Our Mission Series, The Coming of Jesus is the Good News of Joy and Hope/Chapter 8-A: The Evil That Man Faces

Chapter 8 - A: The Evil That Man Faces

•     In the beginning when God created man, man lived a life God gave him which was already meaningful. God gave him, and to his wife this earthly life whereby they were to appreciate their life including God-given stewardship over all his other creations, both for their own good and the glorification of God. God Himself said His creating them and all the other things of creation were 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 on 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. They could absolutely comply with the condition; and it was by no means depriving them their complete satisfaction and happiness in the life God had given them. Their existence was called 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! These spell out what might be our bottom-line definition of earthly living in any place at any later time of history! 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 the first human beings had all these needs given them, and met with! Indeed they got it made!

But they failed to obey the one condition asked of them by God; and so God punished them, and took away from them the "Godly life they were living, were cast out of that paradisiacal Eden habitation, and were banished to living the imperfect living separated from God, i.e. separate from the goodwill and graces of God.

Ironically, instead, what has befallen them and their off-springs were the human fate of hardships, conflicts, and suffering. This negative character of life on earth is a day-to-day and moment-to-moment story of human existence about which we have elaborated in our Salvation Mission Series.

How only appropriate that human beings suffer on account of their sinfulness. As God, Jesus is above suffering while we as mere creatures are necessarily involved with suffering. Since the fall of our first parents, we, or all their offspring have to suffer anyway. It has become our fact of life. Whether we like it or not, after our first parents’ fall, we have to suffer in life! 

In accounting for the sins men and women of this age, and as a matter of fact, of every age we dwelt a little more lengthily on this topic of sin. We have pointed out how when sinfulness came it overcame the lives of men from the time of Adam and Eve throughout all generations up to their last would-be- descendants before the End-Time. We have, in the other sections of this series, discussed this tragedy of the "original sin" upon mankind, the account about the very first offense of man against God: Adam & Eve’s disobedience of God. It is this curse of "original sin" upon mankind which is the root of primordial conflicts within and throughout existence and world/human realities

It was on account of the Devil that our first parents got into the mess of the "original sin"; the Devil was directly influential at getting Adam and Eve fall away from the goodwill of God. Consequently as all descendants of Adam and Eve inherited the "original sin", continuously, thus, the Devil and all its demons are again at work messing up all human beings born from Adam and Eve. As repeatedly referred to in different chapters of our Salvation Series man or human life has become flawed or made corruptible, both in the physical and psychological/spiritual sense. It was this characteristic of human nature which St. Paul often called man’s life of the flesh. The same reason why he himself confessed of his personal weakness: how no matter how he resisted against it this flawed characteristic of the human nature shamed himself for his natural inability to overcome it; (saved by the grace of God). This is thus, the same ordeal, handicap, or/and death state and predicament each man and human is encumbered with from generations to generations. Prior to baptism all men or all descendants of Adam and Eve all over the world and throughout the entire human temporal existence were, are, and will be beset by this predicament. All of mankind from the beginning of human history until the End-Time is dead spiritually until they are born again in spirit and in water per baptism into the life of Christ. St. Paul preaches about this again and again in his many Epistles. He belabors on and on this antithetical, even contradictory relationship between living in the flesh versus the living in the Spirit, which he also calls living in the life of grace. (All our other chapters in this Salvation Series are inter-related elaboration/explanation about the life of the Spirit or about the life of grace.) In this chapter 9, and particularly at this juncture of this chapter we are belaboring to expound on the meaning and the real experiencing of and by man of the life of the flesh.

With unbelievers and non-believers, this is exactly no other than the living in sinfulness or in sin, which is the main topic of Chapter Nine, a reference to the City of the World, i.e. City of Sinners. Indeed, without grace, or without our being in the state of sanctifying grace, we are dead spiritually. In other words, if we are without grace, then we are WITH sin. Either we are alive in grace or are dead in sin. (It is on account of this dire reality that it is scary and horrible to die unless we are duly receiving of sanctifying grace. What a terrible moment to be at the moment of our death unprepared without grace inside of us!

