The Balancing of Disequilibrium Due Sin: The Business of Christian Education CV

⁸ And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” ¹⁰ And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” ¹¹ He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” ¹² The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” ¹³ Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Genesis 3:8-13

           

A great disequilibrium was introduced into the world of man when Adam and Eve disobeyed God.  This is the biggest mistake ever committed in the history of mankind.  It was the very first time man ever experienced disequilibrium.  It brought a huge shock to the core being of both Adam and Eve.  And they could not handle it the way it was supposed to be.  The souls were shattered.  They had short circuited their coherence.  They entered into a foreign realm that brought chill into their very self.  They felt the feeling they never felt before in their life.  Shame overwhelmed their fragile minds.  Suddenly they felt out of order.  They realized that they no longer fit in the beautiful garden of God.  They saw their beautiful bodies differently. 
They realized that something was missing.  So they tried to hide themselves, from them, from each other, and from anything else.  And before they made sense of what had befallen them, they heard a sound in the garden.  Prior to the grieve mistake they made, that sound was the sound of comfort, sound of joy, sound of shalom.  But suddenly everything changed, including that very sound.  It became a dreadful sound.  It became the sound of terror.  Not because that sound itself that changed into a fearful sound, but it was them that changed.  Their disequilibrium had not found a new equilibrium.  They were still in the state of shock.  They began to enter into the process of re-equilibrium.  They needed to find a balance in their shaken world.  They needed to re-center themselves in order to continue on with their lives.  In that unstable state yet another big thing coming to confront them of what they had done.

The sound was the sound of their Creator in the garden.  The beautiful relationship they had before with God suddenly became undesirable.  They no longer longed for God.  But instead, they longed to be apart from God.  Their hiding from God was a reflection that they did not want God to find out about their state.  They were conscious of their disobedience.  They were conscious of their transgression.  They had broken God’s commandment.  And they couldn’t face God.  They knew that they had crossed the line.  They felt it deep down that they were dying.  The vitality that they had before was now gone.  The glory that they were glowing from was no more.  The dignity that adorned them was torn to pieces.  They felt very low now.  They felt their life was ruined.  They felt hopeless.  The disequilibrium of this magnitude tortured them.  They sensed it in their conscience that something must be done to fix what they broke.  But yet there was a competing force coming out from the depravity that attempted to take over.  On the one hand they intuitively knew that they ought to apologize sincerely.  They sensed instinctively that they ought to ask their Creator, their Lord, their God, for forgiveness of their disobedience.  But yet the competing force that had flooded their disposition and reasoning demanded the opposite.  This newfound tendency forced its logic to maintain their “innocence” and consequently prompted them to deny their duty to apologize and instead a different route was ready to be taken, which was the route to shift the blame to someone else, or in other words, to find a scapegoat.  The torture of their own disequilibrium was too much for their fragile soul so that in order to live with themselves they ought to decide on which route to take to keep the integrity of their soul.

One route demanded their soul to be humble and to admit their mistake to the giver of the command.  This route placed their lives in the hands of other being, who was the Supreme Being that warned them that eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would result in death.  Whereas the other route attempted to save their own self in order to show that they were innocent, that what they did was not punishable by death, and therefore did not require them to humble themselves, so they could maintain their pride, while at the same time drowning the scapegoat into the bottom of sheol to take their blame regardless of whether the scapegoat was innocent or not.  This route had just one purpose, to save themselves, at the expense of other(s).  This is the pinnacle of self-centeredness.  This is the epitome of evil.  That is to sacrifice others as long as the self could be preserved.  This option does not consider the well being of others.  This option is the most egocentric as it can be.  With this option man is not obligated to care for others.  With this option there is no ethics.  Because the bottom  line of this option is self preservation over others.  In this option, self is valued over anything else, even over God himself.

