Nurture or Nature

After all, if I’m ok, then you’re ok ...

A few years ago, I saw a cartoon that depicted the two thieves and Jesus hanging on the cross. At that time, the book “I’m O.K, You’re Okay” (a self-help guide for people with deep-seated mental problems) was very popular. The two thieves were talking. One of them said, “If I’m okay, and you’re okay, then why’s that guy hanging on the cross?”

Over the past while I have been delving into this mind field (be careful where you step) of whether or not man was born with or without a nature, and it’s this very nerve I want to poke one more time, damn it that hurts!

I have a question right off the bat for you, did Jesus actually say, ‘apart from Him we could really do nothing,’ or apart from Him whatever we did or could do, would cease to exist the moment we took our last breath?

Also I want to say right up front here, I am not someone who is good at arranging my thoughts in a lucid and coherent grammatically correct way at all, heck, maybe I’m dysfunctional.
When my wife is able to proof read my stuff, it is most appreciated as she is an English lover with an intense passion and she is able to magically turn my bowel of alphabet soup into a more coherent menu.
My point is, anyone reading this and you stumble over my jumbled ramblings, please feel free to ask, Rich, what the hell are you saying, this doesn’t make sense or, could you please explain what this means?

I hate the word ‘dysfunctional’, hate it, but for conversation sake I will use this word because it is applicable for further illustration.
If the whole of humanity is not (born in sin, shaped in iniquity) dysfunctional, then why the hell did God become incarnate, the Word becoming flesh-a man and living here among us?

I love how the Scriptures do not try to cover up the reality of a fallen, broken, bankrupt, dysfunctional race of people that Jesus’ very genealogy included.If by dysfunctional I mean that this race of people were void of Life, His Life, then yes they, we, are all hopelessly dysfunctional!
Don’t you find it stimulating that something within our ‘nature’ is able to separate the bad from the good, functional from the dysfunctional? Maybe it was this rationalization that Jesus threw the monkey wrench into by saying when someone asked, “Good master, what must I do to..” and Jesus replied, “why do you call me GOOD, there is no one good but God”? Was this simply a case of reverse psychology Jesus was using, or was it actually being directed like a laser beam cutting right to the heart of this insidious cesspool of malignancy within man?

If I seem to be rambling here, please forgive, it's what I do best.

At the moment my wife is desperately (and has been for a very long time) wanting to see light, hope in this prolonged time of darkness in her life that has everything to do with what this post is about- ‘nature or nurturing’.

I grew up with two parents that loved and cared for me as best they could, but the God factor was never there, more specifically knowing God as Life. Many know God only as a religion, and some of that smattering touched my life but had NO impact within the place of lifeless empty heart. It wasn’t until I was twenty two years of age that the miracle of my world being violently invaded, to this day, I remember so clearly saying, not in a religious, pious head bowed, eyes close way, but-God, Jesus, whoever you are, if you’re real, I need you-BAMM, like a bomb going off from within me, I knew somehow I was not in that moment the same son of a bitch I had been the moment before. I see here that is going to take much more time and thought to try and put together my story which over laps into my wife’s story as well, so I will stop here and continue later.

Rich