Wherever I go, I go too...and spoil everything

I have been thinking about sin. My ideas come from many books I have read, many sermons I have heard and formal studies I have been required to do but they must not be regarded as church doctrine or Christian doctrine. They are merely the result of my personal reflections on the matter and the accumulation of impressions that have made sense to me.

I believe God made the universe perfectly. He built into it various laws that hold it in place. These are not only physical laws, like the law of Gravity or the law of thermodynamics, but also spiritual laws. What we regard as the phenomenon of cause and effect is our observation of these laws in action. God made us, humans, in love, out of love and through love. He made us for Himself - to express His love and He made us for Love - to love Him, to be in a relationship with Him and with each other. Not wanting love from mere automatons, God gave us the greatest gift He could - free will. We could choose to love Him, or not. We could choose to obey Him, or not.

Whether the Garden of Eden is literal or figurative, the message is the same. The devil, who is against God and all He stands for, set out a choice before man. "If you eat of this fruit, you can be like God..." In other words, you don't need to obey God. You can make up your own rules.
You can be your own god. That is what man chose.

The result was a cause and effect thing. God created the whole universe for man that He had created to be in a relationship with Him and as a result of man's decision, there was a subtle shift in the fabric of creation. Creation fell and was no longer a friendly place for man. In other words, the relationship between man and creation that was supposed to be, was broken.

In the same way, Man fell. As a microbiologist my best picture is of a nucleotide poison that entered his body (spirit? will?) and got into his DNA. There it inhibited some of the perfect functions of the genetic material so that various imperfections came about. The body would no longer last forever, but get old, die and decay. Abnormalities could arise. These abnormalities were not any immediate change but rather a potential for the future. The worst effect, however, was a breaking of the relationship with God. Fear came in for the first time. The change was a change in tendency, a new direction alignment. So instead of focussing on God, loving Him and relying on Him as God, the default setting was now to focus on ourselves as god.

The third effect was in breaking the relationship between man and man. What was meant to be a community of love, encompassed by God's all-embracing love, became a collection of little gods, all wanting the best for themselves and not caring about the effect of others. Instead of love, there was now suspicion and fear. Man was now a flawed creature. That is sin. The actions that follow from this flaw eg murder, anger, slefishness, they are sins.

These changes were in the very fabric of nature, possibly even in the atoms or quarks and because they were in the genetic material, they were carried over into each new generation.

God choose a people for himself and made a covenant with them. He gave them the 10 commandments. If they followed them perfectly, they would not commit the sins that result from the flawed nature and the relationship with God could go ahead although not in the originally intended love community. The first one is "You shall have no other god before me". That deals with the broken relationship with God. The other 9 have to do with how we treat other people.
Jesus summarised the commandments by saying "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and you should love your neighbour as yourself." The problem is, all these commandments are actions but the basic flaw is a tendency.

Little children do not need to be taught to be selfish. That is their tendency. They do not need to be taught to grab a toy away from another child. It is inherent. They are gods and the world is there to serve them. Left to themselves, they would grow up not much better than animals, relying on basic instincts like hunger, self preservation, sexual instinct.

However, still in man is a genetic memory. He was created for God and there is a God-shaped vacuum inside him. Something deep inside him knows what is right. We instinctively know we should be truthful and feel hurt when somebody lies to us. We know that courage is to be admired and selfishness is to be deplored but we don't have the necessary ingredient, perhaps it is strength, to be able to always do what we know to be right. We make resolutions and sometimes have a bit of success but it is always a battle against our default setting. Most people find it easier to lie than to tell the truth. We have to teach our children to share and to be kind to others. So often we know what is the right thing to do but we don't do it - then we berate ourselves afterwards. This the human condition - sin. It leads to the feeling of "wherever I go, I go too and spoil everything." Paul described it as "..what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do" (Rom 7:15)

This tendency leads to the actions of sin. In an extrovert, it is easy to pick up the tendency in conversation. The entertaining conversation consists of what I did, how I felt, how I told the so and so what's what. Long stories where I am the hero because I am my god. In introverts it is much more subtle and might go unnoticed. I think people are talking about me, I am hurt, I am over-sensitive. The centre of my world is still me. Again I know what is right. I must forgive.
I must not hold onto grudges, I must not keep remembering the hurt that was done to me so many years ago but my natural tendency resists. We live in a constant tension of not being able to quite come up to the mark. That is one definition of sin - missing the mark.

