The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

Dawkins, “The God Delusion”

Dawkins is obviously not a fan. So, let’s have a look at this.

It is all over the old testament, less so in the new testament. God does something hurtful or destructive. I’m not talking about a parking ticket here. I’m talking about a catastrophe: famine, pandemic, flood, invasion, exile, banishment…..you get the point. God intentionally does something that causes us great pain, even death. And we really don’t like it. Some of us, like Dawkins, declare God to be an enemy. But, if you look closer, the hurtful things that God does clearly come in two flavors:

The bad things God does to his “people”, both Jew and Gentile.

The bad things that God does to those who are harming his people.

In each case, the bad thing is about the same. The difference is in what follows the plague, flood, invasion, famine, etc. When God harms those who are hurting his people, he walks away and leaves the wreckage behind……forever. The countries that abused Israel in the old testament have never fully recovered…..even to this day. On the other hand, when God does something painful to his people, the harm has an end and is followed by a blessing. This is a key distinction.

The disasters that God visits on the enemies of his people are a punishment. There is no healing. There is no redemption. The disasters that God visits on his people are always followed by rapproachment…….healing and renewal of the relationship. This, I think, is the lesson of the book of Job.

The point here is this: “how should we react when tragedy strikes?”

And, as usual, the answer is: “it depends”. It depends on where you stand in your relationship with your creator.

If you have no relationship, if you are God’s enemy, if you are not one of his people…….then you have several options:

Go to war with God….like Dawkins. It’s a heady experience. You may even become rich and famous. But, you will lose. Just ask the Egyptians or the Assyrians or the Babylonians.

Reassess your allegiances. Consider the possibility…….that you are on the wrong side of the fence. Unlike football, when it’s late in the 4th quarter and you’re down by 49 points, you can switch teams. This is the essence of the gospel……God’s greatest gift.

If you are one of God’s people, it is a bit more complicated. Sometimes bad things just happen and God is not behind them……..but sometimes he is. So when disaster strikes, you need to consider the possibility that God is trying to steer you away from something that you are doing or that he is trying to steer you toward something that is better for you and for him.
Just like a good parent, God wants happiness and success for you……in the long run. This is the essence of parental discipline and love. This is the essence of God’s discipline and love.

I have seen my share of disasters. Was God behind them? I don’t know……..and I don’t care. What I do know is that there is a prize waiting for me. So I will use the tragedies that come my way to grow my relationship with my creator. Someday, we will meet. And then I will understand. Meanwhile……..I will trust.

I punished them, and hid my face in anger,
   yet they kept on in their willful ways.
I have seen their ways, but I will heal them;
   I will guide them and restore comfort to Israel’s mourners, creating praise on their lips.
Peace, peace, to those far and near,”

God in Isaiah 57: 17-19

Most cars have a blind spot……actually two of them. They are located in the lane beside you just behind your field of vision as you look down the road and just in front of what you can see in your mirrors. These blind spots aren’t very big……..just big enough to fit a semi tractor into. Furthermore, when you change lanes you move your car right into that blind spot. If you don’t turn your head and visually check your blind spot…….and if there is a car ….or a semi…..there……you are probably going to have an accident…….an accident that was entirely preventable.

The problem is that many, perhaps most, drivers either don’t believe in the blind spot or are too lazy to check it. You know this. How many times have you been driving down a lane and had to jam on your brakes when the driver in the next lane pulled into your lane? It’s not that he was being a jerk. He did it because he didn’t see you…….because he didn’t look. He didn’t check his blind spot.

So….what is the point?

The point is that if you don’t believe in something and it is true……you do not escape the consequences. The fact that you don’t believe in the blind spot…….or that you don’t care enough about it to check it……..will not save you from the collision.

But driving tips are probably not what you came here for.

You may have guessed…….this blog is about hell.

You see, hell is the moral equivalent to your blind spot. It is a hazard that is right beside you. You encounter hell as the result of a conscious decision that you have made about how you are going to run your life. You can easily avoid hell if you plan ahead.

But.

If you deny its existence.
If you ignore it.
If you don’t give it any thought.
If you don’t plan ahead and take precautions.

