On The Question of how distressing it is to witness such abhorrent suffering as it’s presented on the news, there is a vastly more serious condition than that. It’s a condition which all men everywhere live with daily, and in which many participate by tacit, or covert approval. That condition is SIN.
People may object to the judgmental tenor of a blunt admission of sin, but it is factually observable. We may see a couple hundred women and children die by violence or cruelty in war crimes. National defense doesn’t much seem like “sin.” We may watch in horror as a hundred and sixty thousand people are destroyed by a tsunami or other natural disasters. But these tragedies are nothing to be compared to the casualties of selfishness and sin. Ungodliness wastes more innocent lives than disasters. The ungodly are people who live as if God isn’t there. Their lives are selfish and immoral. They are not just. The people they kill are in the billions, including children.
For example, the homosexual population in the U.S. is currently 16.5 million. They believe there is nothing wrong with exploiting their interests in young people, corrupting and killing many of their victims. Worldwide, the homosexual population is estimated to be around 270 million. That is probably a very low estimate, based on the level of covert activity associated with an unnatural appetite. Although their immorality is not the only cause, homosexuals and drug addicts are the two primary contributors to the spread of AIDS — totaling around 39.4 million people worldwide.
Is God to blame for the rampant lust of homosexuality, or the degenerate indulgence of drug users and pushers? And they have victims — 20 million of them are women and children. In 2004, death from AIDS reached 3.1 million, and 500,000 of them were children! Is God unjust, or is it rather the ungodly people who are given over to immorality and self indulgence? In 1999, the number of people infected worldwide with STD (syphilis, Chlamydia, and gonorrhea, excluding AIDS), ages 15-49 was 116.5 million out of approximately 3 billion adults. The U.S. total was 1,246,852. Sin kills a lot of people.
A litany of sins against children
In one recent year, there were 879,000 victims of child maltreatment (including neglect) and physical, sexual, and psychological abuse. Twice as many cases were reported in middle to upper class white homes than in black homes. 95% of teenage prostitutes were sexually abused themselves. If that wasn’t despicable enough, children with disabilities are 4-10 times more vulnerable to sexual abuse.
In 1999, U.S. records show that there were 3,244,000 cases reported to Child Protective Services. One million women a year in the U.S. are victims of non-fatal violence. 1,500 women are murdered annually by their husbands or boyfriends. 27% of domestic homicide victims are children. 3.3 million children a year are exposed to family violence. 90% of children killed in domestic dispute are under 10. There are approximately 60 million survivors of sexual child abuse living in the U.S. today. In 2002, there were 1,400 deaths from child abuse and there are 140,000 injuries reported annually. Homicide is the single leading cause of injury-related deaths in infants in the U.S. Worldwide, the figures are more shocking. There is a staggering estimated 100,000,000 street children exploited worldwide. 250 million children between the ages of 5-14 are forced to work in third-world countries.
No government has solved the problem
This nightmare of human suffering is all going on underneath our noses, and there is nothing that any of us can do to curb the effects of anger and lust, except in our own lives and with our own families. Perhaps that is why Jesus began his ministry with a discussion of anger, lust, and hypocrisy in the sermon on the mount. No political party has dampened the steady increase of these sins against helpless innocents over the last 50 years. Statistics about human abuse (sin) doesn’t reduce the horrid tragedy of war crimes, or natural disaster, but it sets the perspective that the worst crime of all is self-indulgence leading to sin. We live in a society which actively promotes freedom to the point of inordinate self gratification, and selfishness to the point of criminal abuse. Lots of people die. When human nature is freed, it becomes increasingly evil, as statistically demonstrated. The actions of the perpetrators above are caused by a general condition of moral lawlessness.