Like the many other examples, which we try to illustrate herer in Chapter Nine, and the many more which we even much more graphically stipulated here and on the other 8th Chapters, as well in the chapter treatment about barriers to holiness, they are truly but a short list of the seemingly endless prevalent images of life shortcomings human ordeals sufferings, all on account of the sin infected living in this world.  Just picture multi million men and women behaving any second according by their 'weak flesh'; and presto there add those further countless acts of people offenses against one another. 

On the other hand, off hand, the real consolation here for the believers is the grace of faith to have the assurance of the praise-worthy fact that along or together with them, and through the grace power of Jesus, the God-man, human suffering is borne and is truly shared by him precisely as part and parcel of God’s Plan in saving man. This topic has been tackled on in the other chapters of my Salvation Mission Series, or in another venue. But, to repeat what we have stated previously, indeed, directly or indirectly, our examples of suffering are results and manifestations of our sinful nature. And, when the suffering is indeed directly the result of a sinful act like aids, gonorrhea, incarceration or any trouble with the law, most abortions, criminal convictions due to falsification of documents, stealing and robbery, assault and abuse of someone, or any other criminal act, then the suffering is even more painful. The individual is pained by both the punishment and the guilt of the act. And indeed, oftentimes, our suffering is the result of our own doing, whether individually or collectively. At other times, they are caused directly by our fellow human beings even if without any fault of ours. And yet during many other times suffering is caused simply by our being members of the blemished and turned-imperfect creations: the predicament of a thousand fold of human shortcomings. Plain and simple, thus, we are imperfect beings; and our world is an imperfect world. Nothing will seem to be right ever; and nothing will seem to be enough ever. We just have to suffer having to put up with this human predicament.

In the Salvation Mission Series, on the one hand, we have described suffering as this "fundamental phenomenon of brokenness" either within the person or between persons. Through those examples we could decipher the individuals’ experiencing of being cut inside them – whether physically or emotionally, of being torn apart from someone or others, again spatially or emotionally or culturally, and/or of any other similar experience of the destroying of individuals and communities or inter-relations on account of, along with other human shortcomings, natural selfish oppositions or irreconcilable differences. We say an individual suffers when certain parts of his body breaks up, e.g. like bruises, and wounds, or like a broken heart as in hurt or injured feelings. Moreover, individuals suffer when between each other some separateness exists, or conflicts take place. Thus, we could generally denote suffering as human conflicts within man himself, or conflicts with others. Within oneself man is always burdened by fears, worries, and uncertainties that always clouded and foreshadow man’s day to day living notwithstanding any amount of caution and diligent efforts about dealing with them. Then as regards his relations with others, every individual has no guarantee he won’t be betrayed by somebody no matter if he be his/her "best friend" or his/her closest blood relation. The individual selfish interest will always dictate an individual’s bottom-line behaving with respect to others. How sad it is to experience the moment when a promise is broken, or our trust betrayed!