Sooner or later you will encounter it…….probably not today. Just as when you drive, everything will be fine for thousands of lane changes. Everything will be fine….until it isn’t. And then it will be too late.

The lesson:

Ignoring or denying a reality does not save you from the consequences of that reality.

Hell is not real, you say?

No problem……keep changing lanes without checking that blind spot. Everything will be fine.

Until it isn’t.

The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

Jesus describing hell, Luke 16: 24-25, ESV

How many stars are there?
20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

How many planets?
Probably more.

How many chemical bonds are there in the genomes of all of the life forms on earth?
6,000,000,000,000,000,000

When was the big bang?
13,800,000,000 years ago

How big is the federal debt……today?
$30,000,000,000,000

Really big numbers. But in practical terms…..in terms of their application to our lives……..what do they mean?

The simple truth is that these numbers are so big that, from a practical perspective………we cannot comprehend them. In other words, we haven’t a clue as to how to react to them……how to use them to make decisions on a day to day basis in our lives. That is why the federal debt doesn’t seem to get any traction in terms of what we should do about it.

I call these numbers God numbers. The ultimate God number?……infinity. Infinity is such a large number that it doesn’t actually exist. Infinity, when you get down to it, is not real. It is a theoretical construct.

If you take an infinite number of monkeys, word processors, time, and paper………they will type the Encyclopedia Brittanica. This is a true statement……theoretically. But we both know that it will never happen…….that it is impossible. This is the problem when we use very large numbers……God numbers…….and try to build practical applications using them……..when we try to make practical daily decisions based on them.

And yet, very smart people try to do this every day. They draw conclusions from very big numbers and tell us how we should live:

With all of those stars and planets, there must be extraterrestrial life out there somewhere.

The federal debt hasn’t hurt us yet…….so we can let it grow.

With billions upon billions of years, there was enough time for the earth and all of its genomes to accumulate………purely by random accident.

With all of that time, life could begin out of non living material, begin to reproduce, and then morph onto Angelia Jolie.

With all of that time, we can explain our existence and the existence of the amazing ecosystem that we call earth on the basis of random accidents.

But how many accidents did it take?

1 with how many zeros? 100……1,000…..1 million

Remember, the accidents must be cumulative, they must be consecutive, and they must spread over the entire earth and run off their competitors. Furthermore, accidents that don’t improve the species don’t count.

This is the “science” that our teachers teach our children as fact. We accept it because we cannot comprehend the really big numbers that it is based on. We accept it because the scientists say it is so…….and they are much smarter than we are.

The problem is that we have allowed this “science” to push creation……and with it, the creator……out of the conversation. But, the entire scientific “house of cards” is built on numbers that are so big that we cannot comprehend them. Our eyes get glassy and we just accept it……..because the people selling it are much smarter than we are.

The trouble is that the scientists have no better practical understanding of these numbers than we do. In point of fact, the basic theory that this science is based on….Darwinian evolution…….was formulated before we even knew just how big these numbers are.

If you bet your future…….your eternity…….on the accident theory, you are gambling on an explanation that is built on numbers that none of us truly understand.

God numbers.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:1, ESV

And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.”

Genesis 1:11, ESV

And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.”

Genesis 1:20, ESV

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.”

Genesis 1:24, ESV

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

Genesis 1:26, ESV

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

Genesis 1:31, ESV

Stuff

We all accumulate it. Cindy and I are worse than most. We have interests, hobbies, and……worst of all…….collections. Stuff, in and of itself, is not bad. It can be useful, satisfying, even fun. I look through my piles of stuff and compare it to one of my best friends. He lives the “less is more” lifestyle. He is moving this week and can probably put all of his and his wife’s stuff in a small trailer. It would take me a moving van……..or two…….and a forklift. I once told my son, “you gave me a pretty hard time in your teens and twenties……..my revenge is that I will die……..and you will have to clean up this mess.” It was a joke…….but I noticed that he didn’t laugh.

Here’s the problem for me. I’m in my 70’s. Fairly soon, all of my stuff will belong to someone else. Even worse, most of it will belong to people I don’t even know and have never met. All of the stuff that I have spent a lifetime of work accumulating and caring for will no longer be connected……to me.

