“Who told you that you were naked?” the Lord God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I
commanded you not to eat?” The man
replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.”
Genesis
3:11-12 (NLT)
In the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve sinned by
eating the forbidden fruit; then came the cover-up. God questioned Adam and the man blamed the
whole affair on his bride. And then he blamed
God for giving him the woman in the first place.
Not taking responsibility for our actions has
been humankind’s specialty ever since!
Philip Yancey, in his book Reaching for the Invisible God[2]
describes the way God gets the blame for just about everything.
"When Princess Diana died in an
automobile accident, a minister was interviewed and was asked the question “How
can God allow such a terrible tragedy?” He
said, “Could it have had something to do with a drunk driver going ninety miles
an hour in a narrow tunnel? Just How,
exactly, was God involved?”
Years ago, boxer, Ray “Boom Boom”
Mancini, killed a Korean opponent with a hard right hand to the head. At the press conference after the Korean’s
death, Mancini said, “Sometimes I wonder why God does the things he does.”
In a letter to Dr. James Dobson, a young
woman asked this anguished question, “Four years ago, I was dating a man and
became pregnant. I was devastated. I
asked God, “Why have you allowed this to happen to me?”
Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother years
ago who pushed her two sons into a lake to drown and then blamed a fictional
car-jacker for the deed, wrote in her confession: “I dropped to the lowest point when I allowed
my children to go down that ramp into the water without me. I took off running and screaming, ‘Oh God! Oh
God, no! What have I done? Why did you let this happen?”
Now the question remains, exactly what
role did God play in a boxer beating his opponent to death, a teenage couple
giving into temptation in the back seat of a car, or a mother drowning her children?
Is God responsible for these acts? To the contrary, they are examples of
incredible human free will being exercised on a fallen planet. And yet it’s in our nature as mortal, frail,
fallen people to lash out at one who is not [frail, fallen or guilty], that
being God."
I have met many people in my
life; some were exceedingly proud of their family tree, while others try to
hide as many details as possible. But if
you trace the “human tree” back far enough we all eventually have the
Fall as our starting point.
Considering the shaky state of
contemporary culture in the matter of trustworthy character, it is time for a
little confrontation with God’s standard of truth-telling.
To wit: Whatever comes out of your mouth, you cannot
change the truth. All you can do with a
lie is make things worse.
For You Today
Think and pray before you answer
a question; by committing to total truth when you speak, you will make the
world a better place.
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