28. What Went Wrong?

LONNIE: Glad you could join us once again for Exploring the Word.

JEANNIE: We hope you’ll enjoy digging into the riches of Scripture with us.

LONNIE: Today we’re going to take on what is often a pretty sticky subject: original sin.

JEANNIE: For a lot of people these days, this idea seems like – Oh, here’s something else to feel guilty about. Like I need that!

LONNIE: I think you’re right. Original sin doesn’t sound like the warmest of topics.

JEANNIE: People today want to feel good about themselves, of course. Self-esteem is the big thing. Positive self-image. So ideas like depravity or corrupt human nature just don’t register.

LONNIE: Or the belief that human beings are born condemned. That’s pretty hard to swallow.

JEANNIE: And yet doesn’t the Bible talk about Original Sin only in order to help us understand how God saves us, how completely we’re redeemed?

LONNIE: That’s a good point Jeannie. Did you read Romans chapter five, our homework assignment from last week? There you see that Scripture highlights the problem to get us to look at the solution.

Let’s try to get a handle on this thing called Original Sin. And let me start with a few burglars, a few burglars with a knack for getting caught.

Take Jacob in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He decided to go shoplifting at a clothing store. He thought he was being very clever by removing the security tags from a bunch of shirts, in a dressing room. Then he stuffed the shirts in a shopping bag and marched out of the store – to the sound of alarms going off. Jacob had stuck the security tags in his pocket.

Take Joe in Salt Lake City. He was tackled by customers at a bank as soon as he tried to snatch some money from a teller. Why? Because he’d stood in line for ten minutes, already dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and mask.

Or how about Albert in Grants Pass, Oregon. He decided to break into a house by smashing a glass door with a paint can. Well, the can broke open and splattered paint all over him. Unfazed, Albert took a few items and hurried off to a nearby hotel. But very soon police were knocking on his door. He’d tracked fresh, red paint all the way there from the crime scene.

Now these men were featured in a lineup of “America’s Dumbest Criminals.” It’s almost as if they wanted to get caught. But you know what? That’s precisely the point when it comes to Original Sin. It’s about getting caught. We need to get caught. We need for that red paint to lead directly to our door. Because that’s how we start to make things right. In just a moment we’ll discover why.

A man was once asked, “Do you believe in original sin?”

His reply: “No, I just copy everybody else.”

Well, however original we may be about sin, we all have the same basic problem, according to the Bible.

It’s laid out in Romans 3:23:

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Sin isn’t just a matter of doing things that shame us in front of other people. Sin is about doing things that fall short of God’s expectations. Sin is about how we relate to a holy God.

But that’s not all. Paul digs a bit deeper into our problem in Romans chapter 5. There he talks about how sin first started with Adam in the Garden of Eden, how death entered the world through Adam, how judgment came to human beings through Adam.
Look at Romans 5:19:

“. . . by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners . . .”

Here’s where theologians get this doctrine called Original Sin.

Now, what’s the point? Why push the problem back that far? Are we supposed to feel guilty because of something Adam did thousands of years ago? Don’t we feel bad enough already about the things we do now?

Well, let’s try to get the point. And we’ll start by looking at something called a Psychological Autopsy.

It happened shortly after the death of Howard Hughes in 1976. Yes, Howard Hughes, the billionaire aviation pioneer, movie producer and playboy celebrated in the film, “Aviator.”

Lawyers were squabbling over Hughes’ vast estate. And a psychologist, Dr. Raymond Fowler, was asked to try to determine his mental condition at the time he signed various documents. This led to a “psychological autopsy.” Physicians perform an autopsy, of course, to determine the cause of death. A psychological autopsy is done to find out what mental and emotional factors may have contributed to a death.

Before Howard Hughes died, he’d become an obsessive recluse, as the movie shows.

Well, what contributed to this brilliant man’s decline?

Investigators soon zeroed in on certain events.

There was the plane crash. The experimental XF-11 that went down in Beverly Hills, with Hughes fighting for control. He survived, but sustained serious head injuries. Surely that had taken its toll. Hughes became addicted to morphine while recuperating.

Then there was the tremendous stress Hughes lived under. He was always pushing himself to the breaking point, investing unheard of sums of money in a movie about Word War I pilots, fighting the government to build his huge transport plane, the “Spruce Goose.”

Hughes was constantly involved in controversy. And that must have contributed to his breakdown too.

But still, there was something missing. A lot of people endure stress throughout their lives. Many people become obsessed with great challenges. But very few turn into helpless recluses. And some also suffer traumatic injuries, as Hughes did. But not many turn into psychotics.

