Living With Babel : Understanding COVID-19 and Beyond

By Matthew C. Gartner

"Living with Babel" applies the teachings of the Bible to extensive research and analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic, world and church history, and technology, to create a big picture view of the fundamental challenges believers face today, and the biblical path going forward.

 

• See humanity and God through a big picture view of scripture that will transform your understanding of the world and your journey as a believer.
• See through the world's deceptions. Uncover the truths hidden by the world, using the examples of the Tower of Babel and the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Study the character and message of Jesus Christ to imitate the greatest model of humility, faith, and discipleship the world has ever known.
• Learn how to plant the seeds of belief and change anytime, anywhere without awkwardness, fear, or personal rejection.
• Includes a complete guide to writing and sharing your testimony and the Gospel message with an example of each step, and the author's own testimony.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cherith Haven Publishing
• Release date: May 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781778263118

Book preview

Forward

T

his book was begun in December 2021, when many of the COVID-19 measures discussed in it were still entirely in place.  As this book is completed, most of these measures have been lifted, so I speak of them in the past tense.  However, the effects they have had, the effects they continue to have, and the Biblical view of them, are still absolutely relevant.  While the SARS-cov-2 virus is now becoming endemic, the measures taken will no doubt be considered viable options well into the future.  Even into the fall of 2022, after the pandemic’s main response, there were renewed calls for mask mandates, just as there were in February 2020, making an understanding of them and their nature all the more important going forward.

Further, this book uses Bible verses extensively, to show objective truths.  These truths are best understood by believing in the One True God.  This faith, and the subsequent gift of God’s spirit to move us, will largely determine whether we can accept and live by the truths given by God. If you do not believe today, I would first like to invite you to read my personal testimony in Appendix 5 - My Testimony, at the back of this book prior to reading the book itself, as I believe it is important that you see the love and mercy the one true God has shown me—the same love and mercy He has for you. In this book, I will speak of those who don’t believe in Jesus as unbelievers, not as a judgement on them, for I am no better than them, but as a witness to the saving power of Jesus. We are all God’s precious creations, created in His image, and yet because of The Fall of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3), and as their descendants, we are all born in a state in which we don’t acknowledge our own Creator—we are essentially born in spiritual darkness, believing only in ourselves.

From this perspective of self-importance, we derive all the characteristics that have made the world a place of folly, pain, and death. Selfishness, greed, arrogance, lying, stealing, cheating, control, abuse, negligence, and murder are all ways of expressing self-importance. As we place primary importance on ourselves, logically then, others must have less importance, and this is apparent if we consider any of the above wrongs—in them, we naturally place our interests ahead of, or above others’ because we believe in our hearts, that we are more important than they.

However, in a world filled with people of self-importance, we cannot let our own self-importance be revealed because others don’t like it when we are selfish, greedy, arrogant, lying, stealing, cheating, controlling, abusive, negligent, or murdering. As a result, we go to great lengths to preserve our image of goodness to others, and when caught, we don’t feel remorse as much as we re-evaluate how to repair our image and avoid damaging it the next time—we refine our techniques.  We have only to look to the thief as our example—they don’t show remorse for their crime, but instead, they show remorse for getting caught and rethink how to avoid getting caught the next time.

Moreover, we must preserve an internal sense of goodness while we are selfish, greedy, arrogant, lying, stealing, cheating, controlling, abusing, neglecting, and murdering so that we can maintain our self-righteousness—to allow ourselves to believe we are a Good person who is deserving of what we desire.  To do so, we rationalize our bad behavior, explaining away the harm we are doing.  For example, we steal office supplies from our employers because they are large, greedy corporations and won’t miss them. We tell our boss we are sick to get the day off because we deserve a break for all the hard work we do.  We validate something another person says even though we don’t believe it because they have a usefulness to us. We also perform good deeds to further buttress our image of goodness to ourselves and others, and therefore, in every good deed we do, there is always a reward that serves us in some way, either immediately or in the future.  For instance, in volunteering for a charity, our efforts are compensated for by feeling good about ourselves and by the admiration of others. Self-importance in a person who doesn’t believe in God is inescapable because we don’t live for God but for ourselves. The only act that can be considered selfless is to willingly die for another, like a soldier who throws himself on a grenade to save his comrades, giving up their very self.

One last point about goodness:  Even Adolf Hitler thought he was a Good person—in everything he did, he was building a better Germany, and yet his life reflects all that I have said above, except for selflessness.  We wouldn’t judge him to be a good person because we compare him against our own self-righteousness (our lesser sins), and we ourselves would believe we were good if we were in his shoes because of our own self-righteousness as well.

Furthermore, if we don’t recognize our Creator, we must find a different way to explain our existence. Therefore, we seek a theory or belief that enables us to eliminate a power over us, which also explains our natural disdain for authorities that judge us, such as a police officer who gives us a speeding ticket. We create deities to offer ourselves a higher power and to give us eternal life, but they are inevitably crafted to serve us.  No Spiritual person I know has a god who holds them to account—the gods they believe in accept their selfishness, greed, arrogance, lying, stealing, etc. while promising the benefits that person imagines. Likewise, other false religions of man are built upon an equally flawed supposition: Our goodness gets us to heaven, and our badness gets us condemned.  If this were true, then the self-importance I describe above would only merit one thing: condemnation for our selfishness.  The truth is that the only belief that doesn’t rely on us to either create heaven or to merit it is the belief in the one true God who says, through His testimony in the Bible, that we can’t save ourselves because we lack the capacity to.  Only He can save us despite our natural wretchedness and self-centeredness.

Moreover, when our beliefs lack evidence to explain our existence or purpose, we turn to scientific observation and theory, in a vain attempt to explain these things.  However, science can’t derive purpose from physics or an origin it can’t understand, and therefore it offers nothing but purposelessness, and so we turn back to the previous false gods I mentioned.  The consequence of science’s attempts to explain us and our existence is that its limited firsthand witness of time and its derived theories have inevitably debased us to something no better than an evolved ape living on an insignificant planet in a vast universe of purposelessness.  In its attempt to find answers, it has devalued the very thing it sought to give meaning to: Us.  It has also highlighted the very problem we are born with:  In the vacuum of existence, without an absolute, purposeful power above us, our lives are truly meaningless.

To contrast the insignificance and purposelessness of science’s theories of existence, let me explain how God describes our existence.  God, an omnipotent, infinite being of perfection, out of His love, created us in His own image, to be His children, with a mind and a spirit that could comprehend His existence and see Him.  Out of His love for us, He created a universe like a boundless stage—something so vast and beautiful that we could witness the power and awe of our Creator in it. On this stage, He created a special planet, so perfect and balanced in its design and in its place in the universe, that it would serve every need and purpose for us.  He then placed us on it, and gave us dominion over all things on it, and He desired that we would live and walk with Him forever.  (See Genesis 1 and 2 in the Bible for the story of Creation.)

By God’s description in the Bible, we are not insignificant at all, but are in fact, so valuable, that everyone of us, from the drunken street person lying on a sidewalk to the richest man, is absolutely precious to Him—it is why murder is so serious an offense to Him because we are destroying His most precious creation.  Seeing how precious every one of us is to God, imagine that we valued each other with the same selfless love of God and not with our own self-centered point of view—we wouldn’t kill or hurt each other, and we wouldn’t spend our lives trying to fulfill ourselves at the expense of each other or our home. This was the world before The Fall of man, but even in the fallen world, we can individually return to God and again be His friend and walk with Him through eternity.  We can find Eden in our own lives here on earth—A paradise of peace and joy, outside the emptiness of the world.

Man has tried for millennia to make his own Utopia, and as is evident from history, every attempt is like the last—a dismal, empty failure.  It is only our belief in God and His son Jesus Christ, that can shine the light of truth into this darkness, revealing what we ourselves can’t see.  If we believe in Jesus Christ, who is the means by which we are saved, we will see the truth and be fulfilled, be saved, and have eternal life:

25 Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this? John 11:25-26

and

for Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.  Romans 10:13

If you do not believe today, I beg that you look around you and inside you, and consider the awesome complexity and purpose built into your body and mind, and everything in nature, and ask yourself, Does what I see really seem like the product of random chance that the world says it is?  Also, I beg you to ponder to answer for yourself this question: What purpose in the grander scheme of the universe do our lives serve if there is no God? I pray that God will shine His light on you and help you to see the immense purpose you have, the immense love He has for you, and the peace and love you can have eternally.

Matt Gartner

Introduction

T

he story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible includes a verse which I believe teaches us about the mind and nature of mankind:

4 They said, Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.  Genesis 11:4

I believe this verse has great relevance to the COVID-19 pandemic, to our past, to our present, and to our future, and so it forms the core theme for this book.  The Tower of Babel was the product of the decay and corruption of mankind, by sin nature, after the Flood.  The builders wrongly believed their tower would reach into heaven, effectively making themselves gods.  Their nature (the same nature we share), was rooted in the Fall, when mankind chose to believe Satan over God:

2 The woman said to the serpent, From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; 3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’ 4 The serpent said to the woman, You surely will not die! 5 For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. 6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.  Genesis 3:2-7

The society we live in today, like the empires of the past, has also built a tower—one of humanism, science, technology, and medicine.  It is a tower that has collapsed and been rebuilt over and over in our human history since The Fall.  The tower is rebuilt by the fallen children of Adam and Eve to address the most basic human fear, death, and to satisfy the most basic human desire, control.  It is rebuilt in the vain hope that the lies of Satan, that we would not die and would become like God, would be realized—That we weren’t lied to after all. 

Therefore, in a society of mostly unbelievers, the majority have a devotion to this faith.  In their darkened, God-separated minds there is nothing else that can save them and provide hope for immortality.  Consequently, while the tower is still being built, this religion provides hope for the longest possible life with the greatest perception of control. 

Yet, as believers, we can see how bankrupt this belief is—they will die like everyone before them, and if they die in their sins without believing, they will be separated from God and the light for eternity.  They will have the immortality they craved, but it will not be what they hoped for.  Likewise, their lives on Earth will be blindly filled with pain of their own making and that of others.  The vacuum of unfulfillment will persist and the finishing of the tower will never be realized before it collapses under the weight of its own folly.

As history shows, a multitude of wars and diseases have forced mankind to face death.  The response of mankind has been based upon the embracing of one of two powers: Man’s or God’s. In the present day 21st Century, threats such as COVID-19 come at a time when our culture has almost completely morally debased itself under secular humanism (e.g., gender theory, critical race theory, gay pride, collectivism, etc.) and moral relativism.  At the same time, it has deluded itself that we have a godlike power in science and technology:

21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Romans 1:21-23

As a result, diseases such as COVID-19 produce a response not unlike that of building the Tower of Babel—Man comes together in a shared delusion of godlike power to attempt to control everything around us including the climate and ultimately, death.  (Remember this for later: A popular view of the pandemic response is that it has been about Saving lives. and that climate change action is about Saving the planet.)

We know that what separates believers from the world is the discernment of God’s holy spirit working within us—living in the light of God’s standard of righteousness, seeing good and evil, in ourselves and others through God’s truth in scripture and through conviction by His spirit.  Therefore, having this discernment, we must accurately view the world for this discernment to lead us to God’s righteousness. False views can only lead us to unrighteousness.

Objective information has always been the basis of discernment.  Nations where information was subjective have always slid into folly and destruction (e.g., Nazi Germany, CCCP).  The church too, in the absence of first-hand knowledge of the scripture, has slid into folly and corruption.  When the message is controlled, the truth can be, and usually is, lost.

The danger of our present situation and that of the future, is that the mass of information available via computing and communications technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, the Internet, and TV, is predominantly conceived and controlled by unbelieving humans, with the goals of unbelieving mankind imbued (Self-professed Christians worldwide account for 31% of people with any spiritual belief0F¹).  The message of God is but a whisper, especially when we consider that calling oneself a Christian is far different than actively living as one.