The better of us spend our lives striving to do what is right. We probably do not murder, commit adultery, lie (well not much anyway) or steal. Maybe we covet, but coveting never hurt anybody, did it. Maybe we don't abuse people but we ignore them or treat them as of no importance, or just, in our preoccupation with ourselves and our own little problems, we don't even notice them.(after all, we are the gods here) However, if we look at humanity as a whole, we see the outward expressions of the inward tendency. Our newspapers are full of the outward expression of the human condition - corrupt politicians, hijackers, murderers. The bottom line is we have broken God's laws. Even if we have kept 9 out of the 10 commandments 90% of the time, we have still broken the conditions of the contract. We have still broken God's law. That means we are sinners - whether we like the title or not. We like to compare ourselves to others and there are many people who we think are much greater sinners than we are. We are not rapists, serial killers, child abusers, thieves or corrupt despots. Neither are we Mother Theresa. Although Mother Theresa was a very good woman, she would have been the first to admit that she was not perfect and that she was a sinner, falling far short of God's requirements. Where does that leave us?

Storms and Boats

Imagine you were a boat builder. You wanted to build a boat that would be your last and would be your masterpiece. All the skills you had refined over many years of boatbuilding would be utilized for this, your best project.

You’d use the best materials and design. You wanted your boat to last. Not to be a showpiece in some fancy Sandton toys for big boys shop, but a boat that could go to sea, could withstand salt water, buffeting winds, relentless hammering waves. You’d make it strong.

Then you’d take your boat out to test it. You wouldn’t go on a calm day on a peaceful pond. A sea going vessel can only be tested on the sea and you’d thrill as it weathered storms and cut through the challenging waves.

We are living in perilous times. You only have to look around you to realize that. You only have to read a newspaper, listen to the TV or even talk to other people. Life is not plain sailing.

And God knows that.

I recently listened to a tape by Tom Inglis called “Born for storms.”

He says God created us for storms.

That made a lot of sense to me. We all know that life is full of problems and trials, challenges and setbacks. Even the bible says so.

2Ti 3:1 says, "but this know, in the last days perilous times will come"

If God knows everything, then of course He would have created us to be able to cope with whatever life will throw at us. I don’t think God intended us for a life of ease, with no challenges to overcome, no victories to celebrate.

What happens when there is a major disaster? Like the twin towers of September 11^th?
Stories of bravery emerged, stories of helping each other, of pulling together. Sometimes it takes a crisis to get the best out of people. With the recent outbreak of xenophobia, the ordinary people of South Africa were amazing in rallying round to do something to help the displaced people.

God’s plan for us is that we should be the best that He intended for us. He wants us to grow more and more like Jesus. He is more interested in our growth and maturity than in our happiness. He uses storms to grow us. Even Jesus had to face storms.

So God allows storms in our lives so that we can grow. But the good news is, the storms are tailored to our ability to withstand them.

! Cor 10:13 says “Every test that you have experienced is the kind that normally comes to people, But God keeps his promise, and he will not allow you to be tested beyond your power to remain firm; at the time you are put to the test, he will give you the strength to endure it, and so provide you with a way out.”

Isn’t that great? We are destined to be over comers. We are destined to win. The devil is destined to loose.

So God sends storms tailor made for us to emerge stronger and victorious.

So how do we handle storms? How do we handle all the bad stuff that comes up in our lives?

