Flawed (2)

 


Someone once remarked that the Bible’s teaching about ‘original sin’ doesn’t need any proof.  The flawed nature of humanity is just too painfully obvious.  We see it in just about every news program and in the headlines of our daily newspapers – to say nothing of seeing humanity’s flaws in our own neighbourhoods... even in our own families.  And – as I mentioned in a previous Blog – we even see it in the flawed characters of the Bible’s heroes.

It’s strange then that there is still this very common misconception that human beings are inherently good.  If we just make sure that we have the right environment in which to live and if only we remove the negative stresses from our surroundings, all will turn out okay.  At the beginning of the 1900s there was much optimism about humankind.  It seemed unshakeably sure that we could create our own Utopia here on earth.

We wish!  Two World Wars later we’re not so confident anymore.  Our optimism about mankind has been dealt some pretty serious blows.  The Nazi death camps and the Russian Gulags have cast a lasting shadow over the idea of man’s perfectibility.  Since then we’ve had the horrors of the Cambodian Killing Fields and the terror of Rwanda.  More recently there has been the destruction of the World Trade Centre in New York, the Bali bombings and the terrorism of ISIS with its carnage in the Middle East and even in the Paris shootings over the Charlie Hebdo Cartoons.  And then there were the Hamas atrocities at the Youth Music Festival in Israel in October 2023 – to say nothing of the rise of anti-Semitism in Australia since then.

Isn’t it painfully obvious that humanity is deeply flawed?  Evolutionists who want to argue that man is basically good and that we’re continuing to evolve in a positive direction really need to carry a bucket of sand around with them to bury their head into.

I reflected on this as I listened to some of the rhetoric from our leaders after the torching of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne recently.  There was much talk about solidarity, about standing together against the darkness of anti-Semitism.  There was much soul searching about the lack of security and why didn’t our leaders step in and speak up much earlier?  No one mentioned that these things happen because human nature is deeply flawed.  No one dared to speak the uncomfortable truth that terrorism is merely the extreme but very natural outworking of the sin that runs in our genes.

So why does our culture not admit the obvious and recognise that humanity is fundamentally corrupt?  Doesn’t every theft, rape and murder... doesn’t every injustice and every relationship breakdown, scream out to us, daily, the obvious?  The problem is that for many people that would be seen as an overly pessimistic view of humanity and a denial of the reality that there is still so much good that happens all around us.

No!  We Christians are not being pessimistic when we speak of the ‘original sin’ that’s passed down in our genes from Adam and Eve in Paradise.  It would be a very sad picture indeed if that was all that there was to be said.  The realism of our flawed human character – that we trace all the way back to The Fall in Genesis 3 – has a wonderfully optimistic counterpoint in the Gospel.  We are again moving into that season of the year when we remember that God sent into this broken world His only begotten Son to deal with that flawed nature of ours and its outworking in our life.  The season of Lent is fast approaching (well, okay, the supermarkets have been selling hot-cross-buns since Boxing Day...!).

It’s precisely our flawed nature that made the crucifixion and resurrection of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, so desperately necessary.  The wonderful good news is that God still changes and transforms lives through the saving work of Jesus Christ, who died to renew a flawed and fallen humanity.

I trust that our Australian society can deal with the scourge of anti-Semitism.  However, what Australia needs more than anything else is what every living person needs: the transforming work of the Gospel of Jesus.  He takes our flawed characters and begins already in this life, the process of making us into something beautiful for His glory.

And He will one day return to restore all things.  That’s worth celebrating again as we move into the season of Easter.

John Westendorp
2MaxFM 23/2/25

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