Chapter 7:  Our fallen life fate that in the beginning was not meant to be!

(Balik Sa Panginoon: Turn Our Ways Back to the Lord)

Balik Sa Panginoon (Back With God)

Luke 4:16-21

Jesus went back to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as usual he went to the meeting place on the Sabbath. When he stood up to read from the Scriptures, he was given the book of Isaiah the prophet. He opened it and read,

"The Lord's Spirit has come to me, because he has chosen me to tell the good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to announce freedom for prisoners, to give sight to the blind, to free everyone who suffers, and to say, THIS IS THE YEAR THE LORD HAS CHOSEN."

Jesus closed the book, then handed it back to the man in charge and sat down. Everyone in the meeting place looked straight at Jesus. Then Jesus said to them, "What you have just heard me read has come true today."

Chapter 7: Because Man has Fallen Away from God, Introducing the Good News of Jesus 

(An introductory topic prior to the presentation of the the Good News of Jesus' First Coming)

         At some moments of your living, my friend, you might surely discover yourself inclined to think the following questions describe your world. Are you among the impoverished, always wanting in needs? Does nobody tender you affection, nobody as to notice you're even there? Are you one of them pushovers to everybody, everyone's stepping stool? Are you ever the follower, never the leader; are you ever the bridesmaid never the bride? Do you always find yourself a stranger even among your friends? Do they look down on you as a moron, and without the least of abilities? Do you find yourself one of them sick all the time? Do you count yourself among the incapacitated, one of them so full of despair? Does nobody ever understand you? Are you tired of life? Do you feel like you never get recognition for any of your efforts? Do you feel so confused and disoriented about what you truly want, or dream? Are you ever so scared be it day or night? Do you feel like nobody believes in you? Are you always frustrated in love? Do you have a hard time at gaining any kind of strength to even move on? Is your life so covered by darkness? Do you find your world and your surrounding like a nowhere-land, uncharted and un-mapped? Are you ever perplexed why in our midst inextricably are the homeless, the jobless, the lonely elderly in care homes, the sick in the hospitals, the incapacitated in mind and in body, the drug addicts, the aids victims, the alcoholics, the sex addicts. Then aren't you baffled about those who are in prison? And about not only them behind prison, but everyone who is a victim of someone's abuse, somebody's muscling authority, the people oppressed by unlawful rules, oppressed by unjust laws? And about those who find themselves prisoners of their passion or anger? Ultimately, aren't you disgusted to realize how everyone is under the enslavement of sins, in the state of separation from our Maker, God such  in the end there' no one or anything upon which you can really rely on ? Don't you loathe the stark realities of sins covering all the reasons and causes of human pain, and suffering. Doesn't all the world overwhelm you being steeped in absolute darkness, and despair?

         Before continuing to move on in this direction of deliberation, like God warned Job against an all out outrage about the miseries of living, we certainly have to acknowledge with unswerving reverence of and gratitude to the Almighty for the most evident fact of existence.  Surely, prior to God's creation, man and nature were nothing.  God has created man and the rest of the being both in heaven and on earth.  The undeniable reality is that man, nonetheless breathes, and retains some faculty of choice, no matter how muddled and weak.  Likewise, including human life, nature remains to demonstrate its wondrous occurrences, both pacific and wild.  And definitely no creature has any right nor ability to contest God per any single remonstrance of defiance.  God is the Creator; and creatures are his subject creatures.

        Nonetheless, aware of man's sin of having rebelled and disobeyed God, we can not but receive the dire and damnable consequences by such pitiable and sad act of human disobedience of the Almighty Creator.  And so as in the above, we only recognize such tragic human and natural consequences.  

        Thus, no one could deny the toils & the drudgery in living; as well as its quite simplistic characteristics! Living is a raw deal at one or more stages of life; whether at the very early stage or midway or at the later stage of life.

         Also, whereas, It is likely that, every now and then life would appear neat, even like a paradise for a good many people, again in certain stages of living. And this depends upon whether or not; or how much more or how much less or least individuals were touched or treated in life with incidental or situational/circumstantial good breaks or bad breaks. Life is indeed puzzling and a mystery. How some individuals seemed luckier than others; while others seemed much more miserable than others. At least during the times when they were lucky, or when they were then miserable.

