Fallen Nature

What was it like to be the first person on the earth? The account given in the first book of the collection of history books called "The Bible" helps you to imagine it. Seemingly, the Maker of the world was able to give directions via mental or verbal communications. So, you would have known that a kindly creator had made you and that he was going to show you day by day how to develop the earth. Naturally, this would have given you a great sense of safety and security and you would have set about the tasks that your Maker gave you. He knew where he'd buried the oil and the water and the coal; he knew the best time to sow your seeds and reap the harvests. He also would be able to indicate to you variations that might occur in weather patterns. The result would be a life of fulfilment and order flowing from an inner sense of what to do and when to do it. Above all, you would feel your life depended on your Creator's personal love and interest in you; the world was simply one of his planets you were looking after. The Great Perversion You and I know that the first men and women did not take that attitude. In fact, they began to ignore these inward intuitions from the Creator and set about developing the world as if there were no kindly creator. In order to stay alive they saw they needed continuous food supplies, clothes to protect them from the cold and rain, and shelters in which to sleep when the sun went down. But as humans multiplied, the competition for these "necessities of life" increased and we human beings developed new feelings like fear and anxiety. We began to worry about whether we would have enough food stored for the next year and the adrenalin increased the excess acid in our systems so that our bodies felt the strain. As we experienced frustration at not having as much grain stored as others, our blood vessels experienced constriction and headaches became a fact of life. But the greatest change occurred not in our physical health but in our mental attitudes. Our minds became preoccupied with "beating our neighbours to the punch" and manipulating our grain stores (and later, our stocks and shares) into ever larger quantities. This itself turned into an infinitely receding horizon as it became impossible to be sure that we ever had "enough". It was very difficult to produce the same security as we had when we depended on the infinite Creator of the universe. As the centuries passed, we transmitted these competitive and acquisitive drives to our children. The result was that the human race turned into a mass of little neurotic squirrels trying to get enough nuts stored for the winter. Instead of the fulfilling of our minds' desires for wholeness and order as we saw the world respond to the creator's plans, our minds became slaves to the fulfilment of our physical needs. Under this kind of physical and emotional pressure, mistakes in judgement occurred and the resulting errors in action produced agricultural and mining fiascoes that caused further trauma for the race. The Love Shortage However, this perversion of our mental and emotional natures caused more than unbearable angst. As a race, we found that our "individualness" seemed to go unrecognized. There were billions of us who thought we were different for all the other billions, but none of the rest seemed to appreciate how different we were. We knew we were different, but we no longer felt the love of the One Significant Other in the universe who could give us that sense of worth and self-esteem. The resulting sense of inferiority and insignificance drove us to force others to acknowledge and recognize our importance. So began that disapproval that has resulted in our present society of people-pleasers. We don't want to run our lives by what other people think, but we do. We have become little puppy dogs who will do anything for a pat and a cookie. The Doubly Perverted Nature The reason we have difficulty being what we were meant to be is due to something missing in our natures and something perverted in our natures. We now live without any contact with our maker. This means we lack any inner guidance or direction from him. We roam through life driven by circumstances and others' opinions. Because we lack internal direction, we have become utterly dependent on the external world of things, people, and circumstances to provide for our needs. This has twisted the ways our minds, emotions, and bodies operate so that our personalities are disintegrated. Even when we do aspire to do the kind of thing our maker wants, we find ruts in the very cortex of our brains and imbalances in our emotions that prevent us from "doing what we would". Our Fallen Nature Our own personal failures to live up to what we believe we ought are due to something bigger than our own inadequacies. Our personal failures stem from a nature that is almost as "old as the hills". It's a perverted and twisted psychological and physical nature that has been bred into our forefathers for generations. You are faced not simply with changing "the habits of a lifetime", but with changing the nature of mankind. In order to live the way you were originally created to live, you have to somehow recover the nature you once had. This is a problem that is far bigger than you yourself. This is not just a personal problem you have with bad temper or drugs. This is a human race problem--a cosmic problem. The perversion of our natures is so complex and ancient that humanity itself can no longer solve it. Trying to repair a product that needs to be returned to the manufacturer never solves the problem. This is the reason for our human predicament.