Fall

Ch. 3 by Plantinga

"Evil needs good in order to be evil."  Everything God created was originally good but then it got corrupted.  A corrupted person misuses God's gifts, perverts it, and "pollutes his relationship with foreign elements."  I had never really thought of evil needing good until class.  Good is the standard, evil is just everything besides it.  Plantinga expanded on the second part about polluting your relationship by saying sometimes we want both God and the world, but that isn't possible.  This disregards what God has done; the world will never fulfill as God does.  I've often felt the tug from both sides and just really struggled because I just want it all.  It makes me think of a verse from Romans 7, where it says "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do....For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing."

Total depravity means that every part of our lives is affected by sin.  Common grace is the fact that God empowers everyone to be good; it is " the goodness of God shown to all, regardless of faith,consisting in natural blessings, restraint of corruption, seeds of religion and political order, and a host of civilizing and humanizing impulses, patterns, and traditions."  The concept of common grace was a relatively new idea for me.  I never really thought of the good found in people as grace.  If the way God created man was naturally good, then wouldn't that be the standard rather than something else that God has additionally given us?

"The glory of God's good creation has not been obliterated by the tragedy of the fall, but it has been deeply shadowed by it.  The history of our race is, in large part, the interplay of this light and shadow."   I really liked the second sentence here because it was great imagery and so true.  Someone in class mentioned how the first sentence offered the idea of hope, which I didn't think of.  Even though sin has permeated everything, goodness has not been defeated.  Ultimately, God will triumph over all evil and isn't that something to look forward to?

"Satan goes to church more than anybody else because he knows that at a particular time and place, a corrupt church can devastate the cause of the gospel."  This is a scary thought but it is true.  Think about all the things "Christians" have done, the attitudes they have, that deter people from truly knowing God, that have hurt them.  Using Christianity to promote oneself or a selfish cause is another example of perversion.  

A recurring theme throughout this class that appeared again in discussion was the idea of how the little things matter.  It first starts with a little sin, then we feel more comfortable with it and continue to sin until we no longer recognize this sin and we need others to alert us of our wrong.  Every sin, every person has to be redeemed, has to be saved, individually.