Also, to simplify our worldview in this age of information overload, we have come to rely upon historic credibility—that is, when sources we have trusted for decades say the same things and reinforce each other’s information, what is being said has credibility and is therefore considered true information.  However, in a culture that has reached Babel status, the information we receive is tainted because the culture worships science, technology, and secular humanism and not God, and so can only frame reality in the view of their religion.

Consequently, to discern the truth, we can no longer rely upon the narrative we hear or see to inform us.  We must assess the world by its actions and effects in relation to the scripture.  This removes the subjectivity of the narrative as the fruit is always more telling than words:

16 You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? 17 So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. Matthew 7:16-17

In this book I will strive to lay the foundation for understanding the world and ourselves.  I will also methodically examine the actions and effects of our culture’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic using objective facts that are readily witnessable to us all.  I will elaborate on scripture that speaks to each point, and through God’s word, we will be able to find certainty in the response we live as believers, in the present day and into the future.

We must also always remember that if we live in and believe in Christ we will never die—We have eternal life:

25 Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this? John 11:25-26

Our worldview must at its heart include this peace for without it we are but mindful only of the temporary.

A Story of a Broken Man

W

hen the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, and the fear around the virus grew, I feared visiting my aging father of 83 years lest I be the bearer of death to him.  I had seen the demographic data on deaths out of China in February 2020, and while not necessarily trustworthy, it was telling—COVID-19 primarily affected the elderly.  So, I stayed away from my parents’ home for about a month.

I knew my father’s state of health.  He had had increasing dementia for several years and had poor health following a backward fall from his walker.  He mostly went out for doctor’s appointments. He didn’t do well on the phone either because of his hearing.  Visits from myself and my own family were the primary contact he had had with people, so I knew he missed us during that month. 

Following that absent month, I purposed to visit him, and sat across the room from him to talk.  He was always happy to see me and after our chats, he would always say goodbye with a Till we meet again. I didn’t bring my children over because I felt it was an undue risk, and that there would be other days after the brief halt to living of the pandemic when we could all get together again.

As I continued to visit him and my mom, it bothered me that a virus had come to stop people from seeing each other, from embracing, and from living even. The last few visits I asked Dad if he wanted a hug, and when he said yes, I gave him my best sanitized, don’t breathe, don’t touch skin hugs.  I wanted my dad to have the warmth of a human embrace, but I wanted to be prudent.

The following week my father passed away in bed sleeping.  Not of COVID-19 as far as we know because he had no symptoms of it. However, even if it was from COVID-19 somehow, carried by me somehow, I do not regret showing my father love and affection in his last days of life.  In fact, I can’t imagine the guilt and loss I would have felt had I heard of my father’s death without seeing him for months when I lived a half an hour away. 

I found out from my mom shortly after my dad’s death, that my father so missed the company of his son during that first month, that every day he would ask my mother, Is Matthew coming over? and she would have to tell him, No.

He was a lonely old man, waiting patiently in his recliner, for the joy of a visit from his son. My fear prevented me from showing love for what must have seemed an eternity of days to my ailing father.  My fear prevented me from bringing the joy of his grandchildren to him in his last days as well.  I want you to see that my story is the story of a broken man—whose light was darkness until God showed me the light.

My father never saw two years more of the pandemic or the promised days of being with his loved ones, because life on earth holds no promise of another day except by the will of God.

Division

T

he COVID-19 pandemic, which has been similar in many respects to past pandemics (e.g., Spanish Flu of 1918), produced a curious split of beliefs, which I believe is in itself telling about the time we live in.  These beliefs centered around how our society should respond to the virus, and could be seen in six different groups:

The unbelieving who saw the COVID-19 response as good—a collective effort to save lives and eradicate the virus.

The unbelieving who saw the COVID-19 response as bad—an affront to liberty and bodily autonomy but submitted due to fear of the authorities/fear of harm to their lifestyle.

The unbelieving who saw the COVID-19 response as bad—an affront to liberty and bodily autonomy, and therefore worthy of resistance to authority.

The believing who saw the COVID-19 response as good—a God-ordained response of love toward our fellow man.

The believing who saw the COVID-19 response as ungodly but submitted to government out of obedience or fear of punishment.

The believing who saw the COVID-19 response as ungodly and refused to submit to the government mandates as matters of conscience.

In these six groups we see that both believing and unbelieving viewed the response as good or bad—it did not appear to be aligned to faith. Likewise, both believing and unbelieving applied a sense of righteousness to their belief systems.

I believe there was more at play than simply right or wrong.  Human nature, God’s spirit, false information, and false understanding have come together to produce what we have today.

Therefore, I hypothesize that there are four important features of our reality that address this matter:

Sin Nature - That Man is born separated from God by the Fall and so we all commit sin, whether believing or unbelieving:

12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned  Romans 5:12

God’s Image - That God’s image is imbued into all His created human beings.  Scripture teaches us that both believing and unbelieving persons have an intrinsic sense of good built-in, even if we go against it:

19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. Romans 1:19

Deception - That believers and unbelievers are capable of being deceived under the weight of false information and false interpretation.

Misunderstanding - That believers have different interpretations of scripture, even among themselves.

Nature

T

here are two opposing qualities in each of us, whether we believe in the one true God or not.  The first is our Fall-induced sin nature.  Characterized by devotion to self, it ultimately seeks godlike standing as Adam and Eve did:

4 The serpent said to the woman, You surely will not die! 5 For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. 6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Genesis 3:4-6

Under the Fall’s darkness, mankind sunk immediately to murder (Genesis 4:8), and we have all been born under the curse.  We are all born that way, separated from God, with a temporal desire to satisfy ourselves through selfishness, greed, arrogance, lies, theft, cheating, control, abuse, negligence, murder and more:

9 What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; 10 as it is written, There is none righteous, not even one; 11 There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God; 12 All have turned aside, together they have become useless; There is none who does good, There is not even one.  Romans 3:9-12

There is also an intrinsic knowledge of God, of good and truth that is built into every human being by virtue of being created in God’s image:

27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.   Genesis 1:27

This God nature stands in total contrast to our sin nature, and it informs us of our sin, whether repentant (believing) or not (unbelieving):

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.  Romans 1:18-19

Both sin nature and God’s nature co-exist in us, and it is these qualities that form the basis of our perception of the world.  We have a desire to see the world in our terms, but we also have inborn knowledge of God’s existence and His truth.  For example, our fallen nature desires to murder while our knowledge of God and good informs us it is wrong and punishable.  The Nazi SS soldiers who were tasked with shooting unarmed men, women, and children in open pits suffered mental breakdowns—a key reason the Nazis largely moved away from using the technique.  They instead resorted to mass gassing behind closed doors where fewer murderers were required, where the murder was more efficient, and where there were fewer witnesses.  Under either evil scheme, the soldier’s inborn knowledge of God and good created a massive conflict with their acts of murder, even in the most devoted Nazi.  To combat the mental stress, alcohol use was rampant and encouraged1F².

God’s nature has been imbued in the beings we are. His work through all human beings, even the unbelieving, has been responsible for all things that are good and noble in human history.  Scripture teaches us that godly virtues, held in the highest ideals of constitutions, bills of rights, and laws of countries, are from God and speak to the image in which God made us.

In Scripture:

14 For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, 15 in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them,   Romans 2:14-15

And in man’s own ideals:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  US Declaration of Independence (1776)

Sin Nature

Sin nature is an intrinsic quality, found from birth in the mind of every one of us as descendants of Adam and Eve, which pre-disposes us to seek our own self-preservation and glory.  We are essentially born alone in separation from God and therefore serve ourselves in everything that we do in a world hostile to us.  It is not a learned quality, but a circumstance which we are born into, which we can neither change nor remove—We are here for our earthly life, even if we are saved by Jesus. Sin itself is to be contrary to God, in opposition to His nature, and hence sin nature is to be pre-disposed to living contrary to God’s nature, to deny the existence and truth of God.

