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And God Cried
Chapter 4
Another Look
At Sin
During the first part of the
20th Century, sin was treated lightly. It was called
"ignorance," only a growing pain of the human race. The
prevailing theory then was to give man a bit more education, let
him become a little more civilized and he will evolve out of his
sin, leaving evil behind him. But now we are not so sure. The
heinous events of World War II (12 million murdered, leveled
cities, gas chambers), followed by the continuing senseless
acceleration of war, crime and violence (old people killed for
kicks, 80-year-old women molested) and other immoralities have
forced man to take a second look at the problem of evil.
A fresh look at sin is pointedly
stated in the words of Dr. Cyril E. M. Joad, who was a noted
Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of
London, and listed by the editor of The American Weekly
as one of the world's great scientists.12
Joad said:13
For years my name regularly
appeared with H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, and Aldous Huxley
as a derider of religion.... Then came the war, and the
existence of evil made its impact upon me as a positive and
obtrusive fact. The war opened my eyes to the impossibility of
writing off what I had better call man's 'sinfulness' as a mere
by-product of circumstance. The evil in man was due, I was
taught, either to economic circumstance (because people were
poor, their habits were squalid, their tastes undeveloped, their
passions untamed) or to psychological circumstances. For were
not psycho-analysts telling me that all the regressive,
aggressive, or inhibited tendencies of human nature were due to
the unfortunate psychological environment of one's early
childhood?
The implications are obvious;
remove the circumstances, entrust children to psycho-analyzed
nurses and teachers, and virtue would reign.
I have come flatly to
disbelieve all this. I see now that evil is endemic in man, and
that the Christian doctrine of original sin expresses a deep and
essential insight into human nature.
As Dr. Joad, we must take
another look at evil. It can no longer be considered a growing
pain. It is too deadly a disease to be explained away by
environment. Standing in the 21st Century and
looking back, the sad history of the 20th century confirms that Dr.
Joad was right.
In his book OUT OF CONTROL,
written in 1993, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security
Advisor and professor of American Foreign Policy at John Hopkins
University, notes that the 20th Century began amid great hope and
promise, but it became the century of insanity. In elaborating on
his observation of 175 million slaughtered in the name of the
"politics of organized insanity," he says:
Contrary to its promise, the
20th Century became mankind's most bloody and hateful century of
hallucinatory politics and of monstrous killings. Cruelty was
institutionalized to an unprecedented degree, lethality was
organized on a mass production basis. The contrast between the
scientific potential for good and the political evil that was
actually unleashed is shocking. Never before in history was
killing so globally pervasive, never before did it consume so
many lives, never before was human annihilation pursued with
such concentration of sustained effort on behalf of such
arrogantly irrational goals.
Dr Joad is right, sin is not
just ignorance—a temporary experience in man's evolution. Evil
is a basic flaw in human character that can only be explained by
the Biblical account of original sin.
Speaking collectively of the
human race, the Psalmist said, "In sin did my mother conceive
me" (Psalms 51:5). The Apostle Paul in Romans 5:12 says,
"By one man sin entered the world and death by sin; and so
death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."
Since father Adam sinned,
justice required that he die. Before he died, Adam had children
who were born in sin—they inherited Adam's imperfections. Thus,
the whole human race is born dying. This is how it is learning the
consequences of evil. However, the permission of evil is a brief
controlled experience when compared with eternity. What are some
of the grim lessons? God permits evil to demonstrate that man
without God results in:
possible extinction
through the science which created the H-bomb, and chemical and
biological warfare;
affluence that spends
one billion dollars a year in the U.S. for pet food while 5
million humans starve to death;
religious institutions
whose assets total billions of dollars while millions live in
poverty;
technology and its
deadly tentacles of pollution encircling the globe;
towering cities that
are concrete jungles of crime and violence, filled with
faceless people experiencing life without meaning and with
terrible loneliness.
God permits evil to prove that
man's existence without God can only result in man's inhumanity to
man.
The Problem of Communication
In our era of permissiveness,
the justice of God seems to be an offense to the rationalist.
Perhaps the problem is one of communication, which can be shown in
the simple illustration of an argument. All of us at some time
have been engaged in an argument in which we really never
objectively listened to the other party. We were too busy thinking
up our answers to hear their logic. Similarly, the rationalist is
carrying on a debate with God. If he would only stop and listen to
what God has explained in the historic account of Eden (Genesis
3), he would catch a glimpse of the wisdom and justice of God that
guarantees man's eternal happiness in due time.
Is God's Justice Severe?
Some question the severity of
God's justice in the death penalty. Could not a penalty other than
death have been a just recompense for Adam's disobedience? No
doubt another penalty would have been just; however, God chose
this penalty because it best suited His overall plan for mankind.
Once Adam was informed that death was the penalty for
disobedience, then the penalty was fair.
A basic fact to always remember
is that God in His foreknowledge knew Adam would disobey.
Therefore, long before the creation of Adam, God's wisdom devised
a plan of recovery and ultimate happiness for the human race that
would require the death of His only begotten Son. Thus I Peter
1:19,20 and Ephesians 1:4-7 speak of the blood of Christ as
foreordained before the world began for the redemption of mankind.