         Truth is simple, as God is one: a unity without discord like a symphony of music, and is essentially without contradiction! As Author of life and creations His original design and intended 'natures' for living beings are intrinsically all to be in accord with Himself; and they are to be self-evident or uncomplicated owing to His Self Evidence and lack of complicating contradiction! Thus, when initially He made man according to His image, man or man's living was not supposed to be a messed up maze of inconsistencies and disunity. Yet like we have described above, life realities all occur as muddled, even chaotic.  God's simple truths of life have become complicated by the messed up intricacies of the world. 

        However, we can not escape the other face of reality, albeit, an imperfect reality.  For also at any given day, the sky could be sunny, and cotton white clouds could vastly envelope the entire horizon.  Moreover, also on any given day, anyone could wake up with all sense faculties all geared up for action & all suited up to whatever demanding task that is there to challenge him.  And even if the day shapes up to be a long day, anyone could suddenly find himself ever full of energy and spirit to take on whatever calls for yet an ever more challenging in your face type of action and solution.  Another scenario, could be where you are not asking for it, nor did you set the positive tone but where it happens everyone you bump into seems to give you the nicest word or the ever-ready smile you have not at all even deserved.  Then, for somebody it just is the situation where his career-life or love-life turns all so rosy and blossoming.  Bottom-line, from the over-all facets of nature or human life, it remains the basic fact that God has created, and continues to create 'good' things.  Beginning from the simple fact of being given the human life, and from the fact that God has created all the earth for man to subdue and utilize for all his needs fundamentally man has the basic reason to find good things, and to be grateful to the Almighty God for them.  And so we are never in denial of the abundant gifts of God in the world and for the world.  We do a comprehensive identification, and enumeration of the many blessings in life in our Chapter 11, God's ... Blessings ... In the Universe.  And so like it is said in Scriptures, God chose to let it rain or shine upon both the good and the bad.  We just want to establish what we have already said before namely we are not to be in denial of God's many gifts upon mankind, individuals and people.  That is not necessarily the purpose and even tone behind our discussion in this beginning chapter.  With my seemingly negative and perhaps depressingly cynical initial expounding of the theme in this chapter, the readers here find the treatment of the topic presumably biased negatively.  It is possible to be misunderstood, and be blindsided by our given theological predicament of man's inherited effects of the Original Sin on account of the unraveling of human evils, and natural faults  to which man is very vulnerable to fall into or to yield in sans belief in Christ's grace.  So while we fully acknowledge the undeniable and most pervading manifestations of varied forms of human sufferings and evils that pester man's day to day living and existence on account of man's weakened and flawed human will; on the contrary we much more strongly posit and profess causally by the redeeming effect of Christ's Incarnation and Resurrection mysteries the transformed reality, albeit new world, of good things, and  renewed beings of creation.  And so to go back to the top of the sentence in this paragraph, whereas -- like we state above, on any given day, the clouds are dark, and the sun in hiding.  On any given day, we would wake up with our body sore all over, and feeling all kinds of aches or physical discomforts"; on the other hand, likewise, "On any given day, the sky could be sunny, and cotton white clouds could suddenly vastly envelope the entire horizon...", and on and on.  

    But for the sake of an honest and two-sided perspective reckoning about the true face of life, we could, indeed, allow total open-ness to how we can face up to the undeniable great presence of evil or evil manifestations in human living; but at the same time not be blind to how the good, which comes from God, (who forever remains the Maker and Owner of all that is good in creation), and which God continually incessantly dispenses on man's world.  So we are to proceed in fully unraveling this dark side of life below; as we farther below have to fully honestly recognize and establish that this God's world which he has in all eternity planned and secured for man's use and domination, despite the event of man's fall in Paradise, had not become totally emptied and devoid of hopeful manifestations of God's merciful and bountiful ways and means by which man could both survive and continually live meeting all his earthly needs and by which man could find his way back to God according to God's earth related plan of saving the lost man. 

