From having had decades of conversations with many people from various Anonymous Programs, I know that they know this basic truth of life, that one cannot escape the basic nature of one's being, though one can choose to act differently from one's self-destructive nature. AA, OA, NA, and all the rest know that no person can choose to live a constructive life based on wishful thinking, if one refuses to invest herself/himself in tangible action that is different from what one has been doing self-destructively. Feelings, history, politics, preferences, lust, predilections, peer pressure, and circumstances all have no bearing on changing one's behavior. Personal behavior change is a choice that only you or I can control. No one else, no religion, not even our oversized government, can change us, but we ourselves. Equally true, as someone once put it, the definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same unproductive or self-destructive behavior while expecting different results after each repetition of the same behavior.
I make this point because there is a lot of finger-pointing going on in our present world, and especially in the USA, whereby millions of people and many special interest groups are hell-bent on having their own way with society, but refusing to acknowledge eternal and historical truths that have been recorded and passed down to save us from having to repeat the mistakes of others, in the past. Some have insisted on tearing down statues or dumping books and rewriting histories to suit their own desires about what they want said. As long as any of us insist on letting any of our natural inclinations, unsavory history, our lusts, or our feelings drive how we get along in society, then was shall condemn ourselves to repeat the pain from which history and the recordings of our forebears would deliver us, including the Word of God, known as the Bible (I recommend the King James Bible). God is especially honest with us, more than any other historian, for God shows the strengths and weaknesses of even the most celebrated of those whom he put into positions of responsibility, down through the biblical record. By contrast, most of humanity wants to ignore the One Holy God but to worship sinful mankind and gloss over human failure.
I used to know, before he died, a very diligent man (a sinner like myself) who was challenged to prove the Bible wrong on any point he chose. Being an amateur historian, this man, Ron, collected all manner of histories, commentaries, Encyclopedia Britannica, science articles, and a host of sources by which he, as an ardent unbeliever and researcher, sought to disprove the Bible. Every time he read something he did not like in the Bible he'd research all available materials and sources to try to find flaws in God's Word. But, instead of supporting Ron's unbelief, all his research did was to tear down the lies on which he had been raised and turn Ron to agree with everything that the Bible says. That research project led Ron to trust the Bible and the Christ of God, Jesus, for the salvation that God offers to all humanity. IF we but lay our self-deceptions, false science, and false religion aside, and we examine and prove all things, by the voluminous evidence that God has left for us to acknowledge about His Deity, His Creation, our sin natures, and His only path of redemption, then we, like Ron, shall come to know, love, and trust God's Christ. Sadly, most people would rather follow the lies of the things, cultures, and religions that enslave them, rather than to be set free to see and do things God's way in Christ.
We shall all answer for how we each respond to the evidentiary call that God has put out there for us to examine and from which to deduce our conclusions about our need for a holy relationship with Him and His Christ. God is NOT going to excuse anyone for having rejected nor neglected His evidence, nor for ignoring nor despising His Christ. He says that we are "without excuse". So, I return to my initial premise that has undergirded the conflicts, savagery, cruelty, destruction, and selfish interest of mankind, that our sin nature must be dealt with by each and every soul, or else we shall suffer the consequences that God promises. "God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." However, the contrary nature of our sin wants only to seek self satisfaction (which never really happens), unless we choose to be satisfied God's way. Furthermore, unless we choose to repent of our sin and accept and receive God's salvation in Christ Jesus, by faith, we shall have condemned ourselves to eternal solitary misery.
Please do the research of history and the Bible for yourself. Stop being lazy or relying on the popular lies about God and the Bible. God is going to hold you accountable for the choice you make about this. The choice is yours, so choose wisely, not based on culture, religion, peer pressure, religiosity, lust, greed, not by false science's religious mantra about faith in a big bang or evolution. I did all that, too, until I started reading and researching the truth of life's evidences and history and the Bible, for myself. Now, like Ron, I, too, am a Bible believer and have trusted Jesus Christ as my only hope and Savior. I now can see that I do not have to repeat the lusts, sins, and errors of prior generations. I do not have to live as a slave to my own flesh. With Christ living in me, "the hope of glory", I can live in joy and confidence each day, in God's only and very simple