Character Flaws

I was sitting on my front porch of my beach house last week with a friend, he was looking out at the ocean and describing the beauty of the waves to me. All of sudden I said, “she's back”, he said, “what do you mean?” I said, “Since my house was built, the same dove has returned every year and reestablished her ownership of a nest, here in my house. She is a summer seasonal renter, even though I do not get any money from her. She always makes the same noise as she sits on her nest. The magnificent supernatural dove designed by our creator, 300 species of doves/pigeons, all having a innate response in their creation, like the arctic terns or the monarch butterflies, blessed with the ability to return, each year, to their place of refuge and safety. I said, “she only leaves her nest to go out for a snack or a drink of water.” Later, the cooing stopped and he said, “I see her up on the roof of the house next door.” Completely predictable, her genome/DNA established, she has not bothered with the cares and tares of the world.

One of my aunts would call me often about her health conditions, I had not been in her presence in years, knew nothing about her medications. Trying to give her care and encouragement, I would say, “do you still have any birds around your house? Are they still singing? You know, God cares for the birds, and he still cares for you (Matthew 6:26).“

We are told that 85% of the American population professes to believe in God. If this were true, this would be a different country...a population believing in the love, as well as the wrath of almighty God.

Most children want a relationship with their parents, most parents want a relationship with their children, and most children desire a relationship with one another. Parents and children can be reared, sitting around the same dining table, eating the same food, enjoying the company of one another, it is truly amazing how quickly this relationship can change. There are warts in personality, just as there are warts on the physical body. Personality traits not easily explainable, some little blister will begin to fester, not treated immediately, will grow into a tumor or cancer. Resentment over petty things can result in pitiful relationship, most will put on a front at a funeral, although often, a split family will have split seating even at such a service.

There is more harshness in family and churches than any other place, baptist churches have always multiplied by dividing. If families, churches, neighbors cannot get along on earth, what makes them think they will get along in heaven, and surely, everyone should have enough sense to know that unforgiving, disgruntled, sinful people will not enter heaven.

The creation-historian, Dr. John Morris said, “if we think a man-made machine is flawed, the human being is much more so, and the human being is God made.” The poet said, “there is some good in the worst of us, and some bad is the best of us.” The difference, the holy spirit of Christ should have removed the worst in us. We are his workmanship (Ephesians 2:10)

When children are told in the school, or the unbelieving home, that they come from pond scum (from the goo, to the zoo, to you), what more can you expect from them? I have said many times, it surprises me that most children turn out as well as they do, considering from where they come. It is not just a matter of DNA, but think of the decadence to which they have been exposed, by parents who came from the same, and did not know any better...hedonistic language, music, pornography in books and electronic, unashamed sexual activities...a complete lack of modesty on the part of both parents. Think of a child, living in a home with a single mother, as do almost 70% of all children, often, the mother entertaining a boyfriend, the boyfriend being abusive to the children, both male and female.

Over the years, I have had several women working for me who live under such a roof. Ill prepared to live alone, certainly not with children, lonely, wanting companionship which she did not get with the father of her children, willing to give herself to just any man, often for money. Never considering what such is doing to the psyche of her children, particularly if the boyfriend is abusive to the children. One woman told me she never wanted to see her mother again...as a child, she would come home from school, her mother inside her home, entertaining a stranger, telling her to go stay with a neighbor. She did not want to go to the neighbor's house, nor did the neighbors want her there. She felt she was an unwanted cast away. I told another, who, herself was living such a life, “you may think your children will not remember your activities...the boyfriends you are entertaining, their abuse.” Think of the two-year old boy who was killed recently by his mother's boyfriend, the three-year old girl beaten to death with an extension cord by her mother's boyfriend (Johnson County, NC). There is a very hot place in hell for the evil defilers of children.

Almost as evil is the vindictiveness of divorce, one parent trying to turn a child against the other. I have never met a perfect person, have knowledge of only one, our blessed Savior. His accusers lied about him, stripped him naked (the artists have been so modest in his pictures on the cross, but he was hung there naked), we all know the truth, and the truth is always the victim of any two sides. The procreation of a male and female, boasts the DNA of both parents, why defy god and man, laws and lust, by depriving a child of his ancestry and benevolence. Divorce and dilemma has calloused most lives, a child of a previous marriage unwelcome in a home by present spouse and children.

I remember the day, my mother brought us from school, her only brother, my uncle, had returned from pacific combat in WW2. On the way home from the pacific coast he had stopped and gathered the wife and daughter he had espoused before he left the west coast. His family had never seen his wife and child, one of the most beautiful children I had ever seen, like a doll. But, his jealous sisters did not like his wife, she is not what they would have picked. Her loving parents drove all the way from the west coast to pick she and the child up and take them back to a loving home. He married again, had other children, and not until after his death at age 85, had they heard anything about the first marriage. A child who probably would have liked to have known her father. Such is the pits we dig, the excess baggage we carry, the character flaws for which we will be judged.

No person who goes to hell will challenge god, will ask why, we know that he has the goods on us, he knows the truth. Only through his forgiveness can we escape the inevitable, He gave us freedom, the freedom to fail.