And then it occurred to me. In a deeper sense, my stuff never was truly connected to me. I have simply been a custodian…..no more…..no less. Much of it was here before I was born and will be here long after I am gone.

And so I am shifting gears. I no longer browse antique malls and tool shops looking for new and better stuff. I am even disposing of my collections. I will never get to the point of my friend……..but I will leave a smaller mess for my executor.

The lesson of the Bible……in regards to stuff…….is simple. Stuff is neither good nor bad. The secret to stuff is that we shouldn’t hold on to it too tightly. We should not let it define us. We should not allow it to dictate our value. Because our value is defined by something else.

Our value is defined exclusively by our relationship with our creator.

In a few short years, that will be the only metric that will count. So, if you are young…..if you are still in the “accumulation” phase of your life…….if you are still in the “empire building” phase…….my lesson is this:

Use your stuff, enjoy it…..but don’t hold on to it too tightly. Don’t make stuff the focus of your life, your efforts. And above all, don’t allow your stuff to define your value…..because you are worth far more than that.

Your relationship worth is far greater than your net worth.

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Jesus, Mathew 6:19-21

Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

Jesus,Matthew 6:25-26

I am ignorant. This is hard for me to admit. I don’t feel too bad about it though. Because you are ignorant too. If you aren’t offended yet……read on……it gets worse.

Cindy and I have a dog. He is a fabulous dog. Several people have asked, “When you die…….can I have your dog?” We love our dog and I am absolutely sure that he loves us. Here’s the thing……our dog, Jet, is ignorant too. He is even more ignorant than I am. Compared to us, he doesn’t understand very much. He knows our routine. He knows his jobs. He understands 20 or 30 words. He is a Labrador and he tries very hard to please us. But, the simple truth is that he operates on an entirely different intellectual plane than we do. In a way…….he is childlike. We sent him to obedience school where he learned about authority. Cindy and I are in charge. He has to do what we say. He doesn’t get to pass judgement on our decisions. He trusts that we will care for him, feed him, and shelter him. When we go for a walk, he follows our lead. He doesn’t drag us down the road because he respects our authority. He trusts that we know better than he does where we are going……..where he is going.

If you think about it, Jet is a metaphor for you and me…..in our relationship with God. We don’t have a clue about God’s long range plan. God does things with us and to us. Some of them we like……others, not so much. But, we must recognize that we are ignorant, we are powerless, and we have very little authority. Those things belong to God.

I see a lot of people making plans, building empires, telling us all how it is going to be. But, the simple truth is that we are like dogs on a leash. Our handler, God, is taking us along on his long term odyssey. If we are going where God is going, there is harmony. Everything is OK. But many of us, possibly most of us, are going somewhere other than where God is going. We are like the dog you see trying to drag his owner down the street. And that is a formula for chaos. That is the source of the growing chaos in our culture.

So, the lesson is this:

Accept your ignorance.
Accept your limited power.
Accept your limited authority.
Ascribe that knowledge, power, and authority to God…..where it belongs

Learn to live……to thrive……on your leash.

Heel.

Because the guy holding the leash loves you, is not ignorant, and is going somewhere very good.

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Matthew 28: 18, ESV

I form light and create darkness;
I make well-being and create calamity;
I am the Lord, who does all these things.

God, Isaiah 45: 7, ESV

“Woe to him who strives with him who formed him,
a pot among earthen pots!
Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’
or ‘Your work has no handles’?

God, Isaiah 45: 9, ESV

“freedom from pride or arrogance: the quality or state of being humble”.

Humility is the opposite of hubris.

In practice, humility is the art of accurately understanding your importance, your power, and your place in the grand scheme of things. It is knowing and respecting your position in the hierarchy of the universe.

I once heard a story, possibly apocryphal, about Charles De Gaul. After the war, someone passed him on the street and said, “Beautiful Day!”. De Gaul replied, “Thank you”.

Humility is not something that we, as humans, tend to do well. It is in our nature to overrate our power and our importance. We do this both individually and corporately. Usually, the consequences are manageable. We just come off as pompous and pushy. Sometimes, however, the consequences are more dire. Picture the traffic stop where the driver says to the officer…..”Do you know who I am?” This rarely ends well.