The picture didn’t start becoming clear until investigators focused on something that happened when Hughes was 16. While attending a private boarding school, Howard received the news that his mother had died suddenly during a minor surgical procedure. She was only 39. Then two years later, Howard's father also died suddenly – of a heart attack during a business meeting.

The loss of parents is hard for anyone. But it was especially devastating for Howard. He’d always been a pretty shy, withdrawn kid. He’d grown up in his own isolated world, sheltered by an overprotective mother. Howard found it difficult to make friends. His mother and father were the only people in the world he had ever felt close to. And suddenly, they were gone.

The death of Howard's parents sealed the shell he'd already begun to build around himself. And he would never break out of it. Howard Hughes lived out his life very much alone. Even in marriage he was alone. He ignored his first wife and didn't even live with his second. A long trail of glamorous women paraded in and out of Hughes' life. But he was unable to forge any lasting relationships.

Apparently, Howard Hughes never really dealt with the loss of his parents. That wound never healed. And that’s what the psychological autopsy pointed to. This man’s mind crumbled because he had to bear all the bumps and bruises, all the pressures – alone.
Now, what about us and our basic problem? As it turns out, the Bible, in pointing to the Original Sin, is really conducting a kind of psychological autopsy, an autopsy of the heart, if you please. It’s trying to get us to look at the root of our problem.
And that’s because we always get stuck staring at SYMPTOMS. We look at the accidents, the bumps and bruises. We look at the stress in our lives. And we think that’s the problem that needs to be fixed. If we could just improve our circumstances then we wouldn’t yell at the kids or neglect our spouse or get in arguments at the office.

Well, it’s true, stresses do put us on edge and make us grumpy. It’s true, misfortunes can leave us very vulnerable.

But here’s the question. Do you want to get stuck staring at the symptoms forever, or do you want to get at the root of the problem?

What’s the root of our problem?

Scripture makes it clear. It’s the death, in a sense, of our parent. We’ve been cut off from our Heavenly Father. We’re isolated.

Let’s look at Romans again. This is how Paul analyzes our breakdown:

". . . although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Romans 1:21

What's at the root of human failure? What's the cause of that dark shadow of sin over our hearts? It's a refusal to acknowledge God – our Heavenly Father. It's separation from Him that dooms us to "futile thinking."

Later in Romans, Paul, paints an even more vivid picture of our basic predicament.

“There is none righteous, no, not even one;
There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.
They have all gone out of the way.” Romans 3:10,11

What's at the root of not having righteousness? Not seeking God. Turning away from Him.

Why does the book of Romans take us back to Adam’s Original Sin? Because that’s where that essential relationship with God was first broken. That’s where a relationship of trust first fractured.

The Bible is trying to get us to look beyond symptoms to our real problem, a broken RELATIONSHIP. For us to find healing, the barrier between ourselves and our God must be broken. Nothing else will do. Nothing else will solve the problem.

We can't just straighten up our lives a bit. Discard a few of our worst habits, try to chalk up a few more good deeds. No, we have to deal with more than symptoms.

In order to deal with our problems we have to start with the right DIAGNOSIS. We see the real issue back there in the Garden of Eden when Adam lost his Father.

In the end, it didn't matter that Howard Hughes had designed revolutionary aircraft and established air speed records. It didn't matter that he'd chalked up a long string of successes with Hollywood beauties. It didn't matter that he presided over a vast financial empire.

The only thing that mattered was that he couldn’t get out of his shell. And that’s how he died.

Do you want to get beyond symptoms? Get back to that original relationship.

Now let’s look at one more issue related to Original Sin. There’s still this question: Is Adam’s sin my fault? Am I supposed to feel guilty because I have a sinful nature? How exactly am I connected to that fall in the Garden?

Well, imagine this for a moment. Think of Original Sin as an oil spill, an oil spill in Eden.

You probably remember that supertanker, the Exxon Valdez, running aground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Those pristine waters turned black and toxic. An eight-mile-long oil slick coated the fur of sea otters and the feathers of cormorants.

Eden had been ruined.

Now, most of us don’t feel guilty about that ecological disaster, right? We didn’t steer that ship onto a reef, right? We’re not responsible.

But think about this. Why was the Exxon Valdez up there transporting all that oil? Because there’s so much demand down here. We consume and discard an incredible amount of material every day, stuff that depends on oil. And we want our SUVs; we want our power boats; we want to jet here and there.

We may complain loudly about air pollution. But carpool? That’s asking too much.

You get the picture. The point is, we’re all involved in that thick mass of oil spreading over Alaska’s Eden. We didn’t run the ship aground. But we’re involved.

