Reality Check
Commentary for the April 4, 2026, Sabbath School Lesson
"For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope." Romans 15:4
If there is one thing that humanity learns universally it is the blame game. The Bible says it goes all the way back to Genesis. After they ate the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve hid among the plants of the garden. God, who missed them and their regular walks together came looking for them and found that they had eaten the banned fruit. Instead of expressing sorrow for their transgression, Adam blamed Eve and blamed God for creating her, Eve in turn blamed the serpent, another creation of God. When God told them what the results would be now that they had opened Genesis's equivalent to Pandora's Box, they may have lamented the loss they would now incur, including losing access to their beloved garden, but they do not appear to have felt true sorrow for their sin. The Bible makes no mention of their repentance.
This lack of repentance could explain why Cain and his descendants felt no guilt over their choices but only lamented their punishment. The murderous Lamech's lament illustrating the attitude. (Genesis 4:23-24) Abel sought to restore a relationship with God until Cain killed him, but it wasn't until the birth of Enosh that some of Seth's descendants sought to return to God. Enoch, Enosh's great-great-grandson epitomized that effort when he walked so closely with God that God invited him home to live with him. Despite those scattered efforts at restoration, the tide of evil unleashed by Adam and Eve flooded the entire earth leaving a dysfunctional family of a father and mother, their three sons and those sons' wives to carry on after that tsunami of evil destroyed everything. Despite mankind's desire to shift the blame for evil onto God, he kept the door open, establishing a covenant with Noah and his family.
Later, that covenant was renewed and expanded upon with Abram and renewed again with Moses and the children of Israel as they wandered in the wilderness. But the people continued to complain and murmur against God with very few exceptions, Caleb and Joshua being notable among those. Prophets arose who understood the problem. They tried to tell the people that they needed to stop blaming God and repent of their sin. But instead of repenting they blamed the prophets just as they blamed God. (2 Chronicles 18:6-27) And even though they could not do away with God, they were not above murdering his prophets. The writer of Hebrews tells us, "Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated--the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground." (Hebrews 11:36-38)
As modern Christians we think we would not do such things, but we betray our true hearts when we say such things as "If God exists why does he allow such evil in the world?" We continue the same spirit from the beginning, blaming God instead of recognizing our own responsibility. We childishly act as though in leveling such blame we can eliminate God and thereby deny any possibility of reconciliation with someone who supposedly doesn't exist. But the prophets understood this game. Referring to the singular example of Enoch going to live with God, we are told "without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." (Hebrews 11:6) If there is no God, it removes the idea of repentance and therefore the possibility of reconciliation. Without that, we must fend for ourselves in life, contesting with others over our desires versus theirs. As we fight those battles, we carry an ever-increasing burden of guilt. Blaming others does not seem to reduce that burden. They only respond by blaming us, and we continually add to one another's burdens, leaving us each despondent as we contend with one another trying to carry all of that through the cesspool of life that we have hurled each other into. As Pilgrim in John Bunyan's novel, "Pilgrim's Progress" discovered, that burden can only be removed at the cross.
When the people despaired after he rebuked them for what they had done to Jesus, the Apostle Peter told them, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." (Acts 2:38) Since it is key to a restored relationship with God, it is vital that we understand what repentance is. In the Greek, it means to stop walking away from God and start walking toward him. We need to stop blaming God for the evil in the world and acknowledge our own complicity in that evil. Instead of seeing God as some remote force or entity that cares little about what happens to us here on earth, we need to see him as Adam originally saw him, a loving companion as they walked and talked together in Eden.
Repentance is something poorly understood and even more poorly preached in churches today. Instead of pursuing reconciliation with God, we are taught to find salvation in dogma while pursuing success in this world through education and the accumulation of power and wealth enabled by that education. This is why we have apologists with doctoral degrees that have never known the experience of the transformation that repentance brings. They have grown up in the church, even attending parochial schools at great expense all the way to those advanced degrees. Then they assume leadership positions in the church, presuming to guide others to heaven when they do not have the slightest idea how to get there themselves. They feel that a belief statement will be the key to open heaven's gates, and if not entirely adequate, it can be refined until it is. They do not see that such statements were never meant to open gates but to close them, to make it easier to sift the tares from the wheat, parsing out the possibility of the miraculous ability of tares to become wheat. That is the very essence of repentance, and it is being tossed to the curb in favor of judgment and condemnation.
We go through life with our expensive educational degrees and certificates observing days and times according to the teachings of the church. We backstab and claw our way to positions of influence in our churches and communities, believing the lie that this is what God would have us do. We even arrogantly claim that we are specially called for such a purpose. Pay no attention to the wounded souls we leave in our wake. They wouldn't have made it to heaven anyway. But each one testifies to the lie that we call "Christianity." Our defense of our religion against all comers is no different than the religious defense that hung Jesus on a rude wooden cross, bleeding out his life on the trampled ground below. If it were in our power, we would murder dissenters, just as kings once murdered prophets, priests and Pharisees murdered Jesus and his disciples, and Crusaders once murdered the entire population of Jerusalem. Even as I write this, people who claim to be Christians have no qualms about carrying on the evil work of those Crusaders in modern times, murdering those who oppose them.
Before Jesus was crucified, he promised to send the Holy Spirit who would teach us all truth. (John 16:13) But as Peter says, the Holy Spirit is only given in response to repentance, and it is not arbitrary. Peter says that after repentance and baptism you WILL receive it as a gift. It is evident in the life of the recipient. Harshness and a blaming spirit diminish as the Holy Spirit takes up residence. We were created in the image of God. (Genesis 1:27) That image reflects God's character, and his character is love. (1 John 4:8) We were not created from stone but were created of flesh. The prophet Ezekiel calls us back to that creation, not by our own efforts but by allowing God's Spirit to accomplish that change in us. "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." (Ezekiel 36:26) No matter how intelligent we might see ourselves to be, no matter how enriched with this world's goods, no matter how much power we feel we have to control the lives of others, we will one day die and all of that will come to naught, and our deeds will follow after us to either exonerate or condemn us. May we be so filled with God's love in our hearts that God will say to us as he did to Enoch, "I enjoy walking and talking with you so much, why don't you come live with me?"
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This Commentary is a Service of Still Waters Ministry
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