So after the event of the fall God came to the garden.  Genesis 3:8 documents the event: “⁸ And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”  And that introduction started the most painful conversation God had with Adam and Eve.  God came searching for Adam and he asked: “Where are you?”  Adam’s answer was a reflection of his great disequilibrium: “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”   First, Adam knew that God came into the garden.  Before the fall, it was a common scene.  Genesis 2 shows how intimate the relationship between God and man.  His presence in the garden was always welcomed.  Adam never hid himself when God was in the garden.  But the fall changed all that.  So when Adam found out that God was in the garden, he reacted unusually.  The feeling that never crossed his mind before.  The feeling of fear.  Fear not because of God’s glory and majesty.  But this is a different fear.  This is the unhealthy fear.  Adam gave the reason why he was afraid, which was because he realized his nakedness.  His nakedness was the source of his fear.  He was afraid to stand naked in front of the holy God.  This conversation was awkward.  Because it seems that Adam was always naked, but it was never the issue prior to the fall.  But this time his nakedness became a big problem.  His realization of his nakedness was deeper than merely knowing that he was naked.  Besides, he already sewed fig leaves to cover his body (Genesis 3:7).  In a way, he was not naked anymore because his naked body was already covered.  But this is a different kind of nakedness.  This nakedness projects the torn soul that yearns for the fixing of the brokenness.  This nakedness accuses the self of the mistakes the person has done.  This nakedness bares it all out there the ugliness of their broken spirit.  It wounds the person’s sense of self.  It wounds the person’s dignity.  It robs the person of glory.  What’s left is only the unbearable shame.  This unbearable shame leads to constant regret.  And this constant regret continues to play the “What If?” question over and over again.  And this “What If?” question creates many different scenarios of the event of the fall with the imaginative wish to avoid breaking the command.  But the more the mind plays the scenario, the more the reality is closing in and pressing the soul of the reality of the sin committed.  Depression quickly sets in.  For the self wants so badly to correct the mistake made.  The self desires to turn back the clock and redo the event all over again.  But the consciousness realizes that the wish is a mere imagination.  It won’t happen.  Coming to the impenetrable wall of the powerlessness, the soul succumbs even deeper into the pit of shame.  The disequilibrium grows bigger as the self wiggles in its own feeble strength to remedy its mistake in futility.  The unbearable shame becomes heavier as the self recognizes the hopelessness and the powerlessness of all the great faculty one has.  So Adam was afraid because of the unbearable shame that he could not get rid of his own self.  He did not want to be found in that condition, especially not by God.  The change in himself was manifested through the loincloth he was wearing.  The very thing he used to hide his nakedness was the most obvious clue of his nakedness.  So the very thing he did to cover his shame actually proclaimed his nakedness.  But yet he could not strip himself of the covering, for he could not bear knowing his nakedness uncovered.  He could not act as he used to.  So he had no other choice but to run away from God, to avoid God’s presence.

So the action that Adam and Eve took when they heard that God was present in the garden was to hide themselves.  Adam concluded his answer by saying: “and I hid myself.”  Clearly the construction of the sentence leads the audience to inevitably conclude that Adam was hiding himself from God.  This is a painful picture.  It reminds me of myself when I was a kid.  I was in grade 2 at that time.  My dad told me in the morning when he brought me to school: “Be careful when you play, do not hurt yourself.”  It was because I had quick feet.  I ran very fast.  But I still couldn’t control my speed well enough so often I would fall and hurt myself.  So I answered him: “Don’t worry dad, I can take care of myself.  I won’t get hurt.”  Now, I liked playing tags with my friends.  So that day after school, while waiting for my dad to come and pick me up, I played tags with my friends.  As I was playing, I remembered what my dad said to me in the morning.  But in the fun of the game, I became sloppy.  I ran too fast and couldn’t control myself, and so at the turn I lost balance and I fell and I scraped my knee on the pavement.  Oh boy it hurt so bad.  Blood flowed from the wound.  Right at that time I saw my dad coming to pick me up.  But I did not want him to know that I was not careful and that I hurt myself badly.  I felt ashamed, because I boasted that I could take care of myself.  So I rolled up my sock to cover my wound and to hide it from my dad’s sight.  I tried very hard to walk straight up to him.  I tried so hard to hide my pain, forced myself not to limp when walking.  So I met him.  He just parked his motorbike on the side and he asked me: “How’s your day?”  So I quickly answered: “Fine.”  As I put my bag on the seat.  He asked again: “Did you hurt yourself?”  Oh, to the point question.  I did not want to answer, but I had to.  He looked at me.  And quickly I said: “No!” in order to save myself.  But my dad did not believe me.  He said: “Come on now, tell the truth.”  I shook my head trying to convince him that I was okay, that I did not hurt myself.  But he looked at my knee and he pointed at it.  So I looked down and saw that the blood seeped out of my sock.  What was I thinking?!  My sock was white, of course the wound would show very clearly.  So My dad knew all along that I had hurt myself.  But because of shame, I wanted to hide it from him.  And I lied to him.  This is just a glimpse, a tiny scale, of the painful interaction God had with Adam.  As Adam was trying to hide his sin and shame from God, so I too tried to hide it from my dad.