The Creator used man's experience in Eden to demonstrate the
dependability of His justice. It is vital for man to know that
"justice and judgment [just decisions] are the habitation of
thy [God's] throne" (Psalms 89:14). Justice is the foundation
of the government of the universe, the basis of all God's
dealings. Judgment is also spoken of as part of this foundation.
The Hebrew here means "a just decision." We can take
comfort in the realization that throughout eternity all of God's
decisions will be just.
Man was placed in the Edenic
paradise to thoroughly enjoy the love of God. Suppose that after
Adam and Eve had lived obediently for a while, God changed His
mind and expelled them from the garden condition into the thorns
and thistles of the unfinished earth. His love would be worthless,
whimsical, because it was not based on justice. It would be
changeable.
Another hypothetical situation:
If when Adam disobeyed, God said, "Oh, I will overlook your
disobedience this time, I will not punish you as I promised to
do." Adam might say, "Wonderful! I am surely glad God is
more loving than just."
Wonderful? No! This, too, would
have been whimsical, capricious, arbitrary. The Creator and Ruler
of the whole universe could never be trusted throughout eternity.
At any time, in any place, with any order of intelligent
creatures, God might at the slightest whim change His mind and
turn on His creatures. Eden proved the unchangeableness of God's
justice. Thus God declares in Malachi 3:6, "I am Jehovah, I
change not." And James 1:17 states, "The Father of
lights in whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of
turning."
How unchangeable is God's
justice? It is so unyielding that God's court of justice required
the payment of the costliest fine ever stipulated in a court of
law. What judge has been willing to give up his own innocent son
to death in order to cancel the criminal debt of the defendant?
Another Problem of
Communication
Our Creator wants us to know the
depths of His love, that He is the most loving Being in the
universe, but how can God communicate this to our finite minds? In
human relationships words of love can be quite meaningless.
Actions speak louder than words. How did God show His love? With
tender fatherly emotions of sorrow, God took the dearest treasure
of His heart, His only begotten Son, and sent him to earth to
suffer and die at the hands of man. At great cost to Himself the
wisdom of God formulated a plan which reveals that He is both just
(unyielding justice) and the justifier (benefactor) of mankind
(Rom. 3:25,26).
The simple events of Eden and
Calvary tell so much about our God. Calvary is the greatest
manifestation of love and mercy in the history of the universe.
The combination of Eden and Calvary stand as a pledge throughout
eternity that there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning
in God's justice (James 1:17).
Natural Clamities
Many natural calamities are not
a question of "Where is God?" or "What's wrong with
God?"—rather, "What's wrong with man?" Take for
example, the train of catastrophes around the world spawned by El
Ñino. A monster El Ñino could not exist without a large hole in
the ozone layer. There would be no hole in the ozone layer without
pollution. From whence came pollution? It came from diverse
sources that are all rooted in man's greed for profit. Many
natural disasters before and after the 1997 El Ñino also find
their cause in global warming—the mischief of ultra-violet rays
escaping through this hole in the ozone layer.
The extreme toll of human life
accompanying other natural catastrophes have often been aggravated
by man's selfishness. Over 4,500 lives were devoured in the 1988
Armenian earthquake. Such high casualties were due largely to
shoddy construction of high-rise apartments over a well-known
fault area, again illustrating human callousness. Californians
dwelling over a huge fault area are hoping it won't happen in
their lifetime. When the "BIG ONE" does strike, you will
hear the cry, "Where is God?", but it will be man's
gamble and loss, not God's.
Man has long observed and
recorded the patterns of natural calamities such as floods,
monsoons, hurricanes, etc., yet frequently he chooses not to
respect the danger of these killer patterns. It's well documented
that certain rivers will periodically—every 10, 15, 25 or 50
years—swell over their banks into an ocean of destruction. Yet
thousands continue to rebuild in the path of the inevitable ruin.
Hurricane paths have temporarily obliterated shorelines and
coastal isles. Yet the vanity quest for the ultimate in ocean
front luxury and prestige continues to provide a path of future
victims.
Some disasters could have been
eliminated or minimized if the recommendations of the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers had been followed. Yes, the killer force of
natural catastrophes spirals numerically thanks to human
selfishness and greed. This is one of the many lessons man is
learning from the permission of evil.
Another observation must be made
on the destructive forces of nature. Since the days of Voltaire
(1790s), atheists and agnostics always seized on nature's
catastrophes to loud-mouth "Where is God?" What a
distortion of proportions. Numerically, the victims of natural
disasters pale into insignificance compared to man's inhumanity to
man. Actually these atheists and agnostics need the lessons of the
permission of evil to explode their naive view of evil. At the
turn of the century they were predicting that Darwinism and social
evolution would usher in a 20th Century utopia. What has happened?
It Is Horrific
Remember, Zbigniew Brzezinski's
book notes that the 20th Century became the century of insanity.
In which a 175 million were slaughtered in the name of the
"politics of organized insanity."
It's horrific
— "175
million slaughtered" because of mankind's most bloody and
hateful century. Total all the deaths from natural disasters in
the 20th Century and what do you have? It is a drop in the bucket
compared to man's killing machine of our insane century. This is
what the schooling of the permission of evil is all about. |