And that's the point the Bible makes with this idea of original sin. No, we’re not responsible for Adam and Eve taking that forbidden fruit; we’re not responsible for something in ancient history. But yes, we are involved in that tragedy. How? Simply because we have become participants in the sin that originated with them.

Look at Romans again. Let’s read Romans 5:12:

“. . . through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned . . .”

Because all sinned. That’s the key. It’s our behavior that ties us to the Original Sin. It’s our choices, our mistakes.

God isn’t trying to make us feel guilty about Adam’s sin. The whole point of Romans chapter five is to contrast the tragedy of one man’s fall, with the much greater triumph of one man’s act of redemption. Yes, Adam may have ushered in sin and death, but Christ makes freedom and eternal life abound even more.

God wants us to focus on His great solution. But to really do that, we have to stop something. We have to stop getting stuck on EXCUSES.

Human beings love excuses. We love to point the finger. At least I’m not as bad as those criminals out there. At least I’m not a terrorist. We find all kinds of ways to excuse our moral failures, because it’s not as bad as all the evil out there. It’s so easy to blame others for all the troubles in the world. We point the finger at those idiots who caused that terrible oil slick.

But what Original Sin keeps telling us is this: We’re involved. The insensitivity in our hearts is related to the cruelty out in the world. The selfishness in here is related to the tyranny out there. It’s the same thing simply on a larger scale.

We all have this problem of a fallen human nature. And in order to get better, in order to grow, we need to stop getting stuck on excuses, and start looking honestly at our own BEHAVIOR.

That’s the point. Look at your behavior. Take responsibility. Don’t just keep pointing out there, making excuses. Acknowledge how you’re part of the problem.

And that makes you ready for the right PROGNOSIS. This is how you heal. When you start by saying, “I need help,” then you’re able to take in the forgiveness the New Testament celebrates. Now you’re able to appreciate the redemption Christ makes possible. Now you’re able to value the qualities that the Holy Spirit can bring into your life.

JEANNIE: Lonnie, in thinking about this subject of our human nature and Original Sin there are two texts that come to my mind. I think they cover it all, basically. The first is Jeremiah 2:22. It says:

“‘Though you wash yourself with lye, and use much soap,
Yet your iniquity is marked before Me,’ says the Lord God.”

To me that really suggests how deeply sin stains us, or wounds us. It’s not something we can just pretend is not there.

LONNIE: That verse makes me think of what happens when we get stuck on symptoms, or stuck on excuses. We’re using soap. But sin isn’t something we can just rinse away.

JEANNIE: And then, the second verse I think of is Isaiah 1:18:

“‘Come now, and let us reason together,’ says the Lord,
‘Though your sins are like scarlet,
They shall be as white as snow;
Though they are red like crimson,
They shall be as wool.’”

So that’s the great promise isn’t it? No matter how dark the stain, God can make it white. It’s almost like God saying, “No matter how bad the oil spill, I can clean it up.”

LONNIE: What is hopelessly polluted, He can restore to purity. And that’s possible because God absorbed the consequences of our sin in His own body. He broke down the toxic effects of sin, by taking it all on the cross. God dealt with all sin, original and otherwise, there at Calvary.

JEANNIE: Lonnie, you and I have known people who are stuck on the symptoms, stuck on the excuses, but we’ve also seen how wonderful it is when people finally get to the root of their problem, finally deal with a broken relationship.

LONNIE: And so we’d like to invite you to accept God’s invitation to heal that relationship. He wants to mend what is broken, restore what has been lost. It’s time to look beyond the symptoms; it’s time to stop making excuses. We invite you to come back to the arms of a Heavenly Father. Open yourself up to that essential relationship. Take that step now as we pray.

Lord, thank You for Your accurate diagnosis. Thank You for showing us how we can get to the root of our problems.

JEANNIE: And thank You so much for Your solution, for absorbing the curse of sin on the cross. Thank You for taking the steps to heal our broken relationship.

LONNIE: Please help us appreciate Your forgiveness and grace. Help us to value how completely You can cleanse us from all the sins that haunt us.

JEANNIE: We commit ourselves to seek Your face. To trust You more and more as our Heavenly Father.

LONNIE: And we thank You for accepting us in Your Beloved Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

JEANNIE: It’s time to tell you about our homework assignment for next week. Lonnie and I would like you to read an absolutely beautiful passage in Philippians chapter two. The first eleven verses of that chapter describe what it really meant when Jesus Christ took on human flesh.

LONNIE: That’s the topic of our program next week. We’ll be talking about what the Incarnation involved. What did Jesus really take on when He took on our human nature?

JEANNIE: So remember, Philippians chapter two, verses one to eleven.

LONNIE: Until we meet again, God bless you. Never stop Exploring the Word. And remember, God really does love you.