Religious Idiocy

Religious Idiocy

I’ve never been able to make any sense of some things when it comes to what is generally called, Christianity.  When I say, generally called Christianity, I am referring to any and every expression of it whether accepted or rejected.  Roman Catholicism, Protestants, Reformed, Latter-day Saints, whatever.  All the questions, or confusion, apply.  Let me bring a few of these nonsensical concepts forth.

1. Jesus paid for the sins of the world, but people are still sinning and angering God.

I know, I know, I’ve heard it all – believe me.  But since Paul plainly states in 2^nd Corinthians 5:18-19 the following,

2^nd Corinthians 5:18 And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

It makes me wonder, with God completely reconciled to this fallen sinful world because our sin was paid, how people are still sinning and angering God in the traditional sense of the word?  Again, if sin has been paid, and the wages of sin is death, but Yeshua died for the sin, then rose again proving the payment made, how does sin still exist?

I suggest that what the scripture calls sin and all that Yeshua paid for with regard to it refers to all the conditions resulting from the Fall of Adam.  This means everything and anything whereby human beings naturally cause people to resist God and His will.   However, looking back to the Garden of Eden prior to the Fall, there were two sins that existed before Adam or Eve ever ate the fruit – faithlessness and failure to love.

In other words, Eve chose faithlessness over faith in God and His commands before she ever tasted the fruit in her mouth.  Her heart, prior to eating what was forbidden, decided to follow her own path through seduction but Adam chose to follow his own path purposefully.  We have to wonder if faithlessness, is a sin that cannot be paid for vicariously but because we are made in God’s image, every human being (with the capacity) is responsible for what they choose to believe and what they reject.

Similarly, Adam and Eve both chose acts of non-love in that neither of them chose to love God more than their own will and ways and both of them failed to love each other as they should.  Instead, both of them, before the Fall, chose self-love over the two Great Commandments.  It seems to me that the choice to love, then, whether it be toward God or neighbor, is another action for which each individual is responsible.

Herein lies the point – Yeshua’s sacrifice was for all the deleterious results that fell upon the human-race through Adam’s Fall.   Our Loving Living God is that Good that He sent His Son, the last Adam (1^st Corinthians 15:45) to overcome all of its effects (on the soul of Man.  The physical affects and results remain in place materially).  That said, however, there is no payment for the sin of either faithlessness or failing to love and it is these very personal individual subjectively chosen sins for which all human beings will be assessed in the hereafter.  I suggest that because God has been reconciled to the world as the scripture suggest that He is not angry any longer with the world of Darkness, but maybe He is far more broken hearted by the self-imposed self-will Man continually and willfully choose to live by – just like our first parents.

As a support for this, we do read in the Apostolic Record how the Apostle John describes the only two commandments that remain for people post-Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension, saying,

1^st John 3:23 And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment.