Which came first – the trouble or the attitude?
So many articles, documentaries, and interviews I have seen lately point to a central cause of many of the social and cultural ills of our day. The culprit and focus of their attention….wait for it……..wait for it….’absentee fathers”. In many of the examples cited the father doesn’t have to be “actually absent”, physically away from the home (though that seems to be the major point). When the problem of physically absent fathers is combined with the problem of disconnected, disinterested fathers who do not have a loving connection to their children, the results are catastrophic. I am not speaking in hyperbole.
Criminal activity, addictions, prison populations, violent crime, broken homes, trafficking, pornography (and we could go on) flourish in an atmosphere where children grow up without a connected, loving father. OK. OK! I agree that every person must come to a place where he/she takes responsibility for his/her own actions regardless of the hand he/she has been dealt. So absentee fathers or absent parents (moms or dads) can explain many of the issues at hand, but somewhere there must be a solution. There is, and I know where.
When so many families fail in our communities- large and small , the foundation of the solution must come from godly families in strong churches where excuses and reasons aren’t the end of the discussion. Solutions are coming through strong, godly men, women, and children in our churches. This solution is already being created right before our eyes or under our noses.
What do you say? Do you know people who are making things worse? Know anyone making this world a better place to leave to our children? What are you doing about the dilemma we face?
Lost and Alone
A person without an intimate relationship with God is lost or unsaved. A person without an intimate relationship with one or more other people is alone or relationally disconnected. Which one do you think was addressed first in the scriptures? If you said our “lost-ness” you would be wrong. In Genesis 2:18 the scripture records God’s words to Adam: “It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him.”
Regarding the lost-ness of mankind and his separation from God by sin, the warning came in Genesis 2:15-17 as God told Adam, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Adam could not have known exactly what it meant to be faced with the concept of death that would result if he disobeyed God’s one command. Neither did he understand what it meant to be “alone”. I believe he and eventually Eve had to trust God to come to understand both ideas. Had they not sinned as recorded in Genesis 3, they would not have to be concerned with either condition. Their aloneness was being cared for in their relationships with both God and each other….and others who’d be born from their union. Their lostness (death) would have not been an issue because they were already alive in their physical, emotional, and spiritual dimensions because they lived each day in perfect harmony with God and each other and their world until……Genesis 3:6-7 happened.
Genesis 3:6-7 records what we call the “fall of mankind”. It reads: 6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
The significance of these two conditions and their remedy is found in the same person. I know that even though Adam was first in the garden with God, God still declared that Adam was “alone” and that condition was “not good”. God built Adam needy of a relationships with Himself and with others who were comparable to him. God was not like Adam.
In Jesus Christ we find not only the power to be not lost or to be saved from eternity away from God in a place called hell, but also to not be alone. Jesus offers to us by faith the indwelling Holy Spirit to bring us gifts to use in serving God and others as well as the “fruit of the Spirit” including love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23) He lives His life in us and through us.
Our aloneness is replaced with intimate, close, loving relationships as the fruit of the Holy Spirit takes us into the life of another putting their needs above our own. Intimacy could be explained as “I know you; I allow you to know me; and we know each other so we can give to meet each other’s needs.” People in that deep relationship are not alone.