I was speaking with a friend and brother in Christ and the conversation began to get a little intense because we couldn’t agree over a specific issue.
My friend had come across a website, I think it might have even been one from our people. But it made the claim that God had designed the human in
such a way that we are hard wired to sin. That we cannot help ourselves it is the nature of what we are.
I could not agree with that because I have always felt that we have always the opportunity to make the right choice.
But he made statements quoting scriptures that stated that “the mind of man is enmity against God, that it cannot understand God’s ways, that the heart of man is desperately wicked.
It is true there are many many scriptures that indicate that without God’s help mankind will always make the wrong decision.
Mr. Armstrong used to teach us that we are only half formed, that man was made for the Holy spirit to be a part of him to make him complete and I fully concur with that. But does that mean that as physical human beings we have no choice but to sin?
You start to thinking about this and it just kind of starts to roll around inside my brain with out coming to any clear consensus in my thinking.
The only thing I kept coming back to was that God said we had a choice and that apparently we could make the right choice or else why give us a choice to start with?
Also if we don’t really have a choice apart from God giving us what we need to make that choice, then have any of us prior to our calling really sinned? If we are hardwired to sin to the point where we cannot avoid sinning then wouldn’t that make God responsible and not ourselves? And if that is the case the why did Christ have to die for our sins?
You see what I mean, this gets to be really tough to chew on. You remember the story that introduces “Robbie the Robot” He was programmed to not do some things but he was also programmed to obey so if he was commanded to do something that he was programmed not to do he went into a kind of electronic meltdown. Unable to function until the command was rescinded.
I kind of feel that way now. I need some of you brethren that can really think clearly and logically to help out with the answer to this. I am a more of an intuitive thinker. I jump in my mind from concept to concept to arrive at a clear conclusion. Works most of the time for me but this problem I think needs clear analytical thinking to arrive at a proper conclusion and explanation.
Any of you clear headed thinkers out there want to take a shot at answering this one?
Even the Apostle Paul admitted that he desired for right thinking, but he could not achieve this goal due to his humanity. Yes, we are hardwired for sin, but we still have freedom to choose good and overcome sin
It is the word hardwired that gets in my way. You see I work with computers all the time and the definition that comes to my mind when I hear that word is; To implement (a capability) through logic circuitry that is permanently connected within a computer and therefore not subject to change by programming. .
To me hardwired means NOT SUBJECT TO CHANGE. That is the way satan was. Mr. Armstrong told us that a spirit being could only choose once. After that he was not able to change back or decide again to do good. He was then hardwired to follow that course. He also taught that we were created as physical beings so that we could “learn” from our bad choices. If we are truly hard wired to sin then we could not learn to avoid sin.
As you said Pam even Paul had a hard time avoiding sin even when he knew better but to me that means that we were made subject to the pulls of the flesh making us prone to sin but that proclivity can be overcome. If we were truly hardwired we could never overcome that.
I think the concept of being hardwired to sin comes from satan. He is now hardwired to sin because that is the path he chose and being spirit he can’t change. But we can even after making all those bad decisions in our life we have the right and the ability to choose life.
While the proclivity to sin is clearly our nature, the terminology “Hard Wired” might be a bit too absolute. We do have “free moral agency” which we can on our own faith and determination resist, but it takes the investiture of God’s Spirit to give us the ability to fundamentally change our nature, exhibiting His Faith (which we can never do fully in this lifetime). That’s where the ongoing exercise of confession and forgiveness comes into play. On the other hand, like you say above, we can also go the other way, setting ourselves into a hardened state, knowingly and willingly unrepentant.
If you review early lessons of the original Correspondence Course, WCG originally taught there was an innate tendency to sin that we had to fight against to build character. Later in the 70’s Mr. Armstrong came to understand more fully how we acquire that via Satan’s broadcasts as explained in the booklet “Human Nature – Did God Create It?“
The Bible refers to it as the “Lusts of the Flesh” Gal 5:16 that tendency to sin you speak of.
You bring up an excellent point, the fact that we CAN fight against and resist the pulls of the flesh to develop REAL eternal character.
The temptation to sin is part of our human nature BUT the ability to resist that temptation is also there. So we are not hard-wired to sin if the ability to resist is also built into us.