The facts of sin speak for themselves. Is God to blame for the sins of men? If He isn’t, shouldn’t He still bring it to a halt? Reason demands that He will. What hope do children have in promises of cloud kingdoms, where soul-minds evaporate to their nebulous rewards in heaven, helplessly leaving behind them the extreme suffering of living human beings? What kind of self-centered gospel is it that promises to rapture saints out of society, burn the earth, and kill all those who suffer ignorantly in it? On the contrary, what other kind of Gospel would come from a loving God besides one that promises to deliver one day the oppressed and their children from selfishness and sin. It is unjust to reject God because of man’s injustice.
The relationship between God’s truth and justice for humanity
- Is the doctrine of the immortal soul a fatal doctrine?
- How can there be such grave injustice as we see in human abuse and suffering?
These questions are related in this way: What hope does a disembodied soul-mind in heaven provide for the people in the statistics above? If all those little children are already immortal when they die of abuse, then why would they have needed to later learn of Christ, had they lived? Or, what is the tragedy of their death, if when killed, their minds go straight to God? Why should anyone mourn for them, if it is death that saves them? On the other hand, if their mind still holds the misery of their tragedy, what peace would there be in viewing the remains of that tragedy from heaven? The only salvation that makes sense is salvation that really ends sin, suffering and death. In fact, death separation cannot be regarded as salvation, because salvation is as Paul said, the hope of death reversal—in the redemption of our bodies.
The true hope
Death is punishment for sin. “The wages of sin is death.” “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” “If any man says he is without sin, he is a liar and the Truth is not in him.” “The soul that sins shall die.” So, if sin is the cause and death is the effect, then most of the tragedies we experience in the miserable condition of our world today are the fault of human beings — not God’s injustice. What we experience as good in life all comes from God — even the good that we may do. But we can’t blame a mythological Devil for the evil that men do, and we certainly can’t blame God for human pride, anger and lust. Humility requires confession of our own sins before God. Salvation requires deliverance from death by resurrection. Justice requires that no one who has ever found favor with God will remain dead. They, like Christ will come back to life. The only hope of deliverance from the horror of war, the tragedy of disaster, the abomination of abuse, and the disgust of immorality is the return of Christ; the kingdom of God. From the beginning, God has promised to deliver the poor, the needy, the oppressed, the faithful, and the meek when the Messiah comes to deliver Israel, punish the oppressor, and save the world.
This is the only gospel in our world that provides any hope to humanity for deliverance from the vast millions who die daily from the effects of sin. False theories of immortal souls, other worlds, paradise lost and heavenly mansions may offer shallow comfort, but not for the people who are left alive to suffer in the realities of human life. And what good is comfort if it has no counterpart in reality. Off-world hopes are intrinsically self-centered because they save the individual soul, but they don’t provide any solution for the living left behind. They don’t rescue the living victims of sin. They are escapist deceits whose only promise to society is abandonment. There is no question that the gospel of the kingdom will save the world. Salvation isn’t tangible unless the hope of the resurrection reverses death. How great a comfort and hope can be found in the knowledge that the hand of Christ and his followers will finally resolve human suffering with blessing and everlasting peace? How can it not matter that a follower of Christ understands His purpose?
Knowing this, who would turn away from such an offer? The knowledge of this gospel makes us responsible to it, and it gives us the responsibility of proclaiming it to others. So the Bible concludes with this testimony: “The Spirit and the Bride say Come. Let him who hears say come…” This isn’t an invitation to disembodied departure; it’s an invitation to a wedding, the effect of which will bless all the families of the earth.
In conclusion, the world is full of baseless, self-serving theories, false hopes, misdirected ideals, complex confusion, and exaggerated finger pointing. Blaming Christadelphians for exclusionism doesn’t measure against the lines drawn by the five major religions of the world. Accommodations that include them all make them meaningless. Saving the evil with the faithful is unjust. Blaming God doesn’t square with the statistics of sin. Sending saints to the sky doesn’t solve the world’s problems. And proliferating abusive adults doesn’t save the children. In the end, what will save the world is the final intervention of God with man, when He sends his Son back, as promised, to deliver humanity with justice, equity, righteousness, peace and in the end, everlasting life.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One