Redefining nature
This week's goodness is on Romans 6:15-18:
These verses touch on the heart transformation that takes place as we become Christians. In our nature, darwinistically speaking, we're self-promoting, self-serving, self-replicating selfish creatures. There's no natural sense of doing what's right for others, or for the world we live in. Our natural inclinations are towards evil all the time, in that sense. God gave the Jewish people the law partially to say "If you were interested in valuing the things I value, here is what it would look like." Comparing ourselves against that template shows how bent out of shape our hearts are. The heart, in its natural state, is deceitful above all things.
The heart can change though. I'm constantly reminded of the parallels between people and the life we've created in the form of computers. A computer's brain, the microchip, can now be updated. The virtual circuitry can change and perform things more efficiently or more effectively. Physically nothing has changed, but internally, in terms only visible as electrical impulses, something is new and better. We can do it to each other to some extent, but God is the designer of us all and can do it so much more effectively.
There are still things I've got wired into me from when I was a child. My parents taught me manners, for instance. Even now I seem to be the only person who says please and thank you to strangers. Other people have different things wired into them. Maybe certain smells or sensations trigger certain cravings or fears. Maybe they learned attitudes of self-reliance or hatred. All of these things are fixable. We can be reprogrammed, but sometimes it's only God who rewrites the circuitry of our hearts.
Before we knew there was something better in God, we tried to figure things out on our own. We stumbled and blundered and pushed and shoved. We were slaves to selfishness and confusion. We were sin-robots, repeating the pattern seared onto our dead circuitry. In Christ we have eternal life and with it comes changes and improvement. We can become better, not just in an external sense, but even becoming as new creations. God's Holy Spirit flashes something better into us, and we don't follow the old patterns anymore. We have something new.
So as God changes us, our hearts change. They don't simply deceive us with their selfish whims. We begin to value others. We trust and share and begin to access God's power and love. We're not slaves to the old ways and perspectives. We're under God's direction and control. It is a better place to be.
This is great news for us though. Sometimes the patterns and fears we live in are bad. On our own, maybe we can't change them. God can do it though. He takes us from the bad place to the good. Habits fall away. Triggers are defused. Patterns of destruction are broken. Sometimes in a flash, sometimes in a slow bar of progress, we're changed. We serve a new master, one who loves us and takes care of us. He's the author of our nature, and he can rewrite it to serve his purposes.
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
These verses touch on the heart transformation that takes place as we become Christians. In our nature, darwinistically speaking, we're self-promoting, self-serving, self-replicating selfish creatures. There's no natural sense of doing what's right for others, or for the world we live in. Our natural inclinations are towards evil all the time, in that sense. God gave the Jewish people the law partially to say "If you were interested in valuing the things I value, here is what it would look like." Comparing ourselves against that template shows how bent out of shape our hearts are. The heart, in its natural state, is deceitful above all things.
The heart can change though. I'm constantly reminded of the parallels between people and the life we've created in the form of computers. A computer's brain, the microchip, can now be updated. The virtual circuitry can change and perform things more efficiently or more effectively. Physically nothing has changed, but internally, in terms only visible as electrical impulses, something is new and better. We can do it to each other to some extent, but God is the designer of us all and can do it so much more effectively.
There are still things I've got wired into me from when I was a child. My parents taught me manners, for instance. Even now I seem to be the only person who says please and thank you to strangers. Other people have different things wired into them. Maybe certain smells or sensations trigger certain cravings or fears. Maybe they learned attitudes of self-reliance or hatred. All of these things are fixable. We can be reprogrammed, but sometimes it's only God who rewrites the circuitry of our hearts.
Before we knew there was something better in God, we tried to figure things out on our own. We stumbled and blundered and pushed and shoved. We were slaves to selfishness and confusion. We were sin-robots, repeating the pattern seared onto our dead circuitry. In Christ we have eternal life and with it comes changes and improvement. We can become better, not just in an external sense, but even becoming as new creations. God's Holy Spirit flashes something better into us, and we don't follow the old patterns anymore. We have something new.
So as God changes us, our hearts change. They don't simply deceive us with their selfish whims. We begin to value others. We trust and share and begin to access God's power and love. We're not slaves to the old ways and perspectives. We're under God's direction and control. It is a better place to be.
This is great news for us though. Sometimes the patterns and fears we live in are bad. On our own, maybe we can't change them. God can do it though. He takes us from the bad place to the good. Habits fall away. Triggers are defused. Patterns of destruction are broken. Sometimes in a flash, sometimes in a slow bar of progress, we're changed. We serve a new master, one who loves us and takes care of us. He's the author of our nature, and he can rewrite it to serve his purposes.
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