What is wrong with the human condition?
Q: I don’t understand why you so insistently and relentlessly defend the human condition so much. It would seem that you know as well I do it is touched, affected, damaged, decayed, etc. We pollute, murder, rape, torture, traffic children to exploit, starve for political and ideological gain.
A: Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing wrong with the human condition per se. The Genesis story beings by telling us that the underlying, unchanging, and fundamental essence of humankind is the image, likeness and being of God. Can God be damaged, corrupted or decayed? Of course not. Which means that our fundamental essence has been untouched and unchanged. Jesus unmasked the false notion that our humanity separates us from God by demonstrating that the two can be one. Neither does the human condition separate us from the Kingdom of God, which Jesus said is here now.
So, why do we pollute, murder, rape, torture, traffic children to exploit, and starve for political and ideological gain? Spiritual ignorance. We go into the world and scrap and claw to find meaning, identity, peace, happiness and fulfillment, and there is no end to what one will do to get it, including hurting others. Why do we do this? Because we falsely believe we are separated from God, separated from each other, separated from peace, separated from wholeness, separated from freedom, separated from well-being, separated from meaning, separated from….
The world is as it first appeared in the Garden. Nothing has changed. All the other stuff we have added through our spiritual ignorance – taking things to be a way they really aren’t. There will always be pain in this world. This is natural. You hit your finger with a hammer and it produces physical pain. A loved one dies and you feel emotional pain. But the kind of suffering you described in your question is something we unnecessarily create and impose on life out of our spiritual ignorance. This is why Jesus said, “If the eyes are good, the whole body is good.” In other words, to see things as they truly are is to be free. This is what creation is groaning for – that you and I will see the truth, which sets all living things free.
People like the following options in terms of an answer to the suffering of the world:
A. It’s the human condition and nothing can be done about it
B. God will rapture us out of it
C. Heaven is waiting and we will escape this mess entirely
D. Satan is to blame
E. The world is inherently evil and must go up in flames
The option we don’t like, which is the truth is:
We are responsible for the mess of the world. There is nothing or no one to blame except ourselves and our spiritual ignorance. We don’t have to be doing this. We are free to choose differently.