Although we are born innocent (without guilt for any sin), it does not take long to sin and even the youngest children naturally exhibit sin nature—they lie, selfishly hold to what they have, or steal what other children have for their own pleasure and gain. As a result, much of a child’s early life is spent learning that lying and selfishness are bad things for the sake of co-existing in peace with others.  However, the nature remains and as children grow, their nature continues to rationalize their inevitable lies and selfishness as being selfless and sacrificing, so that they can believe they are a Good person.  Furthermore, as the human mind develops, it refines and perfects the techniques used to hide our sinful motives, so that we can present an even better image of goodness to others, while still accomplishing our desires (e.g., Instead of stealing openly, we steal while nobody else is looking.)

Scripture speaks of sin nature as being of the Flesh:

17 For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.  Galatians 5:17

The apostle Paul speaks in this passage to our sin nature being in opposition to the spirit of God, and the spirit of God in opposition to sin nature.  His spirit, given only to believers in Him and His son Jesus Christ, is the only thing that can keep us from sinning.  Unlike God’s nature which is built into all of us via His image to provide the recognition of goodness and truth, God’s spirit is added to believers as a force opposite to sin nature, a force that recognizes and desires God and counters our desire to sin. 

The apostle Paul also provided a small inventory of what sin nature produces as fruit:

2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,  2 Timothy 3:2-4

Our sin nature explains the bloody, tormented history of mankind.  We are self-centered in every aspect of our being, all of us, apart from God’s spirit in our lives. The degree of sin we accomplish, and consequently the pain and destruction we are responsible for, depends only on our opportunities and experience.  For this reason, we cannot claim to be better than others.  We can only claim to have had less opportunity to do evil.

For example, let us consider Adolf Hitler.  He was responsible for the deaths of millions of people and for untold misery in the lives of those who lived through his reign of terror. Was his nature more evil than ours?  No, he simply had the right timing, opportunity, and experience to do more evil acts.  If we had lived in the same body and had the same opportunities and experiences he had, we ourselves would have been Hitler, and therein lies the truth—We are all Hitler by our nature.  We are no more righteous than he was.

In our individual lives, we have been recipients of the evil of others to varying degrees.  Yet, given the same position, opportunities, and experiences of those people, we would have been just like them.  It is in this light that we must see sin nature, and consequently the God of mercy, who, were it not for His mercy, would condemn us, along with them, for we are no better than they are. If we think we are better than they, it is simply because we have had less opportunity to do evil.

This is in no way meant to excuse the responsibility for evil acts—It is only meant to show that our nature, in every one of us, is self-serving.  If we fail to see this, we will be self-righteous, unable to see our own sin, unable to show pity, and unable to find forgiveness or even pardon for the pain we have suffered and will continue to suffer, at the hands of others.  Consequently, we will only contribute to the endless, relentless repetition of history.

God Nature

As discussed above, God’s nature also exists within us.  Unlike sin nature, which was brought upon mankind by The Fall (and our consequent separation from God), God nature is built into us by design—we were designed this way.

In the perfection in which God created us, He imbued us with a conscience that shows us right and wrong and an image that informs us of what the perfection of God is.  Yet, because of our sin nature, we cannot acknowledge the existence of God nor genuinely bring ourselves to desire good or be sorry for our sins, unless God transforms us by giving us His spirit to oppose our sin nature.  We will instead avoid getting caught and fake remorse only when we have been caught. Were it not for sin nature, the nature that God designed into us would essentially lead us to desire Him. However, because the Fall and sin nature took away our desire for God, we are left to desire ourselves, and are made slaves to sin:

6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;  Romans 6:6

God nature is the reason we have responsibility for our sins—were it not for our design incorporating a sense of right and good, we would have no guilt for what we desire, because we would not understand what good is in contrast to evil.