God did not waste time.  He went straight to the point.  His heart was always for healing, for salvation.  But in order to get the disequilibrium to be re-equilibrated properly, the truth must come out.  Not that God did not know the truth.  He knew for sure.  But Adam and Eve had to acknowledge it.  They had to admit their mistake.  So even though painful God had to prompt further.  In response to Adam’s answer, God asked: “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”  Two very crucial questions.  Straightforward in nature.  And Adam should have been able to answer them with the knowledge that he had.  The proper answer to the first question was: “Nobody.”  And to the second question: “Yes I have.”  That’s all God needed.  He wanted Adam to abide to the truth.  He wanted Adam to walk the path of the proper re-equilibrium.  Jesus said in John 8:32b: “the truth will set you free.”  God’s question, even the first question: “Where are you?” is geared toward healing Adam.  The truth would have begun the process of healing.  But Adam was too shattered.   

Even though he thought that he was okay, that he still could compose himself as much as he could, his coherence was torn apart.  God desired healing for Adam.  And the only way toward healing was through admitting his mistake.  God was helping Adam to walk into the first route.  God attempted to break Adam’s steps on the second route.  But it was clear that Adam’s disequilibrium was off the chart.  The total depravity truly lived up to its reputation.  So instead of abiding in the truth, Adam ran even further away from it.  So in his shame and fear, he answered back: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”  Adam ran deeper into the route of self-centeredness.  His main goal was to save himself.  So he had to cover his sin.  He did not humble himself.  He stayed in his pride.  But his soul had to compensate.  He could not stand on pride and at the same time humbling himself.  It is an either or situation.  Either maintaining the pride and kill humility, or humbling oneself and grounding the pride.  One can’t have both.  And Adam chose the first one.  He maintained his pride, in the wish to “keep” his “innocence.”  And by doing that he killed humility.  As he did that he exploited the truth in order to justify himself.  He manipulated the truth in order to assert that he was “clean” and therefore “innocent.”  It was true that Eve was given by God.  But she was given by God to complete him.  Adam was in loneliness.  Genesis 2:20 records this:

²⁰ The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

In that context God created Eve and gave her to Adam.  And Adam’s reaction to the gift, was priceless.  Take a look at this verse in Genesis 2:23 when Adam declared:

“This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man.”

That was the first poem ever composed by man.  One of the most beautiful ever.  No other poem about a woman can surpass this one.  This poem reflected Adam’s greatest joy.  But, see how different Adam’s attitude toward this gift was now.  There was no joy anymore.  His answer to God’s probe showed his rejection of the gift.  It was like he was saying that God’s gift got him into trouble.  Instead of the gift being the source of joy, it had become the source of his misery.  So he barked at God and pointed finger to the holy God.  He needed to re-equilibrate himself in order to cope with the tremendous disequilibrium he was in.  And following the path of self-centeredness he had to find someone to blame.  He needed a scapegoat.  He knew deep down that he was the sinner.  His conscience accused him of his fallout.  But the same was too unbearable.  His pride was too wounded.  In order to establish himself and “cleanse” himself from his filth, he had to shift the blame out of himself.  His corrupted logic found a way.  So he reasoned that IF God had not given Eve to him in the first place, he would not get into this trouble.  So first and foremost it must be God’s fault.  God was responsible for all this mess, so he thought.  He then denied his own responsibility.  His moral self was disintegrated.  The “flee or fight” response kicked in.  But he could not flee anymore.  He tried, but he failed.  So only fight mode remained.  He fought God.  God was the scapegoat, the first and the most important.  He used the truth that God factually gave Eve to him as a weapon to attack God.  He inflicted pain to God.  The holy God who was innocent in every way was intentionally hurt by Adam’s irresponsible attitude.  He thought that by shifting the blame to God, he could find relief for his disoriented soul.  He thought by attacking God he could alleviate the pain within.  Unfortunately, the disequilibrium grew bigger the more he avoided admitting his mistake, which caused his soul to be distorted even more.  He became schizophrenic.

