My testimony is such that, even my boss will discuss my turnaround when he presents me with my Christmas bonus at the company party. There are some things from my college years that I hope everyone has forgotten. Good thing social media didn't exist back then.
On occasion, however, we'll all get to swapping stories at the office, and on occasion, I'll share one from my wilder days. One day, in my office, I shared such a story, to which my boss replied, "I don't think I'd share that one again if I were you."
Driving home that evening, I thought about the day's conversations, the story I shared, and my boss's advice. Indeed he was right. That story was just plain awful and stupid. Sharing a story like that doesn't help my testimony, it hinders it. I'm going to follow my boss's advice, and not share the story. What I will tell you is that no one got hurt, and no laws were broken.
However, on my drive home, the thought occurred to me how silly it is that, as a Christian, I look back on some of the decadence of my youth with a certain sense of humor, and in some weird way, a little nostalgia. The decisions I made back then could have killed me, some destroyed parts of my life, and some consequences I still live with. Yet, here I am, acting like a fool, looking back on it as if it were something by which to be entertained.
Why do we as Christians look back on our lost days as "the good ole days?" Sure, we'd never return to them, but sometimes we find ourselves looking back on them with a certain nostalgia. When you think about it, that makes absolutely no sense.
Think about Adam. He and Eve made the conscious decision to rebel against God by eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That one decision brought the sin curse upon all men, so that we all face death, and God's wrath if we're not saved, because we are all now sinners. Adam's decision to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was the single event that sentenced Jesus Christ to die on the cross. Adam's decision to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was not merely to eat something God said not to, but it was an attempt to get out from beneath God's authority.
That one decision thrust mankind into the darkness that we experience today. Because of that one decision, we have crime, violence, war, starvation, death, disease, cancer. Every bad thing in this world can be traced back to Adam's original sin.
Adam lived several hundred years after God evicted him and Eve from the Garden of Eden. He had several hundred years to look back on that decision, and to see the devastating effects that sin had on the world, namely his descendants.
I wonder if, during those several hundred years, Adam didn't occasionally tell his grandchildren about life in the Garden. I wonder if he explained why they could no longer live in the Garden. What a difficult story that must have been to tell. "Hey kids, we could be living in paradise, but I blew it."
One thing I can almost guarantee Adam never did was describe that fruit, how good it must have tasted, how great the texture must have been, and how juicy it was. For some reason, I cannot imagine Adam sitting back on a Saturday evening, telling the story of eating the forbidden fruit with glee, and punctuating his story with, "I destroyed the world, but hey! The apple was great!"
When we get to looking back on the lost days with nostalgia, and telling stories of our previous decadence with glee, we have forgotten what sin really is, and the effects that it has on our lives, and on those around us. Let us never be guilty of missing this point, and celebrating things from which we seek God's forgiveness. God bless you on your journey.
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