Life Orientation

Sin is the catch-all word for turning anything from virtue (righteousness/affirmation) to loss which is (violation/negation) related to truth in the context of God and mankind for gaining good life.  Mankind sins not only against God but against mankind.  Righteousness (right) is offered by God to form orderly life.  Sin is anything that violates God’s nature (holiness) in values communicated to mankind in scriptural definition (righteousness).  Without that objective standard we are left to define our own values, and that leads to considerable disagreement about right and wrong.  Some persons and entities attempt to disengage on determining value orientation with the proviso that one person should not injure another, which orientation is impossible in a social world of person to person.  There is no neutrality.  We either contribute by lifting upward in our duty to life or moving downward in contraction from right and duty. 

We either vote or we don’t vote.  Withdrawal likely benefits the other side.  Again – there is no neutrality, no zero.  God’s standards apply to the creation whether it accepts his person or not.  God refuses to abandon us. The deist claim that elusive God created and went off to other projects leaving us to our own management is an insult to God.  The analogy is in the human father who having generated a child leaves both mother and child to their own destinies without his involvement.  That is cause for court judgment in organized societies.  (Without my father in our home, my mother had to present my sisters and me in court for the purpose of leaving us in the care of our mother, or removing us from her care.  I remember well the day the judge determined we could stay with our mother.)  It is also a cause among activists for the equality of genders – that children are the responsibility of both male and female in nurture and life formation.  The creator is our attending Father.  In this context, abandonment is the business of the prodigal child.

Some human groupings are so committed to their value systems that they insist that governments make illegal any other system than theirs.  (I have visited countries where I was instructed that to advance my views as a Christian would subject me to arrest and imprisonment.)  At this writing there is terrorism in the world partly due to that exclusive opinion.  God’s approach is based not on political requirement, but on the freedom to choose.  His insistence holds not on force but on the concept that no other system is as protective of the life and conduct of mankind as his system.  God respecting the freedom (a compelling factor of his grace) of his creation leaves the matter to our choosing, but with the education that he cannot deny himself so cannot put his imprimatur on anything that does not fit the righteous context.  Much of the tension in society has been in identifying the needs of mankind, and then applying the most workable solutions that favor all persons equally.  Faithful comparative study, even without identification with faith, would verify the righteousness (rights) of God as the ideal workable system for persons and society.

We are called upon to form an orderly life – the good life.  When distractions, like boredom, selfishness, temptation, and the like negatives are rejected, and love, fidelity (loyalty), service and the like affirmatives are cultivated we form the good life – there is beauty, wisdom, even a sense of modest epiphany that we gain leading to the sense of fulfillment and improvement.  It sometimes takes time commitment and ability to face up to distractions, but facing them there emerges a noble spirit, legacy, and practical love that helps both self and others to find the worth of life.  I am always lifted in this arena of thought when I note how Jesus won preeminence even in the secular world by resting his program in peace, even offering his life when he could have called for armies of angels to sure defense and victory.  (Matthew 26:52-56)  Even the disciples in this conflict for peace fled from the scene.  Persons like Gandhi and Martin Luther King proved that even in activism, peace was the demeanor.  Both died for their views and life course.  The world systems could function in the light of righteousness, but they will not without the aid of God and that is unlikely in the light of the arrogance of mankind related to the order of God, understood as beginning with his holiness to human righteousness and ending in love, safety and perpetuity.