          Proceeding to uncover, thus, as our humble reckoning of man's fallen state outside of salvation yet, very obviously, whether in our place of work, our home, or even our place of worship we would find many not at all welcoming deeds and gestures to truly entitle us to call such special venues our place of worship, our familial domain, or our comfortable resource of livelihood.  It is even possible for such place to be completely without even the least spirit of accord or peace.  Even in such places, any given day, and many a given day could turn out to be an unending very long days.  More often than not, human beings that we are, and even granting the best intentions and ideal situations, almost always it happens something turns awry, a conflict suddenly sprouts, or  some backlash develops; or things turn ugly.  The facts of life here seem that it has become the universal fate of all individuals the world over and throughout all of history; even if in varying aspects, degrees, or circumstances, or at a different era or time, or milieu & place to be burdened with what we might call the human 'theological' predicament, i.e. the human fall from God's favor, the state of not having the full union with God, and the state of being, while in this world before heaven under the power of sin and evil. We could always look back what this was; and how it came about, but we remain face to face battling and surviving the hurdling through this theological human flaw.  The voices of the world will persist to vociferously continue to confuse hearts and minds of people to deny this “human theological predicament”.  For, surely and principally the Prince of this world, the Devil, will orchestrate his minions, both of the spirit world, and from among men under the power of his possession, at telling the world and persuading the world there is nothing wrong in the dog-eat-dog culture practiced between people of the world.  They are to employ all the subtle means at getting people to accept all lies and deceptions in human behaving.  They would get consenting people to commonly think and believe there is no such thing as sin, there is nothing that should make people feel guilty no matter all manipulations and abuses done between one another. 

       Further elaborating, thus, on the one side, this is how  unfortunate human predicament runs through the thread of day to day living, and how it spells out the diverse unpredictable messes it has caused and woven into the fabrics of inner human life, and inter-human social conflicts. Thus, with reference to the lying job worked by the evil spirits upon people, there are individuals who probably somehow entertain the belief that they do  not perceive, nor believe they can be touched at all by life’s prevalent ordeals and shortcomings. Whether uniquely buffered or insulated against evident pathetic human/social conditions; or uniquely undisturbed within themselves by any human complexes of some kind is to give them the benefit of the doubt. Possibly such individuals or people might have been conveniently “parochialized” into some level of coziness and comfort their life seem all very conventionally regimented and protected; protected particularly against the humanly and socially embedded messiness of living, to some artificial degree, and very temporary state of affairs. These individuals or even people very easily confirm and even lament “other” people’s or “other” individuals’ culpability and shortcomings; but hardly contemplate the same character or inner errors or even tendencies in themselves. They are so full of themselves they could only see the problems outside of themselves; their main preoccupation is to correct the societies outside of their own. This is that metaphysical shortness of perceptions and admissions accounted for by these people’s/individuals’ seeming exhibition of self control and self affluence, wit, and gaiety; maybe precisely on account of their having become so engrossed with the world’s conventional fun, pleasure, and non-stop ‘busy-beeness’. Whereas they could possessed with some degree of innocent and simple care and commitment to provide succor and resources; nonetheless theirs' is that humanitarian messiah-ship demeanor and orientation of seeming superiority over them lamentable and sorry bunch of people. They admirably project all the desires for development and progress or perfection in all facets of society and living; and they exude that impossible defeat or failure mindset. These individuals could even be, by Pharisaical imitation, leadership people of the Church, who seem to portray themselves excused from the need of the help they are teaching their flock. A type of these people, and people behaviour have been exemplified early on in the generations of human race. During the olden times, even of the Old Testament people and times, we remember the people of Babel. They had found themselves to be a new breed of the human race in that after becoming content with their accomplishments, they had thought of validating and proving their self enhancements and laurels by attempting to erect what they figured to be an endlessly towering edifice to build on and on. They had imagined so long as they persisted and moved on such an unending towering edifice was all feasible and possible. They had become divinely thinking and conniving. They had made themselves some gods. Until they were baffled and checked and disillusioned when suddenly they found themselves unable to comprehend each other as each other was mysteriously made to speak strange language. The Babel human experience! In the extreme, some group of people who had absolutely deluded themselves into esteeming themselves and totally believing in their supposed exempt human racial superiority were the self professed Aryan dominant race of people associated with the promoters of Hitler’s Nazism.  Thus, the paradisical capabilities, provisions, and order of creations about them were all taken away by God because Adam and Eve disobeyed God's one condition for them.  On a grand scale, Adam and Eve's act of disobedience not only cost them the loss of all human and material provisions. It cost them that most important good given them by God, namely the human innocence towards evil. Before their fall indeed it could be said of them that they were able to see no evil, hear no evil, and talk no evil! For then they did not know evil. Hence, man did no evil, and did nothing wrong. Everything they see around them was good according as God had ordained Paradise for them. Until they disobeyed God. Thus, because they disobeyed God, they had become culpable to God, and then found out they had lost the favor of God. So when confronted by God for their disobedience they found themselves naked and nakedly embarrassed! In other words, they found the effect of disobedience to be the degradation of their human nature, both externally and internally. Externally, we have mentioned the above effect of material impoverishment. God explicitly condemned them to inescapable physical labor as the requisite for subsistence. Hence, the words: "Out of thy sweat, shalt thou earn thy bread!" It was also pronounced to become a painful physical labor even for the woman to give birth to her offspring. Externally and internally most everything in living shall become a labor. But specifically internally, they had lost the divine innocence or state of guiltless-ness. Hence, they and their off-springs had become most susceptible not only to judgments in error but to outright injustices and criminal behaviour. E.g. their first son killed their second child. On and on, they and all their off-springs had become prone to committing all sorts of evil, i.e. the mark of the so-called original sin, or the human state of sinfulness. Inside and out, human living had become a perpetual story of people struggling against each other, and against flawed natural conditions of livelihood. Man's existence had then become an ordeal, a particular human predicament God had not meant for them but which the first human beings chose to befall them and their off-springs.

