Saturday March 5, 2022

The terrible paradox !

“I don't do the good that I want, and I do the bad that I don't want. And if I do what I don't want, it's not me who does it anymore, it's the sin that dwells in me. Romans 7. 19-20

This is an observation that any listener tuned into a radio can make. At the time of the news, he suffered a succession of announcements of dramas and disasters emanating from the four corners of the Earth : wars, violence between tribes and within couples, murders, sexual abuse, exploitation and scams. of all kinds... The world is dark, sad, frightening for the humans who inhabit it. Then, two minutes later, the same listener hears the broadcast of a Bach cantata, or the testimony of an anonymous hero who saved an entire African population by imagining ingenious irrigation on arid soil. Man is also capable of creating the magnificent and producing the exceptional. What a strange paradox at the very heart of the human ! At the same time, the same day and at the same time, on the same earth, he is capable of the worst and the best ; and sometimes the same man switches from one to the other. What a disturbing enigma ! Perhaps we should remember God's initial plan which was all beauty, splendor, happiness and joy ; but this project was interrupted by an unfortunate – and undoubtedly insane – choice through the chimerical need for independence. This is the whole human tragedy. So the Bible gives us the history of the observed paradox and unease. But it also signals that God, even before man measures the drama of his choice, has planned a restoration of the original order. In the meantime, it is not impossible to correct our contradictory behavior by following the advice of James : “From the same mouth come blessing and curse. It must not be so, my brothers. Does the spring cause sweet water and bitter water to gush out through the same opening ? Can a fig tree, my brothers, produce olives, or a vine figs? Neither can salt water produce fresh water” (James 3. 10-12).

Source (His Word for Today)