Catchy title eh? I mean it made you read this far didn’t it? Of course whether you read further or not is entirely up to you but if you do you will come to understand the point of it all.

You know sometimes I think looking at people and telling them they are evil is a little like telling a child the following night time story:

“Once upon a time a long time ago in a land far, far away there were two people. Those two people ate fruit from the wrong tree and the great voice sadly said to them ‘because you have done this I condemn you to death’, and so they died. The end.”

First of all it is highly unsatisfying and secondly it leaves a person with a loud question in their head – SO WHAT?

It seems that we increasingly miss the ‘so what?’ in the grand narrative that is the human journey. Somehow we feel it is more important to point out the obvious.

“You sir, have blue eyes!”

“Ummm…yes, I suppose I do.”

“Well STOP IT!”

In a variety of ways and means we are bombarded each day with the message that we are evil. We see it in advertizing (you are too fat, you are too skinny, you are too bald, you are too hairy, you are too brown, you are too (fill in the blank) and the list goes on.

When we say “so what?” we are offered solutions (go on a diet, eat more, try Rogain, etc.) but none of these are solutions. Rather they are like masks hiding a deeper issue that we all feel in our bones. We are broken in ways we do not comprehend. We are broken at such foundational levels that our brokenness is our new normal and we find ways to ignore it. Still it nags at us and we seek solutions because without solutions we are left without hope.

Sometimes the message that is delivered is – “You are sinful”, to which we respond…”So what?” and in return we are offered the grand solution which typically boils down to “Stop It!” and from this we are right to wander away unsatisfied and without hope for we already knew that was an option but somehow it doesn’t seem to work at the fundamental level of our being.

“Once upon a time there were these people who were condemned to die for their sins and they had children and they were born dead and lived lives of dead men and women, and they had children who were born dead and so on and so on until you were born dead too…”

You hear this message and you ask “how than do I discover life?”, and more often then not the list that comes back to you sounds more like an autopsy than a solution.

“Well son you need to get your heart beating, then maybe get some lung function going and it goes without saying that base electrical activity in the brain is pretty critical. You’re going to need liver function, and the kidneys can sure be helpful, sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing can reeeeaaally come in handy…”

You stand there in all your dead zombie glory and all you want to do is lean over and eat his brains, partly out of frustration but mostly because that’s who you are and ultimately you know you don’t need a list you need a miracle.

See we’re all broken and we all know it (although we’re pretty good at hiding that knowledge at times). We’re just a bunch of dead people wandering around telling other dead people how not to be dead and the painful thing is the miracle that we need is right there but it seems too easy and it seems unfair that such a bunch of miserable wretches, who frankly deserve the disease they carry, should ever be given a miracle.

We are told we are sinful and when we ask for solutions we are given instead a more detailed list of how sinful we are; You lie, you cheat, you covet, you steal, you swear, you kill, you gossip, you envy, you failure, you failure, you failure.

When asked for the solution we are told; stop lying, stop cheating, stop coveting, stop stealing, stop swearing, stop killing, stop gossiping, stop envying, stop failing, stop failing, stop failing. Once again we rightly walk away disheartened, disillusioned and dead because we are corpses asked to reanimate ourselves.

The real “so what?” is at the end of the story, which we tend to miss.

“So after the people died as a result of their own actions the one-over-all felt pity for them and leaned in and said – “You are dead”, to which the dead responded “yes, we know.” The one-over-all said “this should not be, if you could do all these things (breathe, beat heart, think) you would be alive again.” To which the dead responded “We tried these things and our failure to do them only make us feel more dead.” To which the one-over-all responded “Good – now you truly are in a place to know your need” and with that he reached out and said “Take my hand, I will take your death and you may have my life…forever.” The dead were suspicious. “Is it that easy?” To which the one-over-all responded – “try it and find out, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain” and so they did and they lived.

Still…in their life they felt the dead within. “Why this dead living?” and the one-over-all responded “you are alive but you will carry death within until I come to overwhelm all things…in the meantime let the death within you serve as a reminder of the dead ones that walk around you still…let it remind you of their need…show them life and do not despair at the death that remains within…for your death is dying.”

We do not need to be simply told we are evil. We do not need to be simply told to stop being evil. We need, as Paul Harvey would so eloquently put it, “the rest of the story”.

We need to be told that in our death there is life. We need hope. We need Christ.