It’s a question I ask myself and others often. You see all around nature we see it. Plant a seed, it has to die before life springs out. Wildfires make new homes for life. Through pain is new life brought out of a mother’s womb. In death we gain life, not always the same yet still life all the same.

You might notice the lack of a question mark, even though I said it was a question. Well that is because I’m not asking today, but answering.

Humor me for a second and entertain the notion that we are created. Which means we’d have a creator. One who made everything. Call this creator what you will, but let’s say it is intelligent since it made intelligent beings (laws of knowledge preserved after-all).

If say we were a painting, there would be a style. If we were a musical symphony, we’d have a melody. If we were a sculpture, we would have an aesthetic. Why? Because we created beings can create, and what we create have these things. So can we see these types of patterns in the “chaos” around us? Of course we can.

Sugar is what our bodies live off of, but in it’s pure form it does us more harm than good. Yet what is good (ie vegetables) tend to be bitter. Sure we season them, call them “savory” but in the end we just grow accustomed to some bitter in our diet.

So why is poison sweet, and medicine bitter? Well simply to show us that what is best for us, is not always pleasent. Like a parent disciplining a child, it is painful for both. Yet if you don’t the child’s behavior gets worse not better. So too is it with us adults, we make poor keepers of ourselves don’t we?

To start with there is a lie as old as time. We tell ourselves and others it all the time. In fact, I believe it might have roots in the first lie. “That we are all good people.” Or that “if you were to take the sum of everyone alive and you would have someone who was good”. Or perhaps you like the spin “the good I do out weights the bad”.

Lies every one of them! Let me soak my white shirt in mud, then rinse it in the gutter, is it really anything other than a soaking clot of dirty laundry? What weight does any deed have? And who assigns the weights or who sets a standard in which to measure them against? If we set them ourselves, is it not like congress setting their own raises and salary? Who are we to know how our performance really is in the end with our fading memories of anything a few hours old, let alone a lifetime ago?

If you were to take the sum of everyone you know what you get? The destroyer of creation, the beast, the antichrist, whatever you want to call it. Our ultimate and final failure. Adams first sin wasn’t eating the fruit, it was choosing the “go with the flow” instead of what he was charged with.

In order to get help you have to admit you’re sick first. Then that you need help. Then to seek out that help.

Oh but we know more than our ancestors, we have more knowledge. Why then does this centuries old book say that the fruit that made us broken was one of knowledge? Because it isn’t knowledge that saves us! Knowledge of how a virus works doesn’t help your system fight it. Fluids, rest and maintaining a healthy diet give your system what it needs, not knowing how a microscopic organism hijacks cells. You’ll find this to be true almost everywhere. Knowledge of what something is, is of little help to the remedy for it.

Yet aloe vera grows in the desert, Jewelweed next to poison ivy, even aspirin in the bark of a tree. A remedy next to the affliction, call it what you want but I call it mercy.

Medicine is bitter because, to get better than you are; it is not going to be a very pleasant experience. Poison is sweet not because it’s good, but because it is the lie. Such a sweet lie too, how it keeps you from seeing a doctor. How it helps you to refuse treatment. Surely you’re not sick at all are you? You’re not a bad person, certainly not as bad as some people… But there we go again setting our own standard, our own salary.

Sin is rebellion against our creator. But you see our creator is the source of all life, certainly all life we know. To rebel, to cut ties is to sever ourselves from the source of life. How can that lead to anything but death?

Of course, this won’t convince you if you don’t believe you are created. A man born blind knows nothing of color, of light, or how it can be bright. He knows nothing of the sun but the warmth on his face, a shadow of something greater. We are all thus born blind, but knowledge by itself does not teach us to see, we see simply by opening our eyes and believing what they show us…

And yet we are a blind people still… Lord open our eyes, let us see. We cannot lead ourselves out of this darkness, for you are our source of light, life, truth, knowledge, forgiveness, and most of all Love.