The Human Race: Victims Or Rebels?
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The Human Race: Victims Or Rebels?

We aren't just broken; we break things.

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The Human Race: Victims Or Rebels?

Brokenness.

It's a valid word to describe the human condition. We are all broken and battered, bruised and scarred.

But I was reading my devotional this morning, and the author, Timothy Willard, was speaking on surrender and on our rebellion against God.

I've heard about rebellion and sin a million times, but for whatever reason, it resonated in my soul in a new way, and I realized that I'd been holding some wonky notions about God and people. My ideas had gotten a bit colored by influences adverse to the truth of scripture.

In reading all this rhetoric of the broken, I'd developed a view of humans (and myself) as simply the beaten-down and hurting victims of sin and a dark world, helpless and struggling, as simply victims.

And then with this passage, lightbulb.

This isn't what the Bible teaches, but what the world has taught me.

Let me clarify: Yes, life can be hard and dark. There is so much pain and hurt, and there are certainly victims of horrendous crimes and difficult circumstances. These things, these people, deserve attention and justice, but lately, all seems out of whack. It's almost like we are giving out trophies for levels of oppression. It's like people's hurts and their brokenness have become their identity. Souls are not defined by what has happened to them, but by what they do in response.

But often we are not mostly victims, but rebels. Not only passive but active.

Let me say, not in unkindness but in truth, that we live in a culture of victimhood. We do. Most everyone believes that they deserve happiness, and this world has hit them over the head and crushed their dreams. The biggest victim is the biggest authority, the most revered. People who have experienced no real oppression proclaim loudest the injustices done to them, looking for pity and praise for their long-suffering. We have, in many ways, taught people that surrender trumps grit: that they are justified to wallow in problems instead of rising above them. We have taught people that they were born good, born to be a star, and by no fault of our own, life has screwed us all over.

This has fostered a lie swallowed wholesale, in the world and in the church:

That we are victims more than we are rebels. But this is blame shifting.

The Bible sings a different song. Sings of how Adam and Eve chose the apple instead of their Father. And the Old Testament marks the story of a people who ran breakneck speed away from their living God, breaking covenant and breaking themselves. The story of a people bitter, sinful and rebellious, murderous and false. But the prophets who spoke of just wrath and exile under persecution and slander from their people, who spoke at the expense of their lives to a wicked people, they also whispered of a coming hope. This good God who pursues his people ran into human skin that He might be murdered for their salvation, hanging on a crude cross, while the very souls He came to rescue from themselves reviled and spit on him.

Sin isn't passive. Sin doesn't only happen to us. We commit it, and we spit on Jesus Christ and His love for us when we choose "myself" instead of God.

We choose ourselves, choose power and glory and self. We choose the apple, day after day. We are all hardened rebels, smashing into others and cracking each other. We are like brittle glass, hard yet fragile.

Timothy Willard writes, "Sin hardens us; we break us" ("Longing For More").

This is hard truth, that we aren't the poor and pitiable souls we made ourselves out to be. The terrors and hurts of this world are the result of human rebellion and iniquity, not an uncaring or cruel God.

When we know this, when we can't stand to even look at ourselves in the mirror any longer, this is when Jesus comes calling, comes offering a greater hope than we could ever imagine. Comes speaking of salvation and redemption from the wicked path we have taken. We know that we were made for more, made for Him. We have fallen, or jumped, more like it, forsaking God and hating him, but Christ comes with open arms to every sworn enemy, speaking of the forgiveness of sins, of a relief from the heavy burden of guilt. We are dying beneath the weight of our wrong choices, and He offers to remove it.

Grace and love sweep our rebellion away in a flood, wash us clean.

Grace. Oh, the immeasurable beauty of grace, the tremendous wonder of Christ.

And these aren't just high ideals but personal experiences.

I daily wake with heart hard, attempting to depend on myself, sick of surrender to God. I know it, that my flesh still fights, and that I am a wicked rebel, being softened by the love of God. I'm not some victim of sin. I have earned hell, not grace, but He gives me grace because of Jesus.

While victimhood and virtue-signaling push us to be more and more perfect and our failures hit us harder and harder, a truth comes to set us free. The light dawns, and the eyes widen in realization. We have lied to ourselves, and the world has lied to us. The truth is that we were never good, never just harmless and passive actors on the world stage. We are rebels to Christ and captives to sin, but His grace sets us free. A free gift.

Now it is our turn to freely give. To give empathy and inspiration and care to the hurting and the hopeless, not to continue in darkness but to break down the walls of the dank and dim prison cells. We love because Jesus first loved us. So that in the end, souls would no longer carry the heavy labels of victim or rebel but simply and joyfully be known as 'child of God.'

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord." — Romans 6:23
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