"I do believe in God 100% of the time. It's original sin, that I
have a problem with."
Hi Mark,
Just forget about original sin for now, and concentrate on the fact that you possess the knowledge that you have sinned against a pure and holy God that loves you with all his heart. You admit that all men have sinned and therefore fall just a little short of an abstract perfection that is stamped on their hearts. Why do we all sin? For the moment we are avoiding the why and concentrating on the fact that we do.
What is sin? It's a disruption between ourselves and the fundamental nature of God. God's nature is the essence of the laws that operate both the physical as well as the spiritual universe and whatever else exists. Once we disrupt this fundamental equilibrium we find ourselves profoundly disquieted at the deepest level of our being which translates into a lack of peace at the core of our being.
An extension of this definition of sin raises the question of what is it that actually causes this disruption between our nature and the eternal nature of God. It is man's lack of trust or faith in God's eternal benevolence in creating us and caring for us. We have gone our own way
It is like saying that we can actually do better for ourselves than God can do for us. We leave the tender caring umbrella of God's benevolence and we attempt to establish our own autonomy. This is the core of all our sins. This behaviour totally breaks God's heart amd tells him he is not needed and that we can do it on our own. So we go forth out of the Garden of God's loving care and establish our own world and civilization. The more we try the more deeply we bury ourselves in the evil complexities of man's self-effort. Nuclear bombs on civilians, abortion, cruelty to the poor, concentration camps, and destruction of faulty DNA.
We have abandoned the eternal and fundamental rules of God and shown distrust in his loving care.
This is the reality and fact of our sins; they have separated us from God.
There is only one way for God to restore this broken fellowship and that is by returning man to return to a realistic trust or faith in the nature, love, and benevolence of their Creator.
This is the purpose of Jesus. He came to restore our trust and faith in reality, love and truth, in God our creator. He first demonstrated his divinity so we would recognize that he fulfilled the promises he had made about himself in the Old Testament and then in the greatest act of love, he gave himself in death on the cross for our sins so he could restore us to a loving relationship of trust and reality in our creator. This is why that little word faith has become so important in the eyes of God--the lack of it is the dominant ingredient of all our sins.
Emile |
