Simple Question

Spirituality Column #70
March 11, 2008
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

Simple Question
By Bob Walters

Let’s ask the great theological question:

Are we humans basically good, or basically bad?

I’m going to go with “basically good,” because we are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27, 2:7) who the Bible convinces me is a loving and good God, and who – the Bible insists (John 3:16) – desires a perfect and eternal relationship with each one of us.

There’s just that pesky “sinful nature” and unavoidable “death” (“the wages of sin is death,” Romans 6:23) that we can’t seem to shake off.

So, if we are basically good, why do we need Christ? Because we have free will and we sin and we have doubts and we create all kinds of physical and spiritual mayhem all over the world. And because Christ very simply – whether we prefer to believe we are good or bad – is the access path to God.

That’s why He was sent here.

It bothers me to think that Christ would go through the ordeal of the cross if we were basically bad. We must be worth something to God.

And if we are to hope in anything, isn’t “good” hope’s foundation? I rarely hope for anything bad to happen, even to people I don’t like. “Bad” and “hope” just don’t go together.

Plenty of people are convinced that they themselves are the good and that God must be the bad because awful things happen – in the Bible and in the present world around us – and how can a good God let awful things happen?

That, my friends, is a very human – and very flawed – way to see life.

Do we carry Adam’s sin in us? Yes, it certainly seems so. And it is a fact beyond discussion that the curse of Adam’s sin is death; not only of us humans, but for all of creation (Genesis 3, Romans 8:22). The phrase isn’t “fallen humans,” it’s “fallen world.”

There is no sin in the first two books of the Bible (Genesis 1 and 2) nor in the last two (Revelation 21 and 22). The story starts good, and ends good.

As for this time in the middle, it sure is a comfort knowing Christ.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) thinks the point of life is to learn to love God, and each other, no matter what happens.