Am I A Monster: Challenging Original Sin

How we define the human condition and why we sin will effect the way the gospel is preached and the way someone who believes the gospel views their sin. There is a difference in saying, “Without God, I am a sinner” and “Because of Adam I am a sinner.” To an unbeliever, to say, “Without God, I am a sinner” conveys that God’s purpose for humanity is that we be united to him and he with us. To say to an unbeliever “Because of Adam, I am a sinner” conveys that humanities need for being united to God through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is some kind of patch work, humanity united to God in the New Covenant sense becomes contingent on the effects of the fall. It puts forward that the work of Christ was necessary and planned from eternity only because everyone was corrupted in Adam.

There is a serious confusion here. If Christ came merely to undo what was done by Adam, then why will our glorified condition be different from Adam’s supposed original state. We will have no desire for marriage in the new heaven and new earth, Adam did have a desire for marriage in his original condition. We will be impervious to temptation in the new heaven and earth, we will be incorruptible, Adam was not. There is a mix up with our definitions. We are confusing “redemption” with “restoration.” Redemption does not mean restoration! To restore means “to bring back to an original state.” To redeem means “To buy back," “To free from captivity by payment...” God’s work of redemption is not a work of restoration. From the beginning, God intended that Adam and those after him should attain to an immensely greater state of existence than what Adam was, and we are. Even if the Serpent were in the new earth, he would have no hope of swaying any from their state of perfect righteousness. That is the promise of the New Covenant. That God has put his Spirit in us, and by his Spirit in us he is causing us to fear him and walk in his statutes.

To “restore” means “to bring back to an original state.” To redeem means “To buy back,"
“To free from captivity by payment...” There is nowhere in scripture where God or anyone speaking for him claims that God desires for us to be restored to the condition of Adam before he sinned. However, God has said numerous times that his plan is to redeem us, to buy us back from our slavery. Slavery to what? Well, rather to whom, the “whom” being the devil. We were once children of the devil. The devil was our master because we gave our “members” over to serve him. We were enslaved by him, captured by him to do his will. As Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:2 “in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—” So why did we once live in sin? Is it because Adam sinned or is it because we followed “the prince of the power of the air”? It isn’t that some are tempted to sin by the devil, but all are. All who are living in disobedience, whom Paul refers to as “the sons of disobedience,” are being worked on by the spirit he calls “the prince of the power of the air.” How about 2 Timothy 2:26 “and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.” So those who walk in disobedience, who are not living a life of repentance, are captured by the devil “to do his will.”

Now how did God redeem us from the devil? Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:7 “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,” So we are redeemed through the forgiveness of sins accomplished by Christ’ death on the cross. This redeems us from the snare of the devil because it was in-fact the wrath of God which turned us over to the devil. God could just forgive us of all of our sins without us ever asking, and keep the devil away from us and keep us for himself, but God, in his perfect righteousness, cast man out of his presence, to do the will of Satan, turning man over to his own wickedness to follow the devil into further wickedness, so that wrath is stored up for both man and devil, to be revealed on the day of judgment.

How does all of this effect the way we preach the gospel and see our sin? How does not having an inherited corruption from Adam, but in-fact having the same nature which he was created with effect the way we see both believers and unbelievers? There are two key effects that this has, or it ought to have. First is that we are not bound to our sin by nature, but our sinning is rather a result of ignorance, which is causing those who remain in ignorance to go deeper into an insanity that will prove suicidal in the end. The second, and most important effect that this ought to have on us, is that it ought to convince us of our desperate need for being united to God by the Spirit. This is what man was created for. Adam needed the indwelling Spirit, and so do we. Without the Spirit, we remain in ignorance and have no hope for doing good, and no hope for eternal life.

In my part time work, working with elementary school students in an after school program, I have come across emotional conditions in children that I hadn’t expected to see at such a young age. Children younger than ten years old using sharp objects to cut themselves, children expressing that they have had thoughts of suicide, children overwhelmed with loneliness, and one young girl who is especially dear to me tried to write the word “Monster” on her forearm with a scissors. When I asked her why she had done that, looking at the raised mark in the shape of an “M” on her arm, she simply said, “Because that’s what I think of myself.”

She thought of herself as a monster because of some guilt she was dealing with, and that guilt led to her defining herself by her actions. In most cases that is sound. Someone who steals is called a thief, and in general, someone who breaks the law is called a criminal, and they are called so because they have set their mind to continuously commit lawless acts. However, it is a wholly different thing, when a person, who in their immaturity, wrongs another person, or commits some kind of sin, and because they are tired of trying to be a better person, they simply come to terms with the fact that they are as this young girl referred to herself, a “monster”, and in coming to terms with their label, they repeatedly commit the same acts. A person who defines themselves as angry simply says, “that’s just the way I am.” Many who define themselves as “angry people” hate themselves for it, and their guilt instigates more angry outbursts, only to seemingly confirm and advance what they believe they are, until they someday reason their way to being content with their anger, and justify it as necessary and maybe even good.

Is this true? Are we “monsters”? A social worker would sit down with a child who labeled themselves such a thing as “monster” and would try to talk the child away from thinking of his or herself in such a way, and no one in their right mind would say that the social worker was wrong. No sane person would abject and say that the social worker ought to confirm the child’s self hatred. Why can we agree on this? Why don’t we just look at the child and say, “Well you have an inherited corruption and that’s why you are the way you are.” We wouldn’t do that because we believe that like all, this child can learn that not only will he or she do things that will hurt others and make them feel bad, but that we can work on our dealings with others and on ourselves so that we can be better. Now of course, this response seems wholly un-theological, as most teachers and social workers would not be able to bring God and the gospel into the situation except through private prayer, but no one would judge a teacher as speaking wrongly who told a child that everyone makes mistakes, and that we can grow and become better.