         Yet let us, on the other hand, go back and refresh ourselves of the other initially and fundamentally God-intended and willed destiny and heritage for man under the two contest of immediate post creation and post redemption mysteries and plans of God re human and world living according to God the Father's eternal loving and providing providence and wisdom. Thus, from the point of view of creation's beginning, let us recall how and why, from the outset, God created man. Man lived a life God gave him which had a meaningfulness. God gave him, and to his wife this earthly life whereby they were to appreciate their life accepting stewardship over all other creations of God for their own good in glorification to and of God. God Himself said His creating them and all the other things of creation was good. And Adam and Eve surely saw they had a very good deal from God for themselves and their would-be off-springs. Their life was practically an absolute bounty! As God's chief creatures of earth they were well endowed with everything they would need and want as human beings. But because they owed their creation from God they were limited by one condition of God, a condition that God emphatically told them shall greatly displease Him if broken. When they were absolutely complying with the condition, which, by no means deprived them of their complete satisfaction and happiness, the life God had given them, their existence, was absolutely a Paradise. They were not to get sick; they were incapable of worrying about any necessary provisions or wants'; and they were not to die! Everything about Paradise spells out what might be our bottom-line definition of happy and contented earthly living in any place at any later time of history! And, whereas, in our worldly parlance, we tend to hear, and think, what people say would make them happy and content in life: "If only I have all the money in the world that I need!" "If only I'll never get sick!" "If only I have the most beautiful/most handsome/strongest mate in life!" And surely, our  first parents, the very first human beings, had all these needs given them, and met with! Indeed, they got it made.  (Now, unfortunately for them, and their off-springs, all of us, they chose not to comply with the one condition of God. And so their Paradise was taken away from them by God; or their paradisical human living was reduced to just mere human existence. The stability, permanence, genuineness, and orderliness of living, whether with respect to the internal human traits & potentials or with respect to external biological & environmental human habitation & exploiting have become limited and relative by changeableness. Before the fall, our first parents all the animals in the paradise were probably upon their easy beckon call and command as they were made by God during creation masters of God's creatures. This changed; whereas humans still exercise some dominance over the animal species, nevertheless we know very well man has to be extra wary and clever with them: lions, and the sharks, including the snakes. Physically and outwardly, Adam and Eve were probably 'perfect' physical specimens but with the fall experience psychosomatically transpired within them must have been an internal re-structural 'genes inter-reactivity causing them latent biological unpredictability towards the begetting of the potential varied types of human off-springs that might explain the diversities of the human race. Also, Adam and Eve were probably kind of 'Einstein-like' about their mental acumen but for the same phenomenal eventuality of the fall experience many of their off-springs, obviously, would not be; hence, the reality of humans all over history & places being born with a greater or lesser degree of congenital physical syndromes typifying the different levels of IQ's of people. Then, that element of good naturedness; some are born moderately tempered, some wild; some are naturally trusting some suspicious; some workaholic, some just plain lazy. Of course, habitat or upbringing has also its 'relative' influence.)