            And the soul longed for another layer of defense.  Adam did not find it adequate just to blame God.  So he had to drag Eve into his defense.  He had to get God’s eyes off of him.  Pointing finger to God did not help his cause.  He realized his mistake very quickly.  For his conscience continued to condemn him.  He knew deep down that God was innocent.  But he panicked.  God happened to be right in front of him.  God so happened to be the one confronting him of his sin.  He knew he was the one responsible.  But he could not bear the thought of letting God do whatever he wanted to him.  He did not trust God anymore.  He was overwhelmed by his fear.  He feared the unknown for he did not know God anymore.  He feared death.  He feared the punishment.  He was crushed by his shame.  He did not want to lose his self.  So he tried to save it.  But it was a huge mistake to blame God.  So he had to quickly invent something else.  He had to distract God.  So he used yet another truth not to do what was right, but to satisfy his egoistic survival instinct.  So he pointed finger to Eve.  For it was true that Eve was the one giving him the fruit to eat.  His statement was fact.  But it was twisted with evil intent.  For actually when Eve gave it to him, he did not refuse whatsoever.  Besides, he was with her the whole time.  In the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Moses wrote Genesis 3:6b: “she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”  So it was not like Adam was forced or coerced to eat the fruit.  His non-refusal is a testament of his desire to eat the fruit as well.  He was the one to whom God gave the command after all (Genesis 2:17).  And God gave the command to Adam before he created Eve.  So Adam was greatly responsible to deter Eve from taking the forbidden fruit.  But he didn’t.  His silence was an endorsement of Eve’s decision.  But Adam used that truth to wash his hands of the guilt.  He said what he said as if Eve was the one who was solely responsible of the breaking of the command.  He hit the wall in blaming God, so he punched Eve with a deadly attack.  Adam pointed his finger to Eve and basically argued that Eve was the CAUSE of his sinning.  For him Eve was the one responsible, and he was not.  So Adam started the “blame game” and it became the model throughout history.  Then and only then, Adam dared to speak the truth as it was, that he ate the forbidden fruit.  When Pontius Pilate pushed the responsibility that caused the death of the Son of Man, he inherited it from Adam.  Matthew 27:24 tells:

²⁴ So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.”

Yet he handed Jesus over to be crucified following the bloodthirsty demand of the crowd stirred by the jealous council of Sanhedrin.  The sin of Pilate was great because he, though endowed with power to judge justly and authority to make right what was wrong, he gave in to the evil demand knowing full well that Jesus was innocent.  Luke 23:13-16 testifies:

¹³ Pilate then called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people, ¹⁴ and said to them, “You brought me this man as one who was misleading the people. And after examining him before you, behold, I did not find this man guilty of any of your charges against him. ¹⁵ Neither did Herod, for he sent him back to us. Look, nothing deserving death has been done by him. ¹⁶ I will therefore punish and release him.”

John 19:6 also testifies:

⁶ When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.”

Just like when Adam accused God of being the troublemaker, so the council of Sanhedrin too accused Jesus as the troublemaker.  For the defense mechanism born of fear the way to preserve the self is to eliminate the threat.  Adam was not successful when he pointed his finger to God.  But the seed of destruction has spread to all humanity.  When the council of Sanhedrin pointed finger to Jesus, they were successful.  They aimed to eliminate Jesus because Jesus was a threat to them.  Their sin was even greater than Pilate.  Neither Pilate nor the council wished to be responsible for the death of an innocent man.  The council devised a scheme to use the hands of the governor, and the governor pushed it back to the crowd.  This is the advanced scheme of the “blame game.”  And this time the scapegoat, or more accurately the Scripture describes as “the lamb of God” was slaughtered.