But like we state, from its fundamental Scriptural aspect human suffering is a revelation account related to the "serpent’s"/the devil’s biting of Jesus’ heel, and consequently of each believer’s heel thus resulting in a damage inflicted by evil upon Jesus and upon mankind. We call this both the phenomenon and the mystery of human suffering and Christian-human sacrificing. This is the main brunt of discussion on part 1 of the Chapters on Suffering. In the previous earlier chapters, we put in context how it all began: both sin and the devil are getting into the mix of human and earthly existence. We refer to it as the fall experience and fate of Adam & Eve along with their entire descendant human race. (For purposes of faith we are, however, to bear in mind throughout this chapter discussion of  God’s gratuitous mercy, whereby it has been permitted by Divine destiny how the serpent/devil was to have bitten Christ and all Christians in order that with the "bite’s" death effect upon Christ and the Christians, Jesus Christ and believing Christians are able to manifest Christ’s and the Christians’ victory over that "death-experience" with Christ’s resurrection, and the Christians’ re-birth into the new life in Christ, including their promised physical resurrection during Jesus’ Second Coming.) But to place all of these in context, this serpent’s bite consisted initially in the devil’s successful tempting of Adam & Eve, and Adam & Eve’s consenting to the temptation, which led to their losing their beginning life of grace, divine life, given them in Eden upon creation, and to the consequential banishment into Earth’s sin-tainted natural/human existing, i.e. the total earthly-human predicament of conflicts & suffering. By temporal order Adam & Eve’s conniving with the devil took place first; yet per eternity, the Lord’s being "bitten by the serpent", i.e. Christ’s being ordained to be assaulted by both the devil’s act of tempting of Adam & Eve and our parents’ act of consenting to the devil’s temptation, has been all along pre visited, preordained, and predestined by God’s forgiving love and mercy to have to take place. God knew in all eternity how certain bad Angels would have rebelled, and would have tempted Adam & Eve, and would have seen Adam & Eve yielding to the devil’s temptation. Thus, by God’s omniscient nature, he has known it would take his having to send a Savior to earth to have to save Adam & Eve and their offspring from their having disobeyed him during their initial life of blessedness in Paradise, which necessitated his Divine Wisdom and Divine Loving Mercy to have to provide for mankind a new Divine Plan for union with him via the Son of God’s Incarnation and Redemption of mankind. Hence, the story of this Savior having to suffer and his letting man to suffer with him both as his act of ransoming of man, and as man’s act of retribution for their own sins. Nevertheless, it has been the suffering that, to repeat, would integrally spell out and lead to their salvation in Christ.  This is the paradox of human suffering in Christ. On the one hand, human suffering embraced and borne per the redemptive merit of Christ is the mark of and the condition to our getting saved by Christ; yet on the other hand; human suffering will continue to characterize interval moments of human existence until before its ultimate permanent riddance in the End-Times.  Christ's resurrection gained for man the inner victory over the choice of sin; yet it does not transform earthly existence yet back to its paradisiacal former condition, nor does it bring on yet Christ's promised New-Earth and New-Heaven human destiny.  This will be for later upon Judgment Times, upon the conclusion of saved mankind's pilgrim living on earth.   

Nonetheless and sadly for the unbelievers, their tragic fate to suffer has not any salvific value whatsoever. By their choice, it remains their deal that conflicts of all varieties and with all levels of anguish and pain come across them exactly for what they are: nothing less than the negative non-liberating brokenness, i.e., actually destructive meaningless and value-less agonizing and hurting suffering. The fact is – it is not uncommon among unbelievers/non-believers to commit suicides. Persisting rejecting of God, namely a living that neither refuses to abdicate a public lifestyle of sin, nor acknowledges need for repentance of their sins cast these souls in the cage of darkness, as they find themselves more and more helpless & miserable captives of evil and by all its working. Indeed, "The wages of sin is death", says the Scripture. Like we have discussed in Chapter 4, the ‘un-holy’ living that denies the truth of Jesus Christ and the voluntary disavowing of the truth has got un-believers stuck in un-stopped entanglements with the manacles of evil forces. (In effect, their human activities, in themselves, create and generate all forms and shades of human and social conflicts & damages, i.e. our topic of discussion here). Thus, their abandoning of the truth prevents them from being freed by the truth. Consequentially, for their continuing embracing of sins they heap life troubles and wasted living upon themselves. And under such conditions, they are only become left to their own helpless element. Under the circumstances, they easily turn self-described cynics or pessimists, while stuck and trapped in their unrepentant ways. And for being completely blinded by the deceptions and allurements of evil, they could not care less if they actually cohort with the Devil himself. And it is, truly horrific the most heinous deeds they can be capable of committing, the evil deeds that could cause tremendous wrongs and unhappiness around others but especially upon themselves. Paradoxically and unfortunately, they are the villains making our living on this world even more "a valley of tears". They are often instrumental at creating the unpleasant circumstances in our life whether at work, at play, and even within supposedly familial surroundings.

