Why I can't help myself

Num 8:19 is interesting. "Of all the Israelites, I have given the Levites as gifts to Aaron and his sons to do the work at the Tent of Meeting on behalf of the Israelites and to make atonement for them so that no plague will strike the Israelites when they go near the sanctuary." The Levites were doing work on behalf of the Israelites. It was work ordinary folks could not do for themselves. It makes me think of Jesus and his work of atonement and advocacy on the behalf of humanity. We simply can't save ourselves. Two months ago my daughter Miracle was crawling and pulling herself up on things. Occasionally, she'd get in a position where she couldn't get down without hurting herself (she had not yet learned to fall down gracefully). She'd begin to cry and cry until she got the help she needed. She simply could not physically save herself. Getting herself out of the predicament was exactly the thing she did not want to risk as she knew she might hurt herself. Spiritually speaking, I am just as helpless as little Miracle. I cannot save myself. However, I have many options to deal with the problem of sin in my life.

1. Enjoy sinning as much as I can since "today we eat and tomorrow we die" (1 Cor 15:32).
2. Work as hard as possible to be a good moral person in hopes that it will be enough. For example, eliminate all the sins that I know that I'm committing.
3. Do as much good in the world in hopes that it will be enough cancel the sinful things I've done, e.g., serve the poor like Mother Theresa.
4. Adopt a belief framework that eliminates the possibilities of heaven and hell after death.
5. Adopt a belief framework that eliminates the possibility of absolute right and wrong.
6. Adopt a belief framework that eliminates the concepts of sin and wrongdoing.
7. Compare myself to others in the areas of my strong suits where the comparison is favorable.
8. Surround myself with people just like me so that I and my behavior become the social norm.
9. Deaden my conscience so I can do what I want without guilt.

The interesting thing about all these approaches is that none of them deal with the root cause of the issue. There are only two sets of possibilities:

• There is a God who created a universe with both physical laws (e.g., gravity) and spiritual laws. Breaking these laws have unavoidable consequences. God will hold everyone accountable exactly for what they have done (no more, no less) and there will not be any wiggle room.
• Any partial negation of the above that results in a different conclusion. For example, if there is no God, then it is impossible to have any universal accountability.

We cannot establish one possibility or the other beyond a shadow of a doubt. However, each person should note the following for him/herself:

• Based on observing plant and animal life and my ancestors before me, I should not expect to live forever.
• If I were to live forever, it would be because some external force gave me this gift, for I cannot provide myself with eternal life.
• My death is a certainty, but its timing is unknown.
• I have a conscience that tells me right from wrong.
• At some point, I have gone against what my conscience told me. In other words, even if all morality is relative, I have broken my own relative morality.
• The messages from my conscience have varied over time in terms of quality, type, & frequency.

Let's explore each of these points more deeply (I'm sure this will require more than one post!). I should not expect to live forever This is a self-evident point. Yet the vast majority of people operate on a daily basis as if life will continue indefinitely as it did last week. The major forward-looking thrust people have is typically financial. How will I pay for my kids college? How am I going to retire (now that the stock market went down 50%)? But considering how you'll die is considered to be morbid and unusual. Things that bring people to a deeper realization of the fact above include:

• Death of a friend, family member, or even reading about a news story.
• Significant illness or disease that strikes someone at my age or younger.
• Noticing that you are aging: health issues, bifocals, looking in the mirror, what kids or others say, seeing the cultural & relational gap to younger people
• Nearly having an accident: driving, skiing, hiking, working on your house

Our natural inclination is to "get it" for a moment, but then to go back to our normal lives. Psalms 39:4-6 sums it up pretty well. "Show me, O LORD, my life's endand the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man's life is but a breath. Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro: He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it." I cannot source my own eternal life Advances in the 20th and 21st century have renewed people's hopes that they can live forever. This is not a new desire, however. We simply have to observe the pyramids that served as monolithic burial chambers for the dead kings of Egypt. Chinese kings possessed similar grandiosity and even had people buried alive with them! Nowadays people will pay millions to freeze their bodies with cryonics in hopes that future scientists could "resurrect" them and restore their body to full health. During college I became fascinated by a book entitled, "The Physics of Immorality." In it, the author went into extraordinary detail about how computers will become sufficiently powerful in the mid-21st century that they can fully simulate a human brain. If a computer simulated a person's brain, that person could effectively live forever. The author is acknowledged as a brilliant physicist and half the book were "proofs" that what he wrote was true. Very interesting tour of computer science and physics. Today in America, we try to live on through the lives and accomplishments of our children. There are plenty of stories of parents getting out of control at their kids' sports games. In Eastern cultures, parents strictly discipline their children's intellectual development in school and music. Some would say that the kids are not allowed to be kids. In contrast, some families place an extraordinarily important role on the children since they provide purpose and an outlet for creativity and generosity. Family events and schedules naturally tend to revolve around the children, both because they are the weakest but also because the adults have a "need to be needed." In Luke 17:33, Jesus observes, "Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it." The concept is that if I keep running around trying to save my life and cling to the small amount of control I can exert over my life, I will completely miss the point. My life was meant to be given to a greater purpose that is beyond my little self or even my children's little selves. The victory literally lies in giving up what is seemingly the most valuable thing (my life), which opens a whole new realm of possibilities where I am no longer the limiting factor.