing” as often as we can. The problem is, we are also predisposition to sin. This means we are going to “miss the mark” of doing the “right thing” from time to time. That is all sin really means: to screw up.
This predisposition was part of G-d’s plan for humankind. He knew long before He even created us that we were going to miss the mark and get things wrong. However, for our sake, He makes it part of our history when our first parents chose sin as an act of free will. When the original sin was committed, it opened the door to all other possible sins. While G-d made it possible for us to be forgiven of our original sin, there were consequences. They are:
- We must have a weakened will. After original sin, we no longer have the perfect ability to always say “no” to evil temptations and to say “yes” to all inclinations of G-d. Our will was weakened, we can now fall prey to future mistakes.
- We must experience life with a darkened intellect. This means that we are no longer going to know perfectly the difference between right and wrong. G-d’s messages to us become garbled, we can not have knowledge of every action we take as being right or wrong and we’ll sin again because of it.
- We must suffer. Suffering is as much a consequence of original sin as it is of our own personal sins. Its not so much a punishment as it is a way for us to understand G-d through reconciliation. Suffering puts us in our rightful place beneath Him.
- We must die. Humans must have an end to their earthly lives. There is no escaping death, and when we do die we can only take with us three things: our faith in G-d that He does exist and Christ is our salvation, our hope that He will save us instead of judging us for an eternity in Hell, and our love for G-d and all of his creations. The love is the most powerful of them all.
Sin is evident in our daily lives. It begins right as we are born. Anyone who spends five minutes with a new baby knows how selfish they are and how they will compete with other children for food and attention. Children will even go as far as making it impossible for other children to survive just so they can live and continue to prosper. Babies do not need to be taught this – its part of our makeup to commit sin.
The Dichotomy of Sin
To understand sin, it comes in six stages, as illustrated to the left of this text.
Temptation: We are tempted by another or our own fallen nature to commit a sin. We feel the need to do wrong. In itself, temptation is not sinning.
Sin: We consider a temptation and take joy in it, and accept it. By committing an action (or not performing an action) we sin by setting our will against G-d’s.
Reconciliation: After committing a sin, we realize it and find ourselves feeling sorry for committing it. We reconcile ourselves by saying we won’t commit it again and we’ll take steps so it won’t happen any longer.
Forgiveness: With a sorrowful heart, and a plan to change our lives we now ask for forgiveness. G-d always forgives us for our sins, as we ask Christ to die for our sin on the cross.
Atonement: We make reparations for our sin. As a gesture, we do something that makes us closer to G-d by some act of personal correction or in helping someone else in some way. We repair the fabric of our community that we damaged.
Consequence: Forgiveness is meant to be permanent. We forgive, and we forget. However, since we still are fallen creatures, humans can not perfectly forgive, forget, and atone. There are going to be after-effects.
Stay tuned throughout the next three posts, as a further explanation of these stages of sin will be discussed.
The Bible is one hundred percent True, it is infallible. Every statement in it is True and thus it is the greatest collection of Truths that we have. But, wait a minute, which version of the Bible is True? and where in the Bible does it say which books belong in the Bible and which don’t? (the table of contents is not part of the Bible).
The Bible as great and wondrous of a gift from G-d as it is, its not a complete set of Truths. Simple logic says so: nowhere in the Bible does it say that the Bible is True — so how do we know it is True? Answer: something outside of the Bible has to tell us that the Bible is true. The Bible isn’t complete in of itself. Thus, Sola Scriptura isn’t possible.
Now, enter the Church. The Church has some hard-to-refute credentials when it comes to declaring what is Truth outside the Bible. With more than 33,000 versions of protestantism and evangelical faith-based initiatives, the Church has to! Here are two important ones to consider, both from the Bible.
And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it (Mt 16:18)
Simply put, Peter built Christ’s Church on Earth. Christ, who is G-d, could not be more specific. Wherever Peter went and formed this Church, that is where Christ’s teachings would be founded. Peter went to Rome and founded the Church.
I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven (Mt 16:19)
This would be an unbelievable statement if it weren’t in the Bible. G-d’s love for us humans is so great that He’s willing to allow us to affect His divine plan. This underlines the Church’s moral authority, it can make statements about the Bible and interpretations of the Bible that (when held consistent) are also True.
For instance, it was the Church that first taught us that the Bible is infallible and one hundred percent True. The Church first formulated the books of the Bible, and without the Church there would really not be the collection of books we call the Bible today.
Some important questions to ask.
When should we question the Church’s teachings?
The answer to this is: when learning. As we learn about Truths, its important to understand them with the human power of reason. While its great to take something on a leap-of-faith every once and a while, you should be skeptical about the things you believe. Thus, as you learn about Truths, its important to ask ‘Why?’. New Truths don’t come out of a fountain somewhere, they are revealed by studying other teachings and meditating on them in prayer. New Truths take root through word of mouth and other forms of communication. The Church can then carefully analyze them and eventually (it can take hundreds of years!), adopt them.
Is the Church some sort of answer machine?
No. It simply contains a large collection of G-d’s messages (all Truths) given to mankind. While it doesn’t have every answer to every problem, it can give you a good sense of consistency so you can have moral clarity on the issues you face in life. When you ask whether something is right or wrong, consider Church teaching first. While you may not get a direct answer, you’ll get a pretty good sense as to what G-d’s position might be.
Could the Church be led astray?
Its not possible, and that’s what Mt. 16:19 is really meaning. Whatever G-d reveals and the church binds itself to becomes Truth. The Holy Spirit guides the Church so that whatever it embraces it is not only the will of G-d, but the direction Christ wants us to go.