I once heard an interview with Robert Dinero. When asked if he believed in God, he replied, “All I can say is that when I meet him…….he’s got some explaining to do.”

The problem is that, at our core, we believe that we, mankind, are the top of the ladder, the apex life form. This takes two forms. The less common form is to deny that there is any higher power. This is the path of the true atheist and it is, at least, intellectually honest. The more common form is to believe that we get to pass judgment on the activities of God. At best, this is intellectually dishonest.

First, let me clarify something. We are not the apex life form. God is. He is in charge……of everything. He either instigates or allows everything that happens in our world…….both the things we call good and the things we call bad. Read Job if you disagree. This is great when good things happen. We thank him when our lottery ticket wins. It becomes a problem when bad things happen……..someone we love dies…..we get cancer. Then we deny God…..we get mad at God. Or we blame it on someone or something else…..free will, Satan, or bad luck. We do these things because we firmly believe that we get to pass judgment on God’s activities. We get to decide whether we approve or disapprove of God’s work. We get to decide if what God did was good or bad. We get to pass judgment on God. We decide if he made a mistake. We believe this idea because, in practice, we do not accept the fact that we are below God on the ladder of authority. In a word……we lack humility.

If we are truly practicing humility, if we truly recognize God’s sovereignty, when we experience something that we don’t like, we say that a bad thing happened, but we recognize God’s ultimate authority, control, and responsibility, and then we do the hardest thing that we are called on to do. We trust God. We trust in his love and in his promise to take care of us…….in the long run. Because God promises, for those who love him, that everything will be OK…….in the end.

If everything is not OK now……then this isn’t the end.

Humility demands trust, trust grows into faith, and faith is the path to paradise……where everything is OK

It is very hard to practice Christianity honestly without humility……..and that is why so many of us struggle.

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6:8, ESV

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

God, 2 Chronicles 7:14, ESV

And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus, Matthew 18:2-4, ESV

Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair.

John 12:3, ESV

I have granddaughters………four of ’em. And I love them to death. Cindy and I recently took two of them out to dinner……..a very expensive dinner at a very nice rooftop restaurant with a stunning view of downtown Cincinnati. They spent the evening glued to their cell phones…….occasionally responding to a question with a monosyllable. I wanted to tell them that the people sitting in front of them were far more important than whatever was going on…….on their phones…….. that their relationship with Cindy and with me was far more valuable than their relationship with whatever app was running on their phone. But, I didn’t. I think that I realized that that battle had already been lost. I suspect that my experience is pretty common. Cindy and I will be gone in a decade or so……..and I suspect that they will not remember much about us.

I will keep trying to engage. I will keep driving a couple of hours to watch their games. I will keep giving……. that is what grandparents do. But, it occurs to me that they have a stronger relationship with their machines than they do with me. This loss of relationship causes me some pain…….but that really isn’t the point. The big problem is that forgoing a relationship with Cindy and me severely diminishes the quality of their lives. And they don’t seem to recognize this. The phone occupies them……but really doesn’t give them much in return. It is an empty promise. Does this sound familiar?

I come back to one of the great truths of life.

“If you want to have a friend………be a friend”.

And that brings me to the point of this post. How much effort do we put into the most important relationship in our world………our relationship with our creator……..our father…….Abba? On the other hand…..how much of our time do we invest in activities……..relationships……like our cell phones…..that give us very little in return……..that promise us nothing in the long run?

I propose a metric to answer this question:

How much time each day do you spend interacting with an app on your phone that does not have a human being on the other end. Compare this with the amount of time that you spend in prayer…….in conversation with God……in reading the Bible…….in spreading the good news.

Pretty convicting isn’t it?

Maybe it’s time to start moving the needle a bit. I’m not saying that you should toss your cell phone……and all of those amazing apps. But, maybe you can spend a little more effort on your relationship with your father. Maybe you can say a prayer of praise and thanks………just before you fire up “candy crush”.

I can’t imagine anything more terrifying than to finally meet Jesus…….and he looks at me and says, “I don’t know you……..go away”. There is no app on my phone that will save me. Only the relationship with God that I have spent years nurturing can do that.

