The Way We Are
The world in which we live is crazy. Sometimes it seems as though societies have gone totally mad.
For example, on July 16, 2008, Israel returned four living, breathing terrorists and the remains of 199 others to Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist organization. What did they receive in return?The corpses of two Israeli soldiers who had been captured two years ago.
One of the terrorists had murdered an Israeli police-man along with another man and his four-year-old daughter—all in horribly grisly ways. The four freed terrorists received a Palestinian hero’s welcome and vowed to continue fighting for the eradication of every Jewish person in Israel and ultimately the world.
Meanwhile, two young newlyweds from Wales enjoying a two-week honeymoon in Antigua were murdered when their cottage was invaded.
Each night on the news there are countless reports of murder, rape, child abuse, and heinous crimes too vulgar and disgusting even to describe.
Yet the world believes people are inherently good and that things are improving. After all, that is the premise of evolution. But the reality is, as science long ago stated, things left to themselves degenerate. They do not improve. They suffer entropy, or break down, and become completely unrecoverable. Such is the case with humanity. Scripture says that people who refuse to submit to God become degenerate in their thinking and perverse in their practices (Rom. 1:18–32). Consequently, they corrupt the political, social, moral, and ethical fabric of our society and produce the horrors we read of daily.
In the beginning, man was created in the image and likeness of the eternal God. This likeness has nothing to do with our appearance; rather, it addresses the intangibles: intellect, emotion, and will. Satan deceived Eve, and then Adam disobeyed the Lord’s direct command. Consequently, all of their descendants became corrupt (cf. Ps. 14:1–3).
There were at least two times in history when everyone knew God and his/her responsibility before Him. The first was at the creation of Adam and Eve. These two were the only people in the world, and they knew God intimately. They were totally cognizant of Him and His command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:3). Yet they chose to reject His word. Despite their knowledge, “their foolish hearts were darkened”; and they became fools (Rom. 1:21–22).
The second time was immediately after the flood of Noah’s day. A total of eight people populated the entire world. They knew God had kept His promise to punish sin and preserve righteousness, and they knew they had survived His worldwide judgment.
Yet their descendants rejected the truth, as recorded in the very next chapter of the Bible. In Genesis 11, humanity again rejects God, attempting to come together as a world power under the banner of the Tower of Babel. This pride and self-will come from mankind’s innermost being: the heart. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9).
So here we sit in a world filled with evil because it denies God and mocks those who believe in Him.
Instead of worshiping and praising the Creator, much of humanity prefers to deify itself and revere pleasure, power, and material possessions. How far mankind has fallen from what God desired for it. He desired the best for His creation: “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (Jn. 10:10).
That abundant life comes only from a personal relationship with the God of the Bible and accepting His Word as absolute truth.
