Disfunctional Families and Actions

 

Pardon Me by Norman Rockwell, 

appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on January 26 1918. Oil on canvas

This Norman Rockwell painting is owned by Stephen Spielberg, but this graphic is in the public domain. Rockwell painted America as he saw it, and Saturday Evening Post carried it across our country. To us it depicts moments out of American life across decades. Somewhere across those decades, American life became quite dysfunctional. From a Google query:

A poll by Fox News found that 81% of Americans view the country as a dysfunctional family.

Public Perception and Polling Data

Country as a Family: 81% of respondents in the poll described the U.S. as a dysfunctional family

Since that fits my criteria of this being a family discussion, I won't give the remaining responses of being on a wrong track and the show of broader dissatisfaction. Back to yesterday's analogy of toes being stepped on, we have much more than the tender toes of a young lady. So let's take a look at sin.

Sin is disobeying the will of God. First earth creature to do that was in the form of a snake, according to Genesis 3. It lied to Eve. Eve was the first person to believe the lie and not only do what God said not to, but shared her thought process with her husband, who joined her in doing what God told them not to do. 

It was a simple request - do not eat the fruit from that tree. The result would be death. 

As any of my readers would agree, we know exactly what it is like to not understand what the exact consequences are to our actions. I wonder if Adam or Eve truly understood what "thou shalt surely die," meant. Did their lives ever see death? They were in Eden, the garden of perfection created by God. They walked with God in the garden in the cool of the day. What was so important about that fruit?

Same things that become important to us simply because it caught or attention and we wanted it. That is temptation. Giving in to temptation, acting on our desires and not God's instruction is sin. 

Sin is not following God's instruction. 

So why do we have such problems? God has inspired men to write what sin looks like. We can recognize it from Paul's writing:

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,  And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. (Romans 1:21-32)

That's a long list of sinfulness. Verse 32 affirms that people know the result of sinning, and do it for pleasure. Eve would understand that:

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. (Genesis 3:6)

Jesus changed the results of sin by becoming the sacrifice, but he also gave the instructions that can keep us aware and away from temptations:

Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:36-40)

Everything else in the Law and the messages of the prophets falls within following these two - love God and love people. How difficult is that?

Very difficult, because Paul continues a little later:

“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;” (Romans 3:23)

That means me, you, and everyone alive today. Definitely falls under the "whosoever" of John 3:16:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:16-18)

Oh, you didn't expect the following two verses? People seem to forget them a lot. It is very much like giving your child instructions, then telling them the consequences. IF you do this, THEN this will happen, or ELSE something bad will happen. 

Almost twenty years ago I used those programming lines in a blog - July 5, 2008 - and if you look at it, I've been giving out this same message since long before that date. God has been giving the exact same message for eternity: If you believe, then you are safe, or else we will be separated for eternity.