Humanity--noble or savage?

Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be (James 3:10).

There is no living thing on earth that is more highly regarded and thoroughly despised as humanity.  Songwriters and poets have much to say about our capacity for love, understanding, and generosity towards others.  At the same time, angry people armed with weapons maim and kill those who don’t look like them, act like them, or believe as they do. Idealistic youth dream of building a future where all can do as they please and no one has to live in want.  Environmentalists blame man for ruining the earth, and the most radical among them say that the world would be better off if humanity wiped itself out.

So what is humanity?  Is it noble or savage?  The short answer is yes—mankind is both.  Every human being struggles with doing the right thing or the wrong thing, and that struggle is a daily occurrence. The reason?  We have a corrupted inner nature. God’s design for humanity was perfection—the Bible says, God saw all that He had made, and it was very good (Genesis 1:31).  But our first parents were not satisfied with things as they stood—Satan persuaded them into thinking that perfection was somehow not good enough.  So they opposed God, and by so doing became corrupt—corrupt with a rebellious nature that can never be satisfied but always craves more, even when that ‘more’ is too much, unhealthy, even outright dangerous.  Every day, the good we were created to do is undermined by the evil that we hunger to do.

We are beings of body and soul joined as one.  Like the soul, our bodies were intended to live forever.  But living forever in corruption would be truly awful.  So God placed a time limit on the human body; death reigns in just how much hurt any one person can cause and suffer.  But death by itself is a curse—we needed something more.  That ‘something more’ came in the form of Jesus, who did something absolutely mind-boggling—He took the punishment we deserved for being sinners, so that we might ultimately walk free!  Jesus gave His life as restitution for all the hurt we’ve caused, then stepped from the grave alive to assure our own resurrection following death.  Forgiven by Christ, our corruption is laid to rest in the grave. The new life which follows will no longer be a struggle between nobility and savagery; with every last trace of sin removed, we can experience life that is filled with joy untouched by pain. Best of all, that new life will be lived in the company of kind and loving individuals who will be with us forever.