Something VERY Remarkable

I could hardly believe what I was reading in a recent article in last week’s Sunday Telegraph. The article, by Marie Daouda was, essentially, a plea for a return to the Christian understanding of original sin. Two generations ago, she said, people knew what the concept of original sin meant – that there is a force for evil within each one of us which even the Apostle Paul struggled to overcome.

Without understanding and believing this, she implied, we have no grounds for bringing correction into anyone’s life, for modern social dogma dictates that “we are all perfect” and that, therefore, my truth is just as good as anyone else’s truth! There are no longer any absolutes and no plumb lines against which behaviour can be measured or corrected, even in young children. Therefore, no correction is allowable and no-one else has any right to even suggest that anyone else’s beliefs or behaviour are either not acceptable or wrong. It does not need a degree in sociology to determine that society is out of control.

In the article Marie Daouda even said “it is as though the serpent’s promise to Adam and Eve has literally been fulfilled: we are now gods.” And, of course, that means that if we are now considered to be gods, how dare anyone challenge the personal beliefs of anyone in our secular humanistic society. Man has dispensed with the belief that God is Creator of all things and who, therefore, we can freely ignore because man (humankind) is on the throne of a universe that accidentally brought itself into being without God’s involvement. There is no God, no such thing as sin and God’s Word can be safely laid on one side!

None of this is new, of course. What goes around, comes around. The book of Jeremiah, for example, is largely a prophetic lament about the devastating consequences, to society and the land, of forsaking the living God amid warnings of God’s judgments that will follow. A world that has dispensed with, and even despises, God’s truth cannot be far from the point when God is stirred to act.

In his address to the COP26 Climate Change conference in Glasgow, Boris Johnson declared that as far as the need for change is concerned it is “one minute to midnight”. He was, of course, referring to the need for physical changes that man needs to make in order to enhance the future of our planet before it’s too late. But, inadvertently maybe, he was also drawing attention to the Scriptural expectation that the Bridegroom will return “at midnight” (Matthew 25:6).

If only the leaders in the church or believing leaders in the world had the courage to declare the need for the restoration of God’s order, both in the heart of man and in society, maybe those with ears to hear would listen and turn to the Lord. Climate change may be an important issue, but it pales in significance compared with the need for people to have a change of heart while there is yet time, for God has also promised that He will heal the land.

I pray that the article which prompted this blog may be the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, which will in time bring showers of blessing that will turn hearts to the living God, and that there will be a harvest of righteousness in the nation. If the Sunday Telegraph is putting its weight behind the need to understand sin, could it be that the next step will be their declaration of the need of a Saviour!