Passage of the Day - May 27, 2011

Ecclesiastes 7:23-29

 ²³ I tested all this with wisdom, and I said, “I will be wise,” but it was far from me. ²⁴ What has been is remote and exceedingly mysterious. Who can discover it? ²⁵ I directed my mind to know, to investigate and to seek wisdom and an explanation, and to know the evil of folly and the foolishness of madness. ²⁶ And I discovered more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are chains. One who is pleasing to God will escape from her, but the sinner will be captured by her.

 ²⁷ “Behold, I have discovered this,” says the Preacher, “adding one thing to another to find an explanation, ²⁸ which I am still seeking but have not found. I have found one man among a thousand, but I have not found a woman among all these. ²⁹ Behold, I have found only this, that God made men upright, but they have sought out many devices.”

Alert!  Rebellion against conservative teaching!  Verse 29 strikes me with a thought!  Calvinism teaches that we are desperately wicked and incapable of finding God.  However, verse 29 points to another thought.  We are created good (because God cannot create something bad).  We are created upright, but born under a curse, enslaved, and in chains.  We are sinless when we are born, but we, by nature, seek out our own way and sin very quickly (before we know any better).  How can someone not joined to Christ do anything else?  We teach that little children are born with original sin, somehow inferring that God created us flawed.  In my opinion, that is absolute blasphemy and should be stricken from our theology.

Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®,
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