I made the booklet you mentioned in your comment a hot link so that we could reread it again.
My understanding is that God made Adam as a kind of “blank slate” as far as character is concerned. He was not evil, and he was good as far as he started out, yet not having God’s level of righteousness. God instructed him and started him on the right path. Then Satan tempted him and he sinned. And in allowing Satan, who was more powerful than Adam, to temp Adam, God in effect set him up to sin. God either knew he would sin or knew he was very likely to sin. Then that sin corrupted Adam’s character. And Satan and sin have corrupted the character of every human ever born. It is because of that corruption of character that we have a sinful nature.
You could say that God make man a blank slate, then let Satan write on that slate.
Or consider the analogy of a computer. God made the hardware, but he let Satan write the software. We are therefore programmed to sin, not by God, but by Satan. God did not make the tendency to sin in Adam’s brain or mind. But he built a mind that was capable of sinning, either by free volution or by Satan’s temptation and corrupting influence.
Not only does Satan write the software, he is constantly updating it, renewing it, by his influence, like a Windows computer connected to the Internet and Microsoft keeps updating the operating system whether you want Microsoft to do it or not.
But humans in the world also have free moral agency, so that, even though they are programmed to sin by Satan, they can sometimes choose good. Yet God has allowed Satan to deceive mankind, so even if some people often choose the right way, it is a mixture of good and evil. So a sincere man in the world might resist temptation of commit adultery or steal. But he will still break the holy days because he doesn’t have the truth.
But in the Church, we have God’s Holy Spirit and God’s truth, which means that there are two sets of writing on the slate. Satan’s writing is on the slate, but now God’s writing is there too. Now we can choose to obey God all the way. Or using the computer analogy, there are two software programs in the machine, Satan’s and God’s, and it is as if the machine can choose which software to follow at any time. But the world does not have that choice because they are cut off from God’s Spirit till their time to be called comes.
But even in the Church, before receiving God’s Spirit, we have spent a lifetime living according to Satan’s software, Satan’s operating system in a sense. It takes time to break the habit of following Satan’s way of life and learn God’s way of life. That is why we still sin.
God lets the world be programmed by Satan because He is teaching the world, through experience, that Satan’s way does not work.
Indeed the world runs on Windows operating system, while God operates on UNIX heh heh. It’s easy to see that windows just doesn’t work in the long run. Sorry I couldn’t resist.
Windows is easy for Unix to beat, not even a challenge. But how would Unix stand up compared to the Mac?
😀 yes but I only have experience with Windows and Unix so I can’t comment about mac heh heh
Friends, I’m having a delema about a Jesus’ return.
I get many conflicting answers, but I know someone must have the answer that
makes sense. The question is, if the year of Christ’s first coming was prophesied,
why wouldn’t the year of his sencond coming also have been given?
Matt. 24:36 say’s that no one would know a day or an hour, but it says nothing about a
year. And, Dan. 12, in answer to Daniels question in verse 8, seems to give a year for Christ’s return.
In fact, all of chapter 12 is a wrap on history, setting a scene straight out of 2Thess’s on the resurrection.
Seriously.
Please leave a comment, or visit the website where this prophecy is, I believe,
well explained.
According to the author of, The Final Time Prophecy, DW, the time prophecy ends 2026.
Looking for feedback.
Endtimes,
Just so you know I do not normally let ads come through to be posted. I let this one through as a Food for Thought comment and because I wanted to use it to make a point about something you said that I thought might be useful.
You asked why wouldn’t God want the world to know when Christ was coming the second time seeing that He gave evidence of when He was coming the first time.
The first coming was prophesied so that Israel, when the time was right, would know that He was the Messiah. Knowing the time of the second coming or the “End of the Age of Man’s rule” would have had a much different and destructive effect.
Besides, He asked His church to watch and to patiently wait for His coming, that if they did that then they would know before it happened.
In truth they will even have a count down that starts 1335 days before the return of Christ.
Christ gave the signs of His coming in Matthew 24 and other places so that those who are obediently watching can see it coming clearly and not be taken unawares. He gave a Sign showing when the last generation would be alive to see all that is going to come to pass.
He said the world would be taken by complete surprise so if He gave a prophecy of exactly when it would not be a surprise would it.
Anyway that is my take on it.