James 1:2 tells us:
“My brothers, consider yourselves fortunate when all kinds of trials come your way, for you know that when your faith succeeds in facing such trials, the result is the ability to endure. Make sure that your endurance carries you all the way without failing, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”

God never promised us that we would have no problems. What He did promise is that he would be with us. Psalm 23 says, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me.”

Let’s look at how the disciples handled a storm. Jesus had been busy all day, preaching, telling parables. The disciples had been involved too. At the end of a busy day, Jesus says, “ Come let us cross over to the other side.” Wow! a chance to go somewhere with Jesus. Let’s go.

The bible tells us they took Jesus with them. It is always a good idea to take God with you when you are going somewhere. Of course first, they had to leave the crowd. Why? Because the crowd didn’t want to go where Jesus was going. In general we will find we will have to leave the crowd to go with Jesus. We will need to go against what is popular and considered the social norm. The disciples were happy to do that.

Suddenly a strong wind blew up, and the waves began to spill over into the boat, so that it was about to fill with water.

Now most of this crew were fishermen. Don’t you think they had come across storms before? So they used the skills they had learned before. They took down the sail, angled the prow to the wind and started bailing water as it splashed into the boat.

But it wasn’t working this time. The water was coming in as fast as they were chucking it out. What to do?

Ah! We forgot. We have God in the boat with us. Quick, call on Him!

One of them is delegated for the job. He comes back in a short while.

“Guys, I have good news and I have bad news. God is in the boat with us.’Yay, all cheer! “ The bad news is - he’s asleep”

Well, go and wake Him ups for heavens’ sake, before we all drown. It’s amazing to think that these disciples really believed that they were all going to drown, God with them. So they wake him up. “Teacher, don’t you care that we are going to drown?’

This is an honest, desperate plea. No fancy words or polite phrases. It’s telling it like it is. So Jesus woke up and spoke to the wind. He addressed the storm. “ Be quiet, “ he said, “Be still.” Then He said to His disciples “Why were you so frightened? Have you still no faith?” The disciples were filled with awe. They had not realized how powerful the one with them was.

Did the disciples learn from the experience anything of value? Anything that they would not have learned if there had been no storm?

You bet! They learned how mighty Jesus is. They had had a life changing experience. Their faith and their trust grew in leaps and bounds.

Was it a comfortable experience? No way! They were wet and soggy, bailing to exhaustion, pitching and tossing on an angry sea. They were really frightened and had got beyond their ability to cope.

God is not interested in our comfort, but in our growth. If any of you have watched survivor, how many of them said it was an experience of a life time. Yet were they comfortable? Not in the least. It was much worse than they expected. But God’s rules of the universe decree when you face storms with the right attitude, you grow.

So what can we learn from this? First of all, if we are facing a storm right now, know that we are overcomers. God made us for storms. We will get through. We are destined to be victorious. We need to do everything in our power to help ourselves. We can use all the coping skills that we have learned in the past, seek help if necessary, rely on our support system.

Secondly, always go with God. Take Him with us in the boat. Sure, there are times when he seems to be asleep. The situation just gets worse and worse and it seems like

our prayers are falling on deaf ears. Remember, God will not allow us to be tested beyond what we can endure. Persevere.

Wake him up. Be honest. Tell Him you are afraid. Tell Him you are angry with Him because it seems like He doesn’t care. Storms are a time for fellowship with God. Almost anybody you meet who has got through some kind of struggle will tell you how they got closer to God through it.

Then, trust Him. Just leave it up to Him. There is nothing really else that you can do anyway.

One version of James says, “Count it all joy when you face various trials.”

Don’t moan, don’t complain, don’t grumble. Count it all joy. You will overcome.

