Now for even worse news... One of the main doctrines that sets Christianity apart from all other religions, philosophies, and worldviews is the one that centers around our natural condition. You may have your struggles with the doctrines of Heaven and Hell, but it will be here that you may just hit your breaking point:
- You will either break towards the direction that nearly everyone else in the world has broken towards for centuries in all the other religions and cultures; OR
- You will break towards the one path that will bring you freedom beyond imagination; it will literally make sense out of all your interactions with all other human beings. You will see yourself and other people in a new light, and you will be able to uncover the solutions to so many of the mysteries that have confounded you for so long about human behavior. Crime & punishment will take on a whole new meaning, and your eyes will be open in answering the popular question: "Why do bad things happen to good people?"
You will find that in every religion, every psychological theory, and every human philosophy there is this dogmatic, long-held belief that every person is really, truly, basically good at heart -- either at birth or way down deep inside everyone who lives. These beliefs will have different variations, but they all come down to the same basic point: We are all good people. Sure, it's way, way deep down in some people; but for the most part, with exceptions like Hitler, Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, we've all got goodness within us. (In fact, it's likely that as you read this, you're probably saying, "Uh, yeah! Duh! That's exactly what I believe! Who doesn't?! I mean, don't tell me you're gonna try to tell me anything different! Are you?!")
Well, again, only one Book, the Bible, describes our condition in the following ways:
- When the first created man and woman, Adam & Eve, broke God's one commandment in the Garden of Eden, their penalty, and the penalty for all those who would descend from their seed, was instant spiritual death, as well as eventual physical death. In other words, we all became the "walking dead," in spiritual terms. (Yes, we're all spiritual zombies, of sorts, not knowing that we're dead and not seeing others that way either.) The Bible also calls it spiritual "blindness." We're in the dark, but don't know it. Or in movie terms: we're in "the Matrix" but, like everyone else here, we don't know we're in it. Got it? You and I are blind from birth to the true spiritual things of God and His Kingdom (which exists, per se, outside "the Matrix").
- Now, many argue: Why do all of us have to face the penalty for a couple of people who lived thousands of years ago and ate some forbidden fruit? The answer is: All of us, in their "shoes," would have done the same thing. We were all there in Adam & Eve. They did what all of us would have done; so all of us inherit the consequences and penalty for their fateful decision, including being born with a nature that naturally wants to serve self first and not live under God's rule. Though He made us to put Him first and designed life under this condition, we don't want that. Life on earth was never designed for people to put themselves first before Him, and all the problems that exist stem from mankind abandoning the exclusive worship of God, the Creator, and worshiping the creation over Him. This is what Adam & Eve wanted in eating the forbidden fruit, and we got what we wanted -- with all of its inevitable consequences. God didn't create robots who would follow His every command, and we chose from the start to "do life" on our own, without Him. And He allowed us to have life our way, against His design.
- As a result of this spiritually dead condition, every one us, Adam & Eve's physical descendants, are born spiritually dead, meaning that we are physically born with an inescapable desire to do all things our own way, in a manner that pleases us and, usually, protects us; and we naturally go against God's built-in design and commandments for living in this world He's created. It's an all-encompassing reality from the womb to the tomb. (Oh, sure! There are no infants who are robbing banks or murdering or committing rape; however, they would if they could, and the same truth describes all of us in every stage of our growth & development -- it's just that circumstances rarely ever call for us to commit such atrocities; yet we'll shake our heads in disbelief when someone whom we thought was a "normal guy" does something really bad, and we'll say, "Wow! He always seemed like a quiet guy. I never would've seen that coming!" or "Whoa! She did what to her kids?! She always seemed like a good mom whenever I saw her!") We're all capable of doing anything evil or bad, if circumstances pressure us into doing something that seemed like the only thing to do at that moment in time -- whether it's to cover our tracks or to stop something from happening we don't want to see happen or whatever other excuse we can think of. Think about it: does any toddler need anyone to show him how to hit someone else when he wants something someone else has? Does any toddler need to be trained how to lie when she's been caught doing something wrong? Who teaches the baby to not follow a parent's direction, even at 6 months young? You see? It's already inside every one of us, from birth. We are naturally self-serving.
