Wrong Diagnosis

Why is the world in the state it is in at present? What has gone wrong? Why are people doing the things they are doing? Why are there wars and turbulence and disturbance in nearly every country, some visible and most invisible? Why did the massacre take place in Norway last week? Why 40 years of terrorist violence in NI? Why the corruption in governments worldwide? Why so many marriage breakups and teenage pregnancies? What explains the famine in What is happening? What is the explanation?

Well, listening to the important and learned people in society, the politicians and policy-makers, etc, you will be told that the big problem is lack of education, especially for the working classes. Give these people more education, and you will solve the numerous social problems that blight our land. Enable more people to go onto university, and education will solve our problems. But when you educate a murderer, you don’t get a good person, but a more educated murderer.

Others will say that we need better health care. People are discontent because they do not enjoy good health; so improve the health system, and our problems will all be solved. But when provide better health care for people, you only make them healthier to sin against God.

Still others say that we need to come into the 21^st century, and leave behind all those old beliefs that people believed 500 years ago, and 2000 years ago. Get rid of these, and allow people to become enlightened. But when you leave behind the old paths, you embark, necessarily and inevitably, on bad paths.

Then others very confidently affirm that we need to change the way we see things, including ourselves. So long as we see ourselves as sinful and rebellious, we are simply reinforcing negativity; so in order to overcome this destructive negativity, we must see ourselves as advanced animals, as people who have gone to the moon, split the atom, discovered DNA, and have discovered the capability to send men into space for months on end. We are great people, and the human race is developing and improving with every passing day. But when you change how you see things, you don’t bec a better person, bec it depends entirely on what you change to!

Still others will tell you that man is just an animal, a more advanced animal, but an animal nonetheless, and nothing more. And when man dies, that’s it. As a tree falls, so shall it lie! Nothing beyond death. Therefore life has no meaning, no pur, no point. So, if man is no more than a meaningless animal, what’s to stop him committing suicide?

Yet, the sad reality is that with all our modern technological and scientific advances, we are still essentially the same deeply flawed people that humans always were. Crime is still a big and growing problem; sexual promiscuity is a multi-million pound industry; corruption still dogs the steps of every institution; and mankind still cannot live at peace with its fellow human beings.

How are we to explain this obvious phenomenon? Is there an explanation, and what is it? Has the Bible anything to say by way of explanation of our present state of affairs?

Well, strange as it may seem to some people, it has all the answers; it alone can give a proper diagnosis and explanation of our present predicament. Indeed, the whole Bible presents the only adequate explanation, and some passages in particular give the answer very clearly. Let me take you to two of these, which are two of the most important passages in the whole Bible – Gen.3 and Rom.8. What is it that provides the reason why things are as they are today? Only one thing – the Fall of man. When God made man, He placed them in Paradise, in Eden. They were given freedom to eat whatever they wanted, and there was only one prohibition – not eat to eat from the tree of god and evil. And the penalty – they would surely die.

But what did Adam do? He disobeyed God’s Word to him, and ate the forbidden fruit. He listened to, and obeyed, the devil’s message, rather than God’s. He saw the devil as a better guide to happiness than God. Devil promised wisdom and knowledge, but God restricted their movements! The devil gave them freedom, but God took away their liberty. So went devil’s way.

My dear friends, there is one great lesson from all this: liberty gained by disobedience to God is bondage.