The Bad, the Ugly, and the Good

The trail of human history doesn’t lead up from the beast, as evolution supposes, but down from the best, as the Bible teaches. The human race originated in a perfect environment. God created our first parents and placed them in a peaceful, productive, and pristine environment—the Garden of Eden. But Adam and Eve sinned, defying God’s authority. Their sin incurred judgment. Planet Earth fell under a curse, and death, and misery and mortality befell the humanity.
Sin’s ugly nature took an early toll on Adam’s descendants. Envy, hate, and murder sprang from the heart of Adam and Eve’s son Cain. Cain killed his brother Abel, and before long man’s wickedness on the earth had become so rampant and putrid “that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5).
God destroyed that evil-obsessed civilization with a flood, but spared Noah and his family because Noah had found “favor in the eyes of the LORD” (verse 8).
After the Flood, a new day dawned for the human race. Would it worship and obey the God of grace? It would not. It soon pursued an evil path.
The human race continues on that path today. It is characterized by self-centeredness, and it leads to eternal death (Isaiah 53:6; Proverbs 14:12).
The recent shootings in Arvada and Colorado Springs that claimed several young lives points out once again that the human heart is “deceitful and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9, KJV).
But Good News in the midst of such bad news shines like a diamond against the backdrop of a black cloth. Nearly 2,000 years ago, Jesus, the Second Adam, led a sinless life and intentionally took a path that led to Calvary. Unlike the self-centered path sinful humanity has taken since the Fall in the Garden of Eden, the path Jesus took was one of selfless devotion to God’s will. At Calvary, He died to rescue us from sin and eternal judgment, and to reconcile us to God.
About 725 years before Jesus died on the cross, the prophet Isaiah diagnosed the chronic human condition and prescribed the only cure. “We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him [Jesus] the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6).
While secularists wish one another “Happy Holidays,” Christians can share the greeting, “Merry Christmas.” We can’t impose peace on a troubled world, but we can honor the Christ who came into the world to seek and to save us and to instill God’s peace in our hearts.