Certainly you must feel this way when you look around at the broken world we live in, I know I do. Just read the newspaper, watch the latest newscast and just when you you think it can’t get any more strange, there is another heinous crime, corporate scandal, or corruption in government that we could never have imagined. The dilemma is what do we do about it? Can we try and hide from it? Do we just accept that is how it is?
Is there a common thread to all of this?
I recently studied the book with the same title, “Not the Way It’s Suppopsed to Be”, by Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. and it is well worth the read. I wante dto share some exerpts as it has certainly helped me gain a new perspective on the world we live in. We all know that God created the heavens and the earth and everything in it. He created man in his own image and gave him dominion over all the earth.
The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call “shalom”. Something has gone terribly wrong.
Sin entered the world.
Sin is any act – any thought, desire, emotion, word or deed – or its particular absence, that displeases God and deserves blame. Let us add that the disposition to commit sins also displeases God and deserves blame, and let us therefore use the word sin to refer to such instances of both act and disposition. Sin is a culpable and personal affront to God.
Sin distorts our character, the human image of God. We know that when we sin, we pervert, adulterate and destroy good things. We create matrices and atmospheres of moral evil and bequeath them to our descendants. By habitual practice, we let loose a great, rolling momentum of moral and spiritual evil across generations.
Along the generations, human nature itself, with its vast and mysterious amalgam of capcities to think, feel, supervise, love, create, respond and act virtuously – that is with its vast capacities for imaging God – has become the main carrier and exhibit of corruption.
Let that sink in for a while. More to follow.