            Now, God’s eyes turned to Eve.  At this point, Adam thought he was off the hook.  He thought that he was relieved from the responsibility.  Now the blame was on Eve.  But the disequilibrium did not go away.  He still experienced the distortion of his soul.  But at least now God did not deal with him directly.  He found a temporary relief.  But God was not finished with them yet.  In the human limitation within space and time, God dealt with them in sequence.  So God asked Eve: “What is this that you have done?”  With this question God gave Eve a chance to explain what was going on.  The question opened a big opportunity for Eve to chronologically tell the story of how they arrived where they were.  Eve could have just explained starting from the encounter with the serpent down to the decision to eat the fruit.  God gave Eve the chance to trust his judgment.  God was giving Eve the opportunity to tell the truth and trust God for whatever judgment he would give after assessing the situation.  But she too had lost faith in God.  She could not trust God.  She was overwhelmed with fear.  She was surrounded by shame.  How much more knowing that she was the one who spoke with the serpent, and that she was the one entertaining the statements the serpent made even though contradicting God’s command.  The guilt was huge.  To make matter worse, in the midst of her disturbing disequilibrium, her only partner did not cover her back.  But instead she was stabbed in the back.  She was betrayed by her husband.  She expected that Adam would be a gentleman and took the blame for all the mess, and so covering her sin, for Adam was the one receiving the command directly from God after all.  But that scenario was not in play.  Adam washed his hand right then and there, and pointed his finger very strongly toward his wife as if she was a deadly plague.  Eve felt as if there was a sword piercing into her very heart.  She was heartbroken.  Her soul mate crushed her only hope.  Her fragile heart was shredded into a million pieces beyond remedy.  She was in need of Adam’s help to save her.  But instead of receiving the compassion she was hoping for, Adam used the truth to expose her shame, and left her dry and alone before the judge of all the earth.

            So Eve had to resort to her own self.  Her defense mechanism too kicked in.  She too wanted to justify herself.  She too wanted to save herself.  But the truth, exploited as it was, had come out.  She couldn’t escape from the fact.  She couldn’t deny that she was the one giving Adam the fruit.  Her conscience condemned her too.  As soon as the truth was mentioned, her very self could only nod.  Yes she did, she gave Adam the fruit.  She broke God’s command.  But the shame was unbearable.  She wanted to save her life.  She panicked.  She was given the opportunity to admit her sin.  She was given a chance to tell the truth properly.  But the more she played the event in her mind, the more she felt guilty.  Adam was not actively involved.  It was all her and the serpent.  So she couldn’t disagree with Adam’s blaming her.  She was afraid that if she laid out the details about the event, God would judge her and punish her severely.  She was afraid that she would lose her life if she admitted her sin.  She could have told God everything, and in the end admitted that yes she was the one giving Adam the fruit.  But the opportunity was wasted.  She chose the second route too.  Just like Adam, she chose the self-centeredness route.  She opted to play the “blame game.”  She thought Adam could get away with it by shifting the blame to her.  So she calculated the players, and there were only two left, her and the serpent.  Once she walked that path, her corrupted logic was actively seeking loopholes that could be exploited.  So she thought, either she fell or the serpent.  Eve did not have pride like Adam.  She did not set her logic to keep her pride.  So she played victim.  She acted as if she was weak.  She positioned herself as someone being manipulated.  With that she thought she could get away.  She thought that in that logic God would pity her and let her off the hook.  So her answer to God was: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”  She became the judge.  She did not trust God as the judge.  She did not tell the details of what happened.  She quickly judged that the serpent deceived her.  She made her own conclusion that the serpent was the one with evil intent to deceive.  At the same time she was attempting to declare that she was merely a victim, that she had no evil intent, that she was deceived.  This meant that she told God that she was weak, so that the serpent was able to exploit and manipulate her and bully its way on her.  A very heartbreaking plea of innocence.  It is the most deadly kind of defense.  Easily believable.  It touches the emotional aspect of every moral being.  And this defense has been used very often as long as the history of mankind.

       
Eve’s defense system is brilliantly utilized through psychoanalysis.  A murderer could get away based on the “play victim” strategy.  The case of Richard James Herrin in 1977 murdering his girlfriend Bonnie Garland in cold blood is one example of this deadly defense argument.  Herrin admitted that he killed Garland.  But he was found not guilty on the first and second degree murder.  He was found guilty on first degree man slaughter, a much lighter verdict which carried a much lighter sentence, even though evidences showed that he actually pre-meditated this murder.  He gained sympathy on the basis of him playing the victim card.  The jury saw him as a victim of the society.  The rejection of the society “caused” him to react adversely toward the rejection from Garland.  It was understood that their relationship grew weaker, and Garland wanted to date other men, so she broke up with him.  Herrin felt rejected, so he decided to end her life.  Herrin killed Garland in cold blood with a hammer.  He waited until Garland fell asleep.  And he even checked whether Garland was asleep before then he unwrapped the claw hammer that he found in the basement and began swinging it on her head repeatedly.  The “victim of the society” argument gained the sympathy of the jury based on the psychiatry’s testimony.  Herrin’s childhood rejection trauma became the “culprit” or the “cause” that prompted Herrin to murder his girlfriend.  So Herrin was just a victim.  Herrin was a victim not just of society, but also of Garland.  And thus Garland too was considered as the “cause” of his brutality.  The greater responsibility rested on society and Garland, instead of on Herrin.  But neither the “society” nor Garland were there to defend themselves, were they?  So based on such logic, Herrin was only found guilty of a much lesser charge.  The play victim strategy reduced the level of his responsibility.  This “Yale Murder” case is considered as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in the United States.  But it was not a new thing.  Eve already masterfully played it at the beginning of human history.

            She hoped to gain sympathy from God so that she could get off the hook from the responsibility of bringing down the entire humanity.  So she skillfully shifted the blame to the serpent.  And that’s the end of the investigation.  God did not investigate anymore.  There was no use.  The serpent was the master of liar.  He was the devil himself, the father of lies.  An investigation was not necessary.  So immediately after Eve’s defense, God gave his judgment on all three of them, beginning from the serpent, then Eve, and ended with Adam.  It was very painful for God, because the creature that he created according to his image had gone haywire.  He had given them opportunities, and he even had tried to lead them down the path of the proper re-equilibrium, but yet they refused.  They chose the opposite path, following their own corrupted reasoning.  They chose the path of distorted re-equilibrium.  They arrived at false equilibrium.  They had rejected the way of humility.  They rejected the way of admission of their own mistake.  Instead of allowing the truth to set them free, they enslaved the truth to serve their evil desire.  Instead of being responsible of what they had done, they blamed others, and worse the sinless one was then ultimately blamed.  And ever since, the descendants of Adam always blamed God for everything, even when God intended to do good for them.  And when they couldn’t directly point their fingers on God, they point their fingers on his faithful servants.  Here is an example of the corrupted heart of man from Exodus 14:10-12:

¹⁰ When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. ¹¹ They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? ¹² Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

And throughout their forty years journey in the wilderness, they continued to beat Moses the servant of God with their cruel words and rebellions.  It has become “THE” default defense mechanism of sinners to always shift blame to others, avoiding responsibility.  The self-centeredness route is the way to go for the descendants of Adam.  They have found their new normal in the false equilibrium.  But their heart will never be healed.  The soul will never be saved through it.

            The only right way for healing, true equilibrium, and salvation, is through repentance.  In repentance one walks the path that prompts them to admit their mistakes, and to allow the truth to guide them and set them free.  And this can only be done in humility.  David prayed this in Psalm 51:16-17:

¹⁶For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;

you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.

¹⁷The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

In humility alone one may receive the salvation from the Lord.  Here is the path of faith.  The restoration of one’s trust in God is key.  Adam and Eve attempted to save themselves using their own strength, but they failed miserably.  It was in the grace of God that he prophesied the coming salvation which then was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.  It is God who saves.  It always is God.  And only in him, one can be re-centered into the true equilibrium, into the restoration of the image of God in Jesus Christ.  Amen.