Help! I've Fallen and I can't get up!

So much of sin seems to be a failure that we don't recognize sin for what it really is - a lifestyle, a condition of human nature, something that we simply can't get over. We are sin. We wallow in it. We breathe it. We absorb it in our skin. Everything we say or do or touch or taste is tainted by it. We can try to ignore it. We can try to counter it. But ultimately we are flawed creatures by nature.

I love cheeseburgers. I love the taste of cheddar bursting in my mouth, mixed with the saltiness of the beef, the crispness of a fresh bun, the tang of pickles, the sharpness of fresh onions, and the sweet flavor of the catsup - all mixing together to form a sensation that my mind registers as pleasure. Pleasure - that feeling that all is right with the world, even for a split second - is what really drives me. I love the feeling of pleasure and I try to surround myself and do things that create that sensation. It is a moment of bliss, a feeling of being most alive. And ultimately, it is a dead end. Because I can't maintain that feeling. It is a high, a narcotic, an obsession. And this week, its a cheeseburger that helps me feel that pleasure. And next week, a single cheeseburger doesn't help me at all. It tastes like cardboard, so I add bacon to the mix. And the following week, I have two cheeseburgers. And then three. And then three with bacon. And then I change to chicken sandwiches, and that lasts a while. Then I mix them. Then I add a milkshake. But it is never enough. I am chasing something that I can never catch, that I can never predictably reproduce, and the efforts of pursuing pleasure are destroying me.

This is human nature.

In Le Jardin du Eden, Adam and Eve had everything they could possibly want - food, companionship, water, space, animals, the whole world at their fingertips. They walked hand in hand with God who would have given them anything they wanted... but one thing. And that was what Adam and Eve wanted the most. They weren't satisfied with what they already had. They were looking for that new high, that new pleasure, that thing that would be better than anything else they'd ever tried. They threw away all that they had to go after that next thing. And it left them with a mouth full of ashes and pain and death. They fell not from wanting more, but from being unable to control their urge to want more, their urge to want everything. They fell because they tried to make their obsession into their reality.

Right now I am suffering from Hives. I can't tell you how or why I have hives, but I am beginning to understand the suffering of Job. Hives itch like you wouldn't believe. And it takes all my self control to keep from scratching myself. One little scratch and I can't stop. I have to get at the itch. And I scratch and scratch and scratch until little rivers of blood are running down my legs - I scratch myself until I bleed, and still the itch does not go away. I keep scratching with the hope of finding the pleasure of itch relief and it don't even stop when I have blood pooling around my legs. I keep going because I know that sooner or later, the itch will give way to pain and pain is a far easier thing to handle than that crazy desire to itch. Pain may not be pleasure, but it is not obsession either. It is far better to be in pain than to be obsessed.

To choose sin is to choose pain. To give in to the itching until you are literally ripping the skin off your body is to give in to pain. Obsession always leaves to pain. Obsession always leads to sin. Sin leads to death.

But the good news is that even though we are born this way, and even though we can't help ourselves and give in to our obsessions to seek whatever pleasure it is that we can't live without, there is hope. Jesus died for our obsessions. Jesus died so that we might find relief from the pain of obsession. Jesus died to bring us into a place where there is no pain, and their is no suffering, and their is no obsession. Jesus died so that we might live - truly live.

Oh, to be without the desire for cheeseburgers or scratching or any of the hundreds of other obsessions I have; to be able to supplant all my wants and desires and replace them with a life of giving and caring and loving others - that is my fondest wish. But right now, I've fallen, and I can't get up.

Only Jesus can save me now.