*If I were a monster, would you wince when you looked at me? If I were a freak, would you stare? If I were leper, would you say, 'Unclean!'? And if I was lost, would you help me get free?* -Monster, The Almost
"I've always felt like there was this darkness inside of me just fighting to get out."- Davis Bloome, Smallville
I had a dream once that really freaked me out. It was through my eyes, but I was watching it like I was on the outside as well. It was this dream where, I guess, I was evil. One of the worst nightmares I've ever had. I don't like to think about it much, but I make myself every once in a while.
Anyway, the worst part about the dream was that it followed the typical routine of my day. So, I watched 'me' go through a school day/weekend without any conscience. Then, when I went BACK to sleep, I had a dream of a 30 year old me being hunted by the FBI. Definitely not a restful night of sleep. It felt so logical, so... realistic.
Very realistic. It didn't have that quality of bizarre-ness that usually accompanies dreaming. It all seemed very possible.
When I woke up, I thought about it a lot. I asked myself, 'What would I do if I could get away with it? What if I didn't care about God or any form of morals? What would it be like to go through a day without any inhibition, following only my own selfish whims?'
I realized that if there were no repercussions, I would have done almost everything in my dream.
And that scared the hell out of me.
When I say 'no repercussions', I don't just mean not caring about following the Bible. Because we all have an inherent system of Ethics imbued in our souls. Let me explain.
God created the world, right?
And when He created it, He made it perfect. Without sin. Meaning we started as perfect.
So, since we are made in God's image, we are imbued with an inherent sense of right-and-wrong that we feel even when we are very young. We get mad when someone breaks the rules, because that's wrong. We don't know WHY we get mad, but we do.
So, humans started as pure and good, but sin has contaminated so thoroughly this physical realm that we are born sinful AND born into sin.
So, here's my point:
Sin is alien. Sin is foreign. It shouldn't be.
Imagine two beakers. One is full of water. The other is full of a chemical. Now, imagine pouring the beaker of chemicals into the glass of water. Watch as the chemicals react negatively with the water, and the water is overtaken and transformed into something dangerous and wrong. It becomes an entirely new substance, no longer water at all. It USED to be water, but it's not now.
The chemical disperses so thoroughly within the water that it mixes completely. The new liquid in the glass isn't water or chemical. It's NOT a hybrid. It's something new that has been created by the introduction of something foreign. Like oil and water.
In this metaphor, water is our essence. The chemical is sin.
Our sin transforms us into something ugly. Something WRONG. We are NOT what we are supposed to be.
I don't think it's a stretch to say we will be almost entirely different when all things are made new. Because our sin, this constant tug-of-war between what remains of our perfect nature and the sin nature that contaminates dictates our personalities in this world.
The band RED very accurately hits this idea on the head with their song 'Fight Inside'.
*Enemy, familiar friend.
My beginning and my end.
Knowing truth.
Whispering lies.
And it hurts again.
What I feel.
What I try.
Words I say.
Words I hide.
All the pain, I want it to end.
But I want it again.
And it finds me.
The fight inside is raging in me again.*
They also accurately portray this idea in their song 'Death of Me', in which they sing about Christians being their own worst enemies. Check out the music video:
Joss Whedon, in his show Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, created the most metaphorical version of vampires for his story. In Buffy, a vampire is a demon that takes the place of the human soul within a person, effectively destroying that soul. Sinful essence in a body representing normalcy.
To be even more metaphorical, Joss created the character Angel- a vampire who has had his soul restored to him. He is tormented by guilt and desperately trying to atone for his actions when he was controlled by the demon. Now, Angel is just a good guy with unfortunate dietary constraints and a non-beating heart.
The points is, we all have incredible potential for evil and incredible potential for good.
So what is it that holds us back from acting on every sinful whim?
It's that little voice inside our heads, right?
That voice is what remains of our original perfect nature crying out to us. The voice is trying to explain that things are not right.
But that voice can't defeat sin if all we do is act on it.
See, we need to accept Christ. Accepting Christ equips us with the weapons to fight back against this sin nature. If we try to do the right thing and do not seek Christ or follow His methods, we will fall to our sinful nature. That's how the world works.
Fortunately, Christ doesn't just give us the tools to do so after we accept Him. He jumps in and fights the battle for us, protecting us while simultaneously battling the darkness within our own souls.
Skillet, with their album 'Awake', accurately portrays these two aspects of spiritual conflict with the first two songs on their album. The second song on the album should be listened to first. It's the song 'Monster'. Then, go back to the first song and listen to the song 'Hero'.
Obviously, this is a popular theme with Christian musicians.
Ted Dekker is one of my favorite authors, and this is one of his 'short stories' of sorts he posted on his blog I found particularly relevant:
"I always wondered why babies cry when I walk by, and now I know. I am a beast.
You ask me how I know. You see, I was walking through a beautiful forest on a Sunday afternoon stroll when a horrible snort sounded in the bushes to my right. I whirled and came face to face with an enormous hairy boar with two red eyes and long bloodied tusks.
I couldn’t move. But when the boar charged I managed to uproot my feet and run. Through the brush, over rocks, leaping ditches—I don’t remember because panic had shut down my mind.
Blind with that terror, I ran straight into a small canyon and pulled up hard at the base of a cliff. I could hear the beast’s snorting behind and I knew that my back would be pierced by those tusks. When I spun to face it, the boar slid to a glaring stop, a ferocious sight that turned me to ice.
It grunted once and charged, and I lost my mind to fear. I screamed bloody murder and threw myself directly for it, perhaps with a desperate hope it would turn and flee.
It did not flee. It took me head on.
But instead of smashing into those bloodied tusks, I crashed into mirrored glass that shattered and fell to the ground. I stood panting. The boar was gone. The only blood was on my forearms, where the mirror had cut me.
So you see, that is how I know that I am a beast."
---Ted Dekker, 'The Boar'
We all have potential for evil. Each and every one of us could have been Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin. We see murderers, thieves, and rapists on TV and seperate ourselves from them. We say, 'They are worse than us. Below us.'
We all could be that person. For those of us who aren't, it's by the amazing grace of God.
No murderer is born a murderer, and no rapist is born a rapist. They are born just like you and me. But something in their life happened that pushed their conscience away entirely. Under different circumstances, that could have been anyone. It's like some kind of sick, twisted equation:
Broken world + sin nature of humans x circumstance= result.
We've all got this monster inside of us. Christians are no exception. That's the tricky thing about free will- it provides both the potential for amazing good or great evil. Yet God gave it to us anyway.
This is why God is incredible- because His love is UNCONDITIONAL. He loves all He has created, no matter what. God only hates sins- he does not hate sinners. God doesn't hate gays- he hates the sin of homosexuality that these people struggle with. God doesn't hate 'whores'- he hates the insecurity and fear that leads a girl to such actions.
People are not their sin. There are no 'gays'. There are people who struggle with homosexuality. There are no 'whores'. There are people who struggle with self-esteem. Their are no 'emos'. There are people who suffer with depression and self-loathing.
The call of the Christian- and consequently, one of the biggest challenges- is to look at people and see beyond their sin. Hate their actions, not them.
I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to say here, but I have one last quote that will wrap it up:
"Pity? It is a pity the ring ever came to him (Gollum) at all. Gollum loves and hates the ring, as he loves and hates himself. Do not be too quick to offer up death in judgment, Frodo."- Gandalf
God bless.