Really and truly the peace of God surely cannot rest upon such individuals. And under such particularly devil manipulated human environments without the peace of God, there is only turmoil and fear.

But with our reference to Christian suffering as the paradoxical salvation necessity, ultimately for our own good, with respect to this holy dimension, there’s the necessary real act of suffering: the act, or the many, many acts of self-denial: that hardest thing for a man to accept and to do, i.e. to completely abandon his will to God, and thereby deny himself.  For this is the ultimate call of God to every human being, this is again that toughest act for every human being to bear. Indeed Christ spoke of self-denial in the same breath with man's carrying of his cross. Really and truly, self-denial is initially where every man begins to carry his cross, and ultimately where he/she crucifies himself/herself. In many instances of real life, self-denial often involves the act of self-denial in relation to other people that come along his/her way. But it is his decision to completely surrender of himself/herself to the will of God in relation to others that he gets to love God, and be in union with God. This sense of suffering thus is fundamentally the main task and work of every human being all through his/her life. And it is in this sense that the act of suffering is and will be a recurring activity in any human spiritual life. It is clearly an instrument of penance, cleansing, purification, and sanctification for a human being on his track to God and salvation.

Now, some simplistic recapping on the evil behind human suffering.

Number One.

We have discussed about evil and sinfulness in general and their universal manifestations in human lives.

Number Two.

The referencing to the great sins committed by individuals, or people against other people, as well as the sins easily people turn to commit by themselves. These on account of man’s separation from God whether from the point of view of "having", "deeds", or "by what they are, being a man" ALL as in state of separation from God.

Number Three.

Universal effects of this universal separation or disunity with God: the separation between men, including the disorientation between men, and disorder or disunity between men. One phenomenon of human psychosis: physical shame as evidenced and referred in Genesis: human embarrassment about nakedness — implying human "alienation" between each other or the state of separateness between men, e.g. we are ashamed or afraid of being totally exposed to others whether for our looks, our errors or shortcomings, poverty, stupidity, etc..

These also translate in terms of our overall differences and strangeness to each other. The dilemma of marital unity, of sex, of race, culture, of government, etc... Bottom-line, every manner of interrelation or non-interrelating between human beings attest to the struggle in all human relationships or inter-personal dealing. Beginning from essential marriage hurdles, going into all kinds of oppositions and conflicts between two individuals or more man bear witness to the difficulty by men at arriving into agreement or reconciling.

Number Four: The fearsome ‘meddling by the Evil One’.

St. Paul warned us we are ultimately and precariously dealing with an enemy much stronger than humans: the principalities of Evil Spirits, Bad Angels.

Number Five:

Ultimately, evil or sin consists in judging or acting by exclusive natural standard and with the imperfect and flawed human faculties. This inescapably unravels into necessarily time and space constricted perceiving or achieving. Sans the faith element accompanying and even actually elevating the "judging" or "acting" to their fullest dimension and capability, such restricted and faith incapacitated human activities are bound, surely, to reckon with mere temporal and visible or tangible dealing with reality. It can only be surmised how easily and falsely human existence would have become characterized. In other words, atheistic and agnostic attitude and behaving naturally follows under such existentially restricted dealing with reality, regarding with both facts and ideas.

Sans faith and grace, or without God, consequently it becomes an open city for the evil spirits to occupy that realm of human existing. Another way to look at it: the Devil has been given a free hand over the lives of such unbelieving & non-believing people. And to their tragedy, they then have unraveled their lack of God in their lives by the consequential chaotic and troublesome living of their lives. The last paragraph above preceding this synthesizing outline illustrates this dire and tragic effect of a life cast into the power and dominion of the evil spirits.