Feeling the Pain

Only what functions perfectly can understand how terrible dysfunction is. If we think that dysfunction is a modern phenomenon, we are wrong. Dysfunction is as old as sin.

Only perfection can feel perfect pain. You and I think we know what pain is, but if we were capable of feeling pain as God feels it, its weight would crush us underneath the load.

God saw the dysfunction and felt the pain. 

“The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.” (Genesis 6:5, 6, NIV)

We are inoculated against dysfunction because all of us are, to one extent or the other, dysfunctional. We don’t fully feel the pain of sin because we are, saved by grace or not, sinners tainted by sin and still prone to a certain level of rebellion against God.

But God sees it all and feels it all.

There were exceptions during those early days of human history—mighty few—but at least some. “Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord…Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.” (Genesis 6:8,9, NIV). Noah followed the footsteps of his great, great grandfather, Enoch (Genesis 5:24). Righteous in God’s eyes and blameless in the eyes of his neighbours—he was the epitome of the two great commandments that Jesus gave us to love God with everything we are and have and to love our neighbours as we love ourselves.

Though the presence of one righteous man must have provided a little consolation for God, the overwhelming presence of sin, and the dysfunction sin caused, brought pain to His holy heart.

And we thought God was above all that.

Does the presence of sin in the world around me grieve me? Do I think before I sin about how much pain I will bring to God if I make the wrong choice? Does the sin in my life grieve me and drive me to repentance?