Further, in this perfect design, we can see the attributes of this conscience not only working to define good and evil, but also God’s values.  These values represent the perfect fulfillment of God that we constantly strive for but cannot reach due to our sin nature.  They have been expressed in the actions of all men, whether believing or unbelieving, throughout the history of mankind.

Value of Freedom

Scripture speaks in many verses to freedom from slavery to sin, darkness and lies:

1 It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.  Galatians 5:1

And John 8:32:

32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." John 8:32

However, I’m not speaking of the freedom of God’s light here.  Instead, from the verses above I want you to consider that God views mankind’s version of slavery, man enslaving man, which is born out of our sin nature, as a less than ideal condition to live under.  Scripture, in indirect words, implies that being a human slave to a human master is to be in subjugation, and is to be avoided—Being a free person is the ideal:

23 You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men.  1 Corinthians 7:23

Additionally, in secular terms, the word Slave itself is a universally negative term when applied to the enslavement of humans by humans.  Freedom has been a central desire universally expressed by men, even if it is tainted by the Fall and even if it may manifest itself as the selfish desire to control one’s own destiny.  There have been noble causes of freedom as seen in the freeing of slaves by the US Civil War and in the US Civil rights movement. Therefore, I believe that God imbued a desire for freedom in every one of us, even though our Sin nature from birth guarantees we are born into slavery to man and to sin, until we are freed by Christ.

Value of Person

The scripture also clearly speaks of the value God assigns to each of his creations.  In addition to Exodus 20:13 You shall not murder. (the sixth commandment), in Genesis 9:6 it is written:

6 "Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man.  Genesis 9:6

God makes each of us in His image, and therefore built-in to each of us is a sense of value of person.  It is for this reason that it is so difficult to take the life of an innocent person and why there is usually tremendous guilt on the part of the murderer.  For example, in the case of abortion, our society attempts to obscure the crime by stating the unborn are not human beings (much as the Nazis saw the Jews—as Untermensch, Sub-human).  Yet, almost universally, it is recognized that there is pain and remorse felt by women who’ve aborted their babies.  We intrinsically value our own life, and therefore murdering others goes against our God imbued sense. 

There is also an interesting perspective on the value of person in Genesis 4.  God speaks to Cain after he murdered his brother Abel:

10 He said, What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground. 11 Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you; you will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth. 13 Cain said to the Lord, My punishment is too great to bear! 14 Behold, You have driven me this day from the face of the ground; and from Your face I will be hidden, and I will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me. 15 So the Lord said to him, Therefore whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord appointed a sign for Cain, so that no one finding him would slay him. Genesis 4:10-15

God clearly finds the malicious killing of his creation abominable, and importantly, Cain expresses his fear that he himself would be killed (verse 14).  He inherently valued his life and realized the gravity of what he’d done (verses 13-14).  The punishment was to effectively walk a hostile earth that would forever reject him—a body that could never find a home.  Yet, importantly, God reinforces that Cain’s life would be worth seven times the vengeance if someone killed him.

Likewise, our value does not depend on our age, sex, race, or nature.  Every human being, young or old, weak or strong, man or woman, of any color or region, believing or unbelieving, is so precious to God that he sent His only Son to die for us wretched sinners:

16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.  John 3:16

Outside of the scripture, laws against murder have been adopted universally as well, which leads me to believe that the value of person is another God imbued aspect of every person created.  In its most minimal sense, it is manifested in a social contract that states I will not harm you if you do not harm me.  In practice of course, the contract is regularly violated.

Value of Succession

Another value imbued in each person is the value of succession, or care for the future. 

22 A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, And the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous.   Proverbs 13:22

I believe we all individually desire to leave a legacy to the future, although very often the legacy is a foolishness that is painfully left for future generations to resolve. At the group level, every civilization that has lasted a long time has valued the stability of their society to the point of sacrificing personal goals for the benefit of the next generation.  Wisdom and sacrifice at a mature age served to dampen selfish youthful desires, and