The Church did some really immoral things in the past, how could that be true?
This is the subject of a whole field of theology called apologetics. The most important thing to remember here is that the Church’s message has been consistent since Peter was at its helm. This is not the same as the person or people who occupied positions of power in the Church over time. These people, subject to temptation and sin just like you and I, fell prey to many bad ideas and selfish thoughts. Consequently, their actions — though immoral, aren’t what the Church stands for. Its a fact of reality that everyone sins, priests and popes alike are no different.
The Church says a lot of strange things, especially about the Saints and Mary, the “Mother of God”. How can this be True?
Creation didn’t end when Christ left this world and ascended into Heaven. G-d’ kept revealing new facts about the world that the Church carefully considered and “picked up” as time went on. This was a realization in the early times of the Church when the apostles and leaders realized that by approximately 60-70AD that the world wasn’t going to end immediately. They formulated a process in which revealed truths would be reviewed for consistency with all other known Truths. If the truth didn’t contradict anything, it became Truth. This is where many of the strange beliefs come from in the Church. In particular popular attacks — people like to ask why the Church believes certain ways about Mary. These strange teachings took years and years of influential people and scholars to formulate. Suffice to say, they’re very well thought out!
More on these subjects in posts to come.
About every culture in this world knows what an angel is. From East to West, angels are part of many religious beliefs. But who are these creatures? and are they really for real? The answer is: yes.
An angel is a supernatural being that like us, was created by G-d. However, its hard to make many more comparisons as they are drastically different than we are in nature. Whereas humans were created in the likeness (the look) of G-d, angels have different forms. They also don’t follow the same set of “rules” we have to completely obey when it comes to things like gravity, distance, and solid matter. Angels are stronger than humans, and smarter. They were intentionally made to be superior to us in ability.
Angels have an interesting history that we as humans only know a little about. They were created before we were and shortly thereafter were told by G-d that G-d was going to make us humans a half-ape half-divine creature just like they were. The angels rejoiced because G-d’s goodness allowed the creation of another “family” of His divinity. However, G-d threw a curve-ball to the angels when he revealed what his plan was to them.
Angels must serve man.
Something about G-d is His propensity to love and give more to those who have less. I think G-d wants us all, angel and man, to know that whoever is humbler becomes more powerful. Its almost as if G-d is rooting for the underdog constantly and whatever you and I do to make ourselves the underdog, the more we’ll be blessed in the end. But this didn’t occur to many of the angels who thought that because of their superiority they should come between G-d and man, instead of man being between them and G-d.
Exactly how much G-d loves us is a subject of many future blog posts, but the important thing is that the angels rebelled. Approximately a third of them, as it is believed by tradition rebelled against G-d. They refused to serve a smelly stupid human and humbly put them between themselves and G-d. So, they became the fallen angels and Satan was their leader.
Today, just as in the old days, angels roam about the earth to and fro doing all kinds of things. The fallen angels, or ‘evil ones’ as Christ would call them, do everything they can in their power to make us not go to heaven after we die. They will badly influence us, lie to us, tempt us to sin and make us look ugly in front of G-d so that he would reject us. They are destroyers of souls, and they are murderers. Its hard to say how many of these there are, but I would estimate that there are no less than 3 billion evil angels.
The good angels are like our older brothers and they embody some of the qualities of a good mother. They watch out for us, they defend us by chasing away the evil ones and they tempt us to do good works for G-d and they pray for us. Some are called to have a vocation to guard us. Each person has one guardian angel whose job it is to watch us 24/7/365. More on those later. There are no less than 6 billion of these types of angels
Ilts remarkable to think that angels are so proliferate. There’s ways to tell if there is an angel influencing you or if something is purely your own nature (self) acting. I will be glad to share with you more about my own ways of discovering when it is that an angel is “talking” to you. But until next time, just consider angels as a reality — because they do exist and they do interact with us human beings.
We all had role models when we were growing up, heroes to which we aspired our hopes and dreams. Think back, who did you “idolize” when you were growing up? I remember myself liking TV characters and trying to be just like movie stars I saw on the big screen.
I say to you that the easiest way to understand Christ at first is to treat him as the ultimate role model of your life. Idolize him, read about him, follow his ways and emulate him. You can even copy his sayings, he won’t mind. My personal favorite is, “Away with you Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” (Mt. 4:10). Try using that the next time you feel tempted to do something wrong, and you won’t.
G-d the Father who sent Christ to us did so that we can understand G-d and what living a perfect (ideal) life would be like. Christ reconciles us to G-d, he is the bridge we must cross to understand G-d and His ways. If we compare an action of ours to what Christ did, we can see where we might be wrong and need to change our ways to become more compatible with G-d. Reconciliation is done through forgiveness, a simple recognition that an action taken was not the right one and a promise to try to change using Christ to be the role model for you. That is how we grow closer to G-d through Christ, we use Christ as our role model.
G-d knows that we can’t do this perfectly. Even the holiest person must sin. Peter, the greatest of Christ’s apostles sinned by denying him at the end of Christ’s life. We can’t get it perfectly right, and believe me when I say G-d knows this! He still loves you anyways, even when you mess up. Its also worth saying that its not a contest as to see who is most like Christ. Some will be given more aptitude to receive Christ’s teachings and more is thus expected of them, others will be given less and thus less is expected of them. G-d will recognize even the smallest of your efforts and bless you immensely for trying as hard as you can to emulate Him by emulating Christ as your ultimate Role Model.