Where does the theology part come into this? It comes in the fact that we are created in the image of God, with the capacity to be joined to him so that we would become what we are meant to be. We might say that a lamp with no lightbulb is useless for it’s purpose. That without a lightbulb a lamp cannot possibly do what it was made to do. We would not say that the lamp is trash. It’s worthless to someone who needs light to read in a room that’s pitch black, but saying that it is corrupt and that’s why it doesn’t work sounds ridiculous. Human beings are lamps in need of the light. We are an apparatus for holding up the light, but we need someone outside of us, greater than us, the light himself, to join himself to us so that we would do what we were made to do. Without God uniting himself to us, we are hopeless to be and do what we ought to be and do.

Now does this mean that we have some intrinsic value that we ought to be proud of and ought to help us feel better about ourselves? To an extent, yes, and to another, no. Yes, because it is a great thing to be human, and if we have hope in the hope of the world who is Christ, then we know that he is shining his light through us, teaching us, conforming us to his likeness, making us lamps without shades, shining his light without anything stealing from his brightness. We have the capacity for such an awesome calling, and it truly is awesome and uplifting. However, we know that the light is Christ, not us. It's his glory that we shine forth, not ours. So no, because it is not as if this places a certain value on us that compels God to save us. He loves us because he loves us, not because he ought to love us, but because he has chosen to, and remains completely free from being compelled by anyone or anything but himself.

Now someone might abject here and say, "Surely someone like Hitler was a monster!" I would say he was a monster in a sense, but not as if he had been born a monster. Men like Hitler become monsters by believing certain deceptions. We can see this clearly through examining any criminally minded persons motivations. A thief steals not out of necessity, but because the thief perceives stealing to be a means to some sort of satisfactory end. Liars, adulterers, fornicators, murderers and genocidal maniacs, they are all motivated to do these things because they truly believe in those things. They believe that by doing such things there is some kind of end that is satisfactory. The end of the act which they seek to commit is the justification of the act itself. It is not that these were born monsters, but became so through ignorance, believing the lies of the devil, that evil and disobedience will give then what they are looking for. But the very fact that they are never satisfied goes to show what they are truly by nature. A monster by nature would be truly content with a monstrous life. Yet, a monstrous life is not fitting for those who live it. Even though there have been many who have travelled far into the depths of darkness, trying for themselves the most heinous sins, their actions never gave them the rest they wanted. If they don't commit suicide like Hitler, then they face some other end which is self-destructive.

We were made for God, and no one is ever satisfied with less than God. Not even the devil, the father of lies, the chief of the damned, not even he is ever fully satisfied. He is always looking for someone to devour, to trap in deception, to take him as their master, and he must deceive more. However many share his fate is not enough. This is because not even the prince of demons was fitted to be filled on wickedness. God created none of his creatures to be satisfied with evil, and since they are created this way, they, to the present time and forevermore, cannot be satisfied with doing evil but can only be satisfied in God. Those who remain in doing evil are not ever satisfied in evil, but they hope in it, they believe the devils lie that if they persist in it they will attain to the desired happiness, their godless paradise.

The very fact that no human being has or ever will be completely happy in anything or anyone but God is a proof that our nature is not changed from Adam's before he sinned. If our nature had become something that was not simply capable of committing sin, but was in-fact particular to sin, becoming a nature that is in itself, not just capable of evil, but evil itself, for such a creature, evil would be a perfect fit. If a creature is by nature evil then evil would satisfy that creature completely, since that creature would be in a sense, made for evil. Yet no creature has ever had their joy made complete in doing evil, proving that no creature was created for evil, nor has any creature fallen into a completely evil state. Many pursue evil wholeheartedly, not because they are wholeheartedly evil by nature, but since our nature is one which begins us in ignorance, and because of our ignorance, we are prone to wholeheartedly pursue evil, being easily deceived into thinking that evil is good.

All evil is faith in false knowledge. It is not a substance or a "thing." It is a worldview, it is blind man believing a snake to be a walking stick. Faith in false knowledge is the cause of evil. Believing that money, sex, food, drink, or religion are what we need, are what will satisfy, those are the branches, the trunk is pride and the root is ignorance. It is out of ignorance of our dependence on God that we become prideful, thinking that we are self-sufficient, and it is out of that pride that we choose for ourselves what we will pursue for fulfillment and happiness. That is what happened in the garden. Adam was not created having all wisdom and understanding. He was clearly not perfected in the knowledge of his dependence on God. Not that God had withheld that knowledge, but Adam had not come to a full understanding of his dependence on God, and so was prone to doubting it, and was open to being convinced otherwise. However, after he sinned, he realized the consequences, feeling the shame that is the absence of God's approval, and he covered himself.

Did Adam become a God hating lover of evil the moment he sinned? It doesn't seem as if that is the case. Rather he proved that all who are born in his likeness will be sinners, since they are just like him, no better or worse. He also proved that without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit according to the New Covenant promise (which he received from God when God told him of a coming savior, and both Adam and Eve believed God, and so it is safe to assume that they were born again, being credited righteousness by faith in the promise), it is impossible for man to live in obedience.

That is our condition. We are not monsters by nature. What we are is lamps in need of the light, without which we will forever live in darkness. We are incapable of doing any good worthy of eternal life, incapable of obeying God, of seeking God, of loving God and others the way we are purposed to. What is missing in those who are "sons of disobedience" is the forgiveness of their sins, whereby the God of all righteousness can justly dwell not with but in man, thus sealing the fate of those who are now called God's children, that they would be perfected in the knowledge of love, forever united to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit.