The Human Factor -The Christian notion of redemption in the face of human nature -part 1 Copyright Robert Fullarton

The Human Factor

-The Christian notion of redemption in the face of human nature -part 1
Copyright Robert Fullarton

The world in which we live in, can be so exclusive and we are creatures which feel so deep, dream and face the relentless gauntlet called life. We are born into this world and are therefore thrown into the deep end, from birth onwards. The world is full of broken people, the back streets of the cities possesses the dark “underbelly” of civilization, where the dispossessed, those fighting addiction and violence hang out, every day the world acts out its passions to the extreme and man’s ideologies are the fuel for the fire that is unquenched in human nature.

As a Christian I believe that the world is a fallen dimension, as man is a fallen creature in need of redemption. What is redemption? It has been classically described to denote that one must be saved from oneself. If you take a look at the world in which you live in, you will be disturbed to see the uniform levels, patterns and repetitious crimes that are nurtured and home grown- in all classes- of human nature. No person can deny that we live in a world of angst, pain, hardship, violence and fear, where governments increase measures of security to fight the rising measures of terror that are being improvised to kill. It is a race to match violence for violence, tit for tat, to deter man from himself, institutions and methods have been drawn up to deter man, prohibit and punish what man can commit, will commit and is inevitable to commit.

We search for excuses and immunity for the acts of human nature, men blame God, they blame their own heritage, their forefathers and their governments and many believe that we are born basically good, but become corrupted –or basically can become bad- but what if the nature of man is akin to that of a predator left in the company of its prey, or that of a contagion which spreads to all parts of the land, what can prohibit the very thing that will return if the organism is in rebellion against its own people?

We do not live up to any standard because we fail to reach the bar, we fail to practice what we preach, we break our ethical codes and we eventually fall in time. But it is worse for men and for societies to deny the existence of sin itself- the wrongdoing, an existential crime itself against the highest reality and highest of beings (could that be what sin is?)- these are what can be called moral crimes in the worst degree. Too often reprimands are melted down into liberal reforms, moral absolutes are questioned, cultures lose their integral core, the laws of nations are deprived of justice and the examples of such fail. I would equally add that dangerous ideologies that indulge and give excuse to violence, legalism, licence for self-righteousness and power mirror and gratify the inner desires that human nature possesses in abundance. 

Destructive ideologies unleash dormant destruction in men and gives them their “excuse” to indulge in power, brutality and aggression. All boys learn to play soldier and are fed on violent films, notions of honour, power and violence from an early age, they are thrown into the ruthless school environment of rivalry, they at times take pleasure in the persecution of the supposed weak and some bring this ruthless system to the work place with them. I always believed that Darwinian social philosophy and psychology has been so compelling because of the similarities, complexities and brutalities which it espouses that are akin to our own nature when acted out in extremity. The worst of man is apparently justified in a philosophical system.

The stoic philosopher Seneca wrote an ethical code and tried to promote universal, humanist codes of honour between man and man, but could not live out nor fulfil his own ruminations, but merely acquiesced in the madness of Nero to a secluded suicide, self-doubt and ultimately shame.

What laws can we create that will essentially instil a sense of love in the heart of a human being, at best a law or piece of legislation can prohibit and reprimand the individual but fail to radically nor truly rehabilitate the criminal. What changes the heart of a violent person, what changes their mind, moulds their stance on life and makes them into a person of renewed compassion, virtuous, outright and upstanding, that is a question to comprehend?

No human being can be taught to love, but must empirically encounter love for what it is in its mystery and the far reaching consequences of what it can achieve. The ways of love are foreign unto the soul of the individual until he knows it and as such it can be like a conversion experience, bearing the mental quality for which I will talk about and expand on later.

What happened 2,000 years ago in Galilee? Who was Jesus of Nazareth? Every human being should examine the questions, the claims and implications made, arising out of the life of this very man, for which his miracles have been recounted in the four canonical gospels and whose crucifixion was recorded by the Jewish historian Josephus and the Roman historian Tacitus. All other religions deny his claim of divinity and declare him to be merely another teacher of ethics, yet what other moral teacher has been recorded to have performed miracles, raised people from death and it is claimed, been raised from the dead.

The implications are more far-reaching, utterly ground breaking and phenomenal  if Jesus is the supposed God-man that Christians believe him to be, in comparison with another moral teacher that merely taught us codes of failing ethics. The Christian message is unique in that it teaches that man can be recycled, redeemed and reborn  and share the nature of God, in a union with Christ, that he or she can possess part of the encompassing nature of the divine (it is not the impediment of rationality but rather the impediment of cynicism and human nature and because it seems so novel, so profound and even alien among the religions of the world, it is met with bitterness, hatred, excuses, opposition and cynicism). What would it mean if the maker and the master were to enter into the world and meet his creatures face to face? What if the unknown householder were to come and meet the unknown tenants on any given day or time or if the force of the divine were to share our material, our physical weaknesses and enter into our time and space, in disguise, he catches all men off guard and finds few hearts are really open to what he has to state and that of course goes against the proud ideals and ramifications of human nature- Socrates stated himself that the perfect man if he were to ever live upon this earth, would be killed for being too strange, for being too different and utterly alien unto the corrupt nature of men.

At the very least one can call the crucifixion of Jesus Christ the cruel execution of an innocent man by vicious methods of torture and brutality, at most and in its truest light it can be called the greatest act of love –for Christians believe that Jesus Christ took the crimes and sins of mankind upon himself and wiped them clean by his own sacrifice- where the God-man stretches out his arms upon the cross at Golgotha in pain and glory. To the modus operandi of the world such an act is seen as nonsense or utter weakness in the face of those who believe that man needs to be liberated through violent revolution, but counter to this history has tried and tested this method and it has shown up the nature of man in his most brutal, man is not naturally harmonious to man.