         Nonetheless, woeful and hopeless the new predicament of living it had become for all of Adam and Eve's children; and deprived of the lasting and authentic qualities of meaningfulness, human existence, as we shall later expound, retained variably and relatively man's natural gifts and faculties (Re: A Chapter On Earthly Material Blessings). Internally and externally, man's possession, exercise, and minimal enjoyment of them would be dependent upon individual and sociological fates and destinies. But, indeed certain men and women might be led to be content with them; and sadly might tragically embrace an attachment to or even espouse themselves into worship of these mere goods of the world. The extreme eventuality of this behaviour is referenced to above with the illustrating of some types of people or people mindset of themselves.

         Indeed, (and this is the main flaw attributable to the fall experience), man will not always choose to opt for what is good. Either he/she will not want to do anything at all, or he/she will not choose to do that which is good, or/and he/she will not decipher what is good for him/her. However, thanks be to the Heavenly Father, at the very least man retained that faculty to will or not to will. For this minimal existential prerogative and for 'all those' other residual physical and mental as well as ambiance possibilities of existence, some individual human beings, like we state above, force and delude themselves to the referred-to-sort of contentment and complacency. Perhaps, for at least a lifetime? Depending upon how much 'lease' of mercy God allows him/her/, or these some individuals?

         Yet, this flawed human act of choosing was and is nevertheless the only threshold, (insignificant as it is without the working of grace), by which Adam and Eve, and their off-springs were and through time to be enabled to receive the FATHER's PROMISE. Through Christ and by the Holy Spirit a later covenant with the Father, and therefore a later REDEMPTION OF MANKIND from the above wretchedness into the temporal LIFE OF GRACE , and the eternal LIFE OF BLESSEDNESS after judgment time in the NEW HEAVEN and the NEW EARTH was/is to be availed and offered in faith to the men and women with open hearts . (This is the Good News, which we are to re-tell, and re-share, and re-expound ON THIS venue on the internet via this website.)  Please be assured our fullest retort and answer to our own describing and acknowledging of the despicableness in living shall be completely addressed and vindicated by the more extensive chapter discussions and presentation of the yet meaningful life God has destined man to live, and begin to appreciate even if still we have not reached the perfection of Christ's promised heaven yet.   

         And so my friends, to you and I, who honestly accept being beset by this overwhelming predicament of being part of the fallen people of God, if you and I would only embrace the Lord's message, "behold, and see here His response to all your problems and predicaments!" And as the evangelicals loudly proclaim: "Christ is the answer!", it is in this context that our specific verses pertaining to Christ's coming unveil THE GOOD NEWS for every man in suffering. Christ came to deliver everyone in bondage because of sin. Jesus' words, and Jesus, himself THE WORD made flesh is our FREEDOM. He is our only recourse to be free. Jesus, thus, creates and points to a new kind of world order. Jesus restores even more what our first parents lost by of their fall. By virtue of Himself, the Good News Himself Jesus is making real, and visible a world where light conquers darkness, where faces of the new life spring replace the many looks of despair. As yet Jesus makes us await for the new heaven and new earth till the end-times with the final restoration of the old order of total human union and bliss with God both spiritually and materially. Essentially, however, Jesus' promise of reconciliation with God brought forth by his coming is already accomplished; it is now here upon us. Upon Jesus' rising from the dead, Dimas, the good thief, along with many dead just Israelite Jews waiting in limbo went up to heaven with Jesus; as from then on more and more holy Christian believers have been taken to heaven; and more and more christian followers in the world have continued to believe. This is the mission message we are proclaiming and explaining here! And it will be our recurring theme on these web pages, particularly on this sub-section on "Jesus, Our hope and Joy!"