Ecclesiastes 7:29

- See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. -

Photo by Mikhail Nilov: https://www.pexels.com/photo/food-wood-people-art-6963103/

This verse reminds us of Genesis during the fall and those verses in Romans we don’t like to think about, no not one.

We lived in a perfect paradisal state. Did we preserve it? Did we wake up every day praising God for the opportunity He had given us to live in such a beautiful world?

Nope. We listened to the talking snake. Of all the creatures Eve could’ve chatted with, why in the world was she cool with a snake?

That’s one of those, “I’m going to ask them when I get to heaven,” questions.

God made us with a love for the good and a desire to exist in harmony with Him, but He also gave us free will, the ability to make decisions common to ourselves.

That is what the tree of knowledge of good and evil represents. It is a path to shortcut God’s plan; to get ahead by saying we know best.

In this story, we learn something about ourselves. We do not desire paradise. We don’t want things perfect. We want something far more interesting than perfection.

Now, that’s sounds strange. Are we not surrounded by a host of utopians attempting to control us into making the perfect society?

Don’t watch that movie. Don’t drive that car. Don’t put out that yard sign. Don’t hold that belief. Don’t tell me who to love.

Language like this is an excellent prompt to examine the speaker’s intentions.

If man is not seeking utopia, what is he seeking? The author Dostoyevsky in his novella Notes from Underground informs us of what man truly desires.

As it shows us man’s true intentions, I wish to leave you with it. Know that this dark heart is why we need a savior.

You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there's no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man's nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses…. Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick…. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point!… If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated--chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point! I believe in it, I answer for it….