Odd Creatures Hard to Understand

We humans are odd creatures not easy to understand.  While it is true that we are prone to acts of selfishness, greed, envy, and desire for power and place, most of us want to be good people leading good lives, and, for the most part, try to be. 

There is a good deal of truth in both sides of our human nature.  In creation, God declared that we are good and that the good earth is here to be nurtured so that it can nourish us.  The biblical story is a metaphor for each of us.  We are, each of us, Adam and Eve.  There are exceptions, but most of us want to be good and still mess up in ways that hurt others, ourselves, and the communities in which we live. 

I don’t know why but for some reason God loves us, engaging in human life without coercion.  Holy Scripture is the record of continuing engagement with humankind, revealing how we can live with one another in a reasonable degree of harmony that will lead to more fulfilling lives.  It shouldn’t be hard to do but we were created with the freedom to choose and choose we do according to our own devices.  For good or for ill, the consequences of our choices are ours to bear.  Speaking through the prophets God has time and again said of ‘his’ people, “if only they would listen to my voice.” 

The freedom to choose, free will as it were, is not unlimited.  Genetics, mental and physical abilities, circumstances of life and education create boundaries to free will and condition the ways in which choices are made. Within these constraints there remains a tremendous range of freedom.  It is possible to choose to live as best one can according to God’s commandments and to be persons of integrity acting toward godly justice.  As Christians intent on following in the way of Jesus, it is imperative that we do our best to live into God’s supreme commandments: love God with all we have; love others as Jesus has loved us.

We are obligated to live in ways that honor the hard road of faith trod by our ancestors.  We are obligated to live as stewards of creation and all in our possession for the good of others, and the lives of generations to come.  It takes a lifetime with many mistakes made along the way.  We do things that bring great harm into the lives of others.  We discover ourselves to be implicit in evil done on our behalf. Harm comes to us by intention and by chance.  God is present through it all guiding us in confession, repentance, healing, forgiveness and reconciliation, the way forward lighted by the beacon of the commandments to love.  

The power in following Jesus’ way is not in  his moral teaching alone.  There are many teachers to choose from.  In his birth, life, teaching, death and resurrection he is the Word of God made flesh.  His words and deeds illuminate the authority of Almighty God.  With his crucifixion we exercised our free will to rebel against God to establish us as the ultimate authority and arbiter of what is good or bad.  If Satan exists, he is the manifestation of human free will untethered from God.  Jesus is reported to have said from the cross, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”  Indeed we didn’t.  We acted out of hubris mixed with good intentions and fear of each other.

In Jesus’ bodily resurrection, the rebellion was quashed; once and for all time death was destroyed.  The way of Jesus is declared to be what it has always been, the only way of life because God is the source of life, there is no other, and not for us only but for the whole world. It is the thunderous, explosive revelation of eternal truth in temporal time.

All of this raises a challenging question: if we know the truth that sets us free, why don’t we see better results?  I think it is because we are loathe to give up the sense that we can make better moral decisions on our own than with bothering God for guidance. I’m reminded of childhood road trips when dad set aside the map in favor of his intimate knowledge of shortcuts. They not infrequently ended up in some farmer’s back yard.  Humanity’s shortcuts lead more toward betrayal and violence that does real damage to others, to us, and to creation. In other words, the moral evil we experience is of our own making.