On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

Jesus, Matthew 7:22-23, ESV

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Moses, Deuteronomy 6:5, ESV

First……a few definitions:

Impossible:  

Something that just cannot happen……it violates the rules of science and current norms of behaviour.

In A.D. 30 these things were impossible:

Air travel

Circumnavigation

Magnetism

Space flight

Nuclear energy

Telephones

Democratic government

Death:  

Heart and lung function cease>anoxia>cellular death>cell rupture and clotting of blood vessels. The brain is the first thing to go. These changes are irreversible. Reanimation…….resurrection of someone dead for 3 days is physically impossible.

Resurrection:

A person is stone cold dead, perhaps beginning to rot. Then, they re-animate and become fully functionally alive.

This leads to a conundrum.

Jesus was crucified (it’s in contemporaneous historical accounts)

He suffered fatal wounds that were not survivable. For three days, he lay in a tomb without modern medical care.

After three days he was walking around, talking and eating. Hundreds of witnesses saw him……at least 11 apostles were gruesomely martyred because they refused to recant.

These three things cannot exist together…….and yet they happened……..they were documented. How can this be?

Remember the riddle of the father, the son, and the fatal accident? The lesson of the riddle is this:  When you follow a bulletproof chain of logic from a set of facts to an impossible conclusion……..it is generally because you made a bad assumption.

Bad assumptions are things that we accept and believe…….that are not true. What are they?:

Science is complete, it fully explains everything. If science cannot explain it……it isn’t real. It isn’t possible.

If you cannot see, touch, and analyse something……it is not real.

Secular humanism is the belief system…….some would say religion…..that flows from these assumptions. It says that we are the apex life form……we are in charge. So, we make up the definitions that prove us to be right. If a man wants to hang out in a women’s locker room…….he just has to define himself as a woman. We like this power…….we enjoy this power. This is how our culture operates.

BUT
 

There is a duality of reality. There is a physical world and there is a spiritual world. Both are equally real. We operate in the physical realm. God is a spiritual being. God operates primarily in the spiritual realm but also in the physical realm. In the physical realm, he routinely does things that are impossible:

Creation in 7 days

The flood and Noah’s ark

Resurrection of the dead

Jonah and the whale

The contents of any Catholic saint’s resume

 
As a matter of fact……an entity that routinely does physically impossible things..…… is a good working definition of God.

As it turns out, the fact that the resurrection is impossible is critical, because it underscores the duality of reality. It underscores the false assumptions that undergird secular humanism. In fact, the only defense that secular humanism has to offer……..is to deny the resurrection.

The resurrection is the single most important event in human history. It is important precisely because it is impossible. The fact that it is impossible proves that the rules of our physical world are incomplete in some cases…….and flat out wrong in others.

Imagine that a guy in a white robe approaches you on the street and says that he is God and that you need to follow him, obey him, and worship him. You ask “why?” He says “because I talked myself out of a speeding ticket, because I mowed my lawn, because I started a successful business and because I was elected to public office”. It is not likely that you would buy in to his proposition,  because all of this stuff is possible. You and I could do all of these things. But……what if he did the impossible?

I follow Jesus……..not in spite of the fact that the resurrection is impossible……..but precisely because the ressurection is impossible.
 

When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?” But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Matthew 19: 25-26, ESV

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble…….it’s what you know for certain…….that just ain’t so.

Will Rogers

My wife and I raised 3 boys. They were a little “rough”. She often said to me, “rules without relationship lead to rebellion”. I was pretty good on rules…….maybe 8 out of 10……..relationship…….not so much……..maybe 4 out of 10. And we reaped a bit of rebellion. If you are beginning a family, you should write this down and read it every day. This is one of the great truths of parenting.

It is also one of the great rules of human nature…….and of the Bible.

God’s idea…….his plan A……..was the garden of Eden. It was a place of perfection. In Eden, God and man lived together in a close relationship……..they talked face to face regularly. They walked together. Relationship was the key to Eden. Rules were secondary. In fact, there were only three: tend the garden, name the animals, and don’t eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then along came the serpent. He, Eve, and Adam wrecked it all. God ended Eden and moved on.

