If you look in the upper right-hand corner of the home page of this blog, you’ll see a photo of my favorite writer, George MacDonald, along with my favorite quote of his.  It answers the question of, “What does God really want from us?”

Sin is doing wrong.  Some sins don’t make you a bad person.  A lot of sins make you suspect.  Our preachers remind us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) So God knows that all of us are going to sin, right?  So why hold us accountable for sins that he knows that we are going to commit; even the same preachers point out that we are born into sin, that we have sinful natures.

And if Christ died for all of our sins — past, present and future — doesn’t that really mess with our minds? I don’t really want to sin, but, oh well, at least it’s covered by the blood of Christ.  Can it be that God would actually like for us to NOT sin, period?

Would it help our children not to sin if we would just die?  I don’t think so. How about if we select one of the little sinners and put him or her to death for the sins of all of the rest?  Oh, right.  The sacrificial child would have to be sinless.  But what difference would that make if the rest of the kids are going to continue to sin anyway?  Wouldn’t it be better if they could be disciplined in order to learn how to NOT sin? Isn’t that possible?  Can’t God do it?  Isn’t he the Father of us all?

And if said discipline could be executed in this life and the next, then what’s the purpose of the cross? Jesus said to “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)

Now that sounds like a plan.

Punishment is the bad thing that happens when you do wrong.  It can come by the hand of fellow humans or by the hand of God.  It can also be self-inflicted.  No matter how it comes, it hurts.  The hurt can often bring resentment or revenge.  But can punishment ever be good?

Our justice system is designed to make punishment a deterrent — that is, if you’re punished for a crime, then you are less likely to do it again.  Unfortunately, most criminals in our jails are repeat offenders.  And this doesn’t even count for the number of crimes they got away with.  So the punishment merely takes them out of society for awhile until they have served their time or until they convince parole boards to release them early.

Before I go any further, let me say that I am not aware of anything that I have done that should put me in prison.  So why should I be punished?  Because I believe that God’s punishment is just and is used by him to discipline us.  It certainly can include punishment by others, but God is the Master Planner.

It is natural for a person to not want to do wrong in order to avoid punishment, especially if he or she has felt the sting of punishment.  But God doesn’t want that for us.  He punishes us to get our attention. It is his desire for us to be able to recognize where we have gone wrong, so that we may set it right. And not only are we to set it right, we must condition ourselves to not repeat it — not so as to avoid punishment, but to consciously want to do the right thing — because we are his children and want to be like him.

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My conviction is, that, near or far off, in ourselves, or in our ancestors — say Adam and Eve, for comprehension’s sake — all our ailments have a moral cause. I think that if we were all good, disease would, in the course of generations, disappear utterly from the face of the earth.

What a remarkable concept! I had read this story several times and obviously overlooked this gem. All of Christianity is pretty much in agreement that disease and death were a result of the “fall” in the Garden of Eden. But what if Adam and Eve weren’t kicked out of the garden because they had sinned, but rather because they continued to sin? And this started the pattern of sinning that they passed on to future generations.

Disease, then, is directly connected to practiced sin — whether outward or hidden. Does that mean that a person’s sickness is an indicator of personal sin? The greater the sickness, the more sin present?

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How did we come to be so bad?  Some folks don’t seem to be so bad, some are more consistently bad, and still others appear to be ”rotten to the core.”  As the saying goes, “Nobody’s perfect.”  Why is that?  Is badness contagious?   Does the Devil always make us do it?  Or do all of us have varying quantities of bad genes?

In the religious circles we’re taught that we can’t help being bad, that we’re born that way.  Ironically, they also teach us that our badness destines us for destruction — even though it wasn’t our fault.  We were born that way, right?

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What are you free from?  Are you free from any authority figures around you?  Not likely.  Can you do ANYTHING you want (within your ability, of course)?  Sure.  But expect some of those things to bring responses or consequences.

For the purpose of this discussion the question is, Does God make us do what he wants, or does he give us the authority to really choose — even if it means to reject him — FOREVER?   

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