- The Bible describes our heart as incurably sick & diseased with sin, full of wickedness, and deceit. While most of us will never commit acts that the majority of others would consider "sick," "demented," or "evil," we, instead, commit acts everyday that God Himself calls wicked, evil, and abominable. We've just learned to "whitewash" these "harmless" sins, like lying, petty theft, hate crimes, and sexual immorality, with great excuses, like: "Everybody's doin' it!"; "Dude, you're like so goody-two-shoes! What's the harm?! Nobody's gettin' hurt here!"; "Who's ever gonna' know? Nobody's watching!"; "The cops don't even do nothin' about that no more. You can't get in trouble for it!"; "If it don't hurt no one, it can't be all that wrong!" or "If it's behind closed doors, it's nobody's business but mine!" OR you may instantly respond, "When have I ever stole anything?! What hate crime have I ever done?! I haven't cheated on nobody!" We too often get caught up in the external crimes that make the news, but God judges us for the crimes of our heart, too.
- God will hold you and I accountable for every impure thought (have you ever checked out a girl or guy in a sexual way?), hateful thought (have you ever been so angry with someone that you wanted to kill them, see them dead, or didn't care what happened to them?), jealous thought (have you ever wanted what someone else has -- their looks, their clothes, their car, their house, their money, their marriage, their job, their fame?), and obsessed thought (have you ever held someone or something up so highly that you couldn't stop thinking about them, collected or created artwork depicting them, or you just had to possess a part of them, no matter what?). It is our nature to only evaluate ourselves on the externals, and our hearts deceive us, trick us, into thinking that we're doing okay so long as we just judge our external actions, and ignore the internal disease. You CANNOT trust your heart! Remember, it's in darkness! It doesn't want the true things of God. It'll fool you every time!
- God says in the Bible that our external actions are only symptoms of our spiritually dead condition. God considers impure thoughts as adultery & sexual immorality, hateful thoughts as murder, jealous thoughts as coveting, and obsessions as idolatry; and though the world holds the firm belief that all of these are harmless and insignficant ("No one gets hurt!"), even one of these sins disqualifies us from ever accessing God's presence in heaven. The problem is, if we're honest with ourselves, we ALL know we sin like this ALL THE TIME. Who are you trying to fool by saying you only do these things every once in a while?! Be honest! You know you act like this, and you think no one's watching or knows what you're like wn no one else is around.
- This true spiritual condition can be seen everywhere, and YOU KNOW IT! But our hearts work tirelessly to convince us on the most unconscious levels: "I'm OK! You're OK! We're all OK!" The Bible says that none of us is OK, and if you make an honest assessment of yourself and all those around you, you know that you see that all human behavior around us supports this premise. While we may also do some good works, even sacrificial ones, even for the betterment of the world, we can't escape the fact that each and every one of us does what's wrong on a daily basis, under even the most reasonable circumstances. You are the problem. I am the problem. We are all the problem. No matter how much love and warmth and rainbows and puppy dogs we muster together, no one has been able to make our condition any better in any society or civilization at any time in world history! No political philosophy or party or worldview has ever made the human condition any better. What's the common denominator? Us! We are the problem! Yet mankind still won't accept this, and keeps trying to make the human condition better on his/her own--with the same dead results every time!
- As the Hell Page says, because of our sinful, spiritually dead state, and according to God's just Law, we are on the path to hell, and will spend eternity there after this life is over.
Sound hopeless?! Good! It is! On our own, it's all hopeless! This life is death, from the start, and there's nothing we can do about it on our own! So, what's even the point of living?! Check out the video below...