God’s plan B……..was an endless list of rules many of which did not…….and still don’t make sense to us. I suspect that they were never intended to. God spoke to Moses……a lot……and to many prophets a little. But, as far as the ordinary man was concerned…….not so much. God lived in the inner room of the temple which only the high priest could enter. In the post Eden Old Testament, rules were the emphasis……..relationship was a minor bit player. And the Jewish people failed over and over. They were punished over and over. To say that the rules didn’t work would be an historic understatement.

And then came Jesus.

For three years mankind experienced the most intimate relationship with God that we had ever known. He taught us, walked with us, ate with us……..even washed our feet. And then he left. After his death he was replaced by the holy spirit. And that is where we are today. The holy spirit is quieter than Jesus was during his three year ministry and less immediate than God was in Eden. The holy spirit is easy to ignore……easy to dismiss. We have to study and seek the holy spirit. We have to pursue it…….we have to reach out. Many of us don’t even try.

Here’s the thing. God’s blessings come with relationship. God’s withdrawal………even punishment follows rebellion. The best times in human history correspond to the times of relationship. On the flip side, during times of little relationship, as a culture, we always slip into rebellion. And we suffer the consequences. Looking at our culture during my lifetime……I can see the truth of this.

So…….what is the lesson?

We must study and seek the holy spirit. We must build a relationship with God the Father, Jesus the son, and also with the holy spirit. If we can do so individually and also as a culture, we can avoid rebellion and tap into God’s blessing.

Unfortunately, our culture has other ideas. The facts show that we are slipping away from relationship and drifting into rebellion. This will ultimately lead to the withdrawal of God’s blessing……..and the introduction of his punishment.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.

Jesus, Revelation 3:20, ESV

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

Jesus, John 15:5, ESV

He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

John 1:10-13, ESV

if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

God, 2 Chronicles, 7:14, ESV

We tend to think of life as an ongoing conflict between good and evil. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. There are three, not two, entities involved: Good….evil……and free will.

Good and evil are clearly defined in the “owners manual”. They are also internal…….they are “written on our hearts”. In general terms, good increases love and evil decreases love. Furthermore, you and I have no say in the matter. Good and evil exist…….and they are completely independent of us……..they are completely independent of our appetites and desires. They are also universal. What is good for me…….is good for you……and for the stranger down the block.

So far so good.

The problem arises when we stir in the third variable…..free will. Free will means that we get to choose between good and evil……every minute of every day. We are not forced to be good. We are not forced to love. But we are expected to be good……to love…….by our creator. When we freely choose good…..love…..we honor our creator. When we freely choose evil we dishonor our creator.

It’s still pretty simple and straightforward.

So…….when was the last time you got out of bed, planned your day and said to yourself…….”Today…..I’m going to be evil”? Probably never. That’s just not the way we operate. In practice, we look at the world, we work through our list of appetites……the things we want to have and do…….then we pursue one or more of our appetites. We often, completely fail to ask, “is this good or evil?”. We often fail to ask, “does this increase or decrease love?”.

And it gets worse.

When we are backed into a corner…..when we are forced to pigeonhole something as good or evil…..when we really want something that is wrong, evil……..we have another trick. We simply redefine the act as good:

We redefine aborting our child as an exercise in reproductive rights.

We redefine gun ownership as an exercise of our 2nd amendment……even though we may someday use the gun to kill.

We redefine our sex to give our appetites precedence over our anatomy.

The snake tells Eve that eating the forbidden apple will make her wise…….that it will make her like God.

But here’s the thing.

In spite of our manipulations……..good and evil do not change. The expectations of our creator do not change.
We can define things, including ourselves, however we wish. This is the glory of free will. But, ultimately, we will be measured against God’s definition of good and evil. And that is the curse of free will.

And we will fall short…….every last one of us.

But there is hope. Because God’s final judgement will be based on one thing:

Did you recognize God…….did you honor God……..did you love God……..did you obey God?

God cares about love. Mankind cares about free will.

Free will reigns in our world.

Love reigns in God’s world.

Choose.

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 certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Genesis 3:2-5, ESV

“Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.”

Jesus, Matthew 19:17, ESV