The Fall

Why do we sin?

Why did God let sin into the world if he is all powerful?

These are simple questions that are often demanded to be answered by many people. Christians just wondering why, and also atheists trying to find fault in God. The bible doesn't explain it. It explains how it happened. But not why.  The simple answer is this. There is no answer. It is simply an intrusion into the world to which no excuse can be given. To answer any questions like this regarding sin would be excusing it and therefore defending sin. Giving it a reason to be. The reason it is sin is because it cannot be excused. 

Of course we all know that sin came from Lucifer. God's most favored angel. And if you don't here is some knowledge for you. Besides God himself, he had the most glory and power in all of heaven. Ezekiel 28:15 states that "Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee." God however did not put him beyond the possibility of evil. It was his own heart that began seeking power for himself and slowly strayed away from the glory of God. He soon led other angels to seek him rather than God. When God asked him to change his ways, he defended himself and his followers saying he had been wrongly judged. He justified his actions by putting the blame on God. When it came to the point of seeking to overthrow God, Lucifer and his followers were banished from heaven. Satan then blamed God for the fall of man due to his unjust restrictions. Which brings me to a quick point. God does not make sin happen. He did not make terrorists fly into the World Trade Center. He did not make Hitler kill millions of Jews. He allows them to happen. Because he has given us free will. He did not make Satan turn on him. He chose to do so because his own heart turned evil. The amazing thing is that even though God has no blame for the fall of man, His love is so great that he sent his only son to die for our sins. 

Why is this important? Because Satan still leads people on in the same way today. When God sends us a message or a conviction about a wrongdoing, we try to justify it, or seek sympathy from others just like Lucifer did in heaven. We often even blame our creator himself for the things that we do wrong. If we could not justify our sins, there would be no more. Think about it. Whenever you sin, you justify it in some shape or form. We always have our own reasoning behind what we do. Since we excuse the sin in our lives, we allow it to be in control. Every time we give a reason we are just prolonging it. I'll give an example of my own. Lust. Whenever I lust over a woman, I sometimes catch myself excusing it. I'll justify it by telling myself that other people do it more than me, or it's God's fault for making her look like that. Satan tempts me to do everything but admit that it's a sin and that it's my fault. It is not possible to stop the existence of sin. It is just as much possible to stop excusing sin as it is to destroy Satan himself. There will be a time for that. But for now we must try to stray away from what Satan does best. And that is making excuses for our sins.

The 3/4 of the bible that we sometimes ignore

I honestly don't even know what to write about right now. I've started like 3 drafts and then realized I've said it before, or it's boring crap that I don't even want to read. So I'll tell you about the new book I'm reading. If you don't read this might be boring and I therefore apologize.

I bought a book by Phillip Yancy (genius) called The Book Jesus Read. It's all about the Old Testament. He breaks it down and talks about what it means to him. But at the beginning, he talks about why it is important. And the preface and first chapter of this book was my favorite part. Who picks the preface and first chapter as their favorite part of the book? Anyway, he talks about why it's important and that's what hit me. Because I never read the Old Testament. From my upbringing, I never thought it as useful. It's just a bunch of stories. Who cares, boring crap, wars, too much information about families. I mean seriously...is it necessary to list every member of every family? Have you read Numbers? The first 4 chapters talk about family records and then Boom! God gets mad and sets a city on fire...yea it's getting good...then they wander around in the desert for 38 years. Chapter 33 has 48 verses, sentence by sentence of where they wandered. That doesn't sound exciting. Not fun. I would rather take that summary and go.

But reading the Old Testament is comparable to reading Shakespeare. Not that anything Shakespeare wrote is comparable to God's word, but the style of reading is similar. If you can find one person who enjoyed reading Shakespeare plays the first time they read one, I would like to shake that hand. When you first start, it's like...I don't understand any of this. It's boring. But when you get into it, and actually start to see a deeper meaning behind it, you fall in love. That's the second best part of the Old Testament. It is so deep that you can't just skim the surface. That's why it's a turnoff to so many people. Because, God forbid you have to actually think when you're reading the bible.

The best part of the Old Testament comes from the question that everyone asks. What is God like? Is he caring? Does he get angry when you sin? All of these questions can be found in the Old Testament. God connects directly to the people. God's word is documented. When Moses wrote the 10 commandments...that wasn't a dream. Or a vision. God was talking to him. God said Moses...write this down. Granted we will never ever come close to finding all of the glory of God and everything about him, we can get a basic...a very basic idea. In the New Testament, the Old is constantly quoted. Take Luke for instance. It is quoted 22 times. Unless I miscounted. Or how about Romans? 68 times. You can't have the Old without the New and likewise can't have the New without the old.

Most people, including me until now, thought that the Old Testament was ruled out by the new. There's no need to read something if there is a new book that takes over the first one right? But the New Testament doesn't replace the first one at all. It builds off of it and supports it. I'm not saying the New Testament didn't change some things. We don't have to sacrifice our livestock anymore to be forgiven and I believe that bacon is delicious and ok to eat. Things changed, but not everything.

Test your knowledge. Name as many 10 commandments as you can. I came up with 6. Maybe 7 but I'm not sure if one a commandment or not. 50 percent of American's don't know that the first book of the bible is Genesis, and 14 percent though that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. 3/4 of the bible is being overlooked. I would say the 10 commandments are pretty important. So does the rest of America since 80 percent believe in them.

This is the bible that Jesus himself read. This is what He quoted. This is what He used when he preached. So why do we neglect it so much and instead find a fitting verse or 2 then ignore it again? 3/4 of the bible sits unread by a lot of people, myself included, because it's either to hard to read, seemingly boring, or we don't think it's important. Hopefully as I start divulging into it more, I will find things that I had before overlooked. Maybe I'll write about that next. If this seems like something you need to do and you need a place to start, go buy this book. I may let you borrow it when I'm through.

-Thanks to Philip Yancey for inspiration and ideas