Broken

This morning I picked up my porcelain doll from the chair where she sits and, with a clinking sound, the top of her head came off in 8 or 9 fragments. She had looked fine. Nobody could have carefully arranged the pieces to stay together so I must conclude she did not drop on the floor. Perhaps something fell on her head or she was hit by an idle broom or something.
I love that doll. I made her myself about 10 years ago. She is the size of a newborn baby and she's got a soft body which is very cuddleable.
I am hoping that with a bit of strong glue and a lot of patience I will be able to mend her and perhaps hide the cracks under her wig.

Aren't we all like that? We are broken. Circumstances which were beyond our control have worked together to break us in some way or other. Sometimes we can hide the cracks and we pretend we are whole but sometimes it is beyond hiding. We are surrounded by other broken people, all hiding their cracks and pretending till we think we are the only broken one.

It brings to mind a strange dream I had last night. I dreamt I had a baby boy who had fairly big ears. He also had the capacity to open his ears and one could see the earhole opening wider. His father didn't like his big ears and flicked him painfully around each ear and told him to stop opening his ears. Such a look of pain crossed that baby's face that it still brings tears to the back of my eyes. Then slowly and painfully he started retracting his ears into his head until there were no signs of an ear at all. I knew that he would never hear again for the rest of his life and he was only 6 months old. That was a broken baby.

They say that we are all the characters in our dreams. What does that say about me? Broken I know about but deaf?

I believe in the Bible

What do I believe about the bible? I believe it is the inspired word of God. Not the dictated word of God. I believe it consists of different kinds of writings - history, poetry, motivational talks, theological debate etc- and should not always be taken literally in the same way that the decorative trim on a bridge is not meant to take the full load. I like the analogy that Nicky Gumble gives. God inspired the bible, but he didn't write it. Sir Christopher Wren designed St Paul's Cathedral. It took him a very long time. Nothing was done in the building process that was not part of his plan. Yet in all those many years, he never laid hands on one stone or lifted one beam. Other people did that. He was the designer. I believe that God is the designer of the bible but people wrote it. In their humanness they might have inserted something of themselves in it. For instance the writings of Luke show more of a scientific mind while John goes for deeper meanings and symbolism.

I believe that the choosing of the Canon (the books that were to be included in the bible) was under the guidance of the Holy Spirit even though comittees and councils did the actual work and recording. Comittees never wrote books of the bible - they decided from all the writings available what would be included in the bible and what would be left out.

I don't see a conflict between the bible and science. The bible teaches that God made everything (very few scientist really believe that everything came about by chance) and that he set up the laws and rules of the universe. Man has broken his rules. The Old Testament is an account of how God made a Covenant with His people but they always broke the terms of the contract. I have an open mind as to whether the world was created in seven days or seven periods of time. It does not matter. The world was created. It is. That is the important thing.

The New Testament is much easier to read but it has more meaning in the light of the Old Testament. I believe the accounts of Jesus on earth are historically correct and I believe in the miracles as they are set down. The parables on the other hand were just that - illustrative stories from every day life to impart a spiritual truth. The letters were just that - letters from a Spirit-guided church leader/founder to various churches relevant to the times and situations they found themselves in. Revelation is a deep symbolic book and different people have different ideas about the various symbols. The basic thrust however is that God is on the throne, this world as we know it is going to end traumatically (that's what scientists and environmentalists tell us too) and that Christ will come again and gather his people into a new world/life where there will be no more death, disease, sadness or evil.

I believe in the words of Paul to Timothy, "All scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the woman of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." I also believe that the bible is a very powerful way in which God communicates with us. How often hasn't a verse come alive to me, speaking straight into the situation in which I found myself even though it was written to somebody else nearly two thousand or more years ago. It is not the only way God communicates with us, but other forms of communication, especially dreams, visions, prophesies, words of knowledge, should always be checked against scripture because God will not contradict Himself and it is so easy for us humans to get it wrong or to misinterpret what God is trying to get through to us.
I believe the bible is God's written communication with us, like love letters, instruction manuals, inspirational thoughts, and that if we want to get to know God better, we need to get to know the bible better.