All in The Wanting

I am of the opinion that if it was possible and desirable for everything to be made better for everybody in this world, then God would have done it already - indeed divine creation would never have had evil, entropy and death in the first place. 

As it is - people have innate evil. As well as having positively sinful impulses; people have a tendency to behave in order to seek short-term gratification and avoidance of suffering or misery instead of doing what they know to be virtuous. 

Furthermore, people are made worse, often much worse, by their environment; by other people; and the many and pervasive negative, sin-encouraging influences, indoctrinations, distractions, lies, manipulations, value-inversions and so forth - which have become worse in recent decades, and are still getting worse.


Since I believe that nothing positively good can be done forcibly, by compulsion (not by God, nor anyone else); what is a way out from this situation of too-bad people in a too-bad world?

The way out must be wanted and chosen by each individual person, and it must be an active choice since people cannot be coercively "made better" without their active cooperation. 

And since the way out much be chosen and active, then this entails that those who do not choose, or who not cooperate in the process, will be "left behind". The way out is not for those who don't want and/or don't want voluntarily to collaborate in their self-remaking. 


Such was (and is) the situation confronted by Jesus Christ in devising a plan for our salvation - that is a plan for us to escape from the intrinsic problems of our lives in this world. 

The plan must work for innately evil people who live in a sin-inducing environment, people who are prone to prefer the expedient and short term and are constantly tempted by a worsening environment - and who are (I think observably) themselves getting worse... 

By my understanding, properly understood; Christianity is exactly a religion for such people as we actually are, in a world as it actually is...

Providing a hopeful future and a way out to something better; that is available and attainable by anyone who wants it - and who is prepared (when the time comes, after death) to cooperate with being made fit for it. 

Salvation transcends our-selves and the world; no matter how bad these have become. 

It is all in The Wanting


 

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Published on April 26, 2025 08:17
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