The Theology of The Worm

So I used to believe that God was on top of a mountain, and all religions, being essentially the same, are pathways up the mountain towards God.  But what if that is all wrong? Christianity says we are not capable of making the climb.  We cannot climb to God by doing the right things or bettering ourselves through the humanistic dribble we sell ourselves from the self-help book shelves, or worse, from the modern day self-help gospel we hear in our churches.  Just do the right things, just go to church and say a simple magical prayer that you accept Jesus; just improve yourself by reading the right things or by controlling yourself.  No, we are sinners.  Dead to spirituality.  We hate God and his precepts because we are utterly incapable of not sinning. No, we cannot find our way up the mountain to God.  Instead, God came down the mountain to us.

Without the sacrifice of himself, we would die in our sin.  Paul says, what I want to do, I cannot do, and what I don’t want to do, I do.  Adam, given all things from God and the ability to commune with him daily, chose to sin: to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Because he was human.  He was me.  And as a human, he was under all the nice beautiful things he told himself, after that choice, he was a sinner as we all are. The story of Adam, I believe, is a representation of man’s age old choice of the knowledge of good and evil over a relationship with God.

I used to think I had a corner on the truth.  That I knew the way to God.  That I knew God like no-one else did and I had it all right and so he was pleased with me.  But God could not commune with me because I was dead in my sin.  I was not worthy of approaching him.  But he gave his only son, divesting himself of all of his power, coming to earth, and through his own blood, made me worthy.

And so I am nothing without him.  I owe him everything.  I cannot even live without him, because I am dry bones without his act of salvation. He set me right with God and saved my soul.  He raised me up, made me shining white and clean, and ushered me into the presence of God.  God.  The God who speaks to all people and invites them to commune with him.  But first, or over time, a person must realize that he is utterly incapable of communing with such a holy God.  He must realize that he is not worthy.  It is only through God’s actions, not through our own, that we can bask in the presence of his eternal, infinite, unending love. A love that caused him to divest himself of his godliness, come to Earth, and die like a criminal, just so he could be in a relationship with him.  That is love like no-one could possess except for the creator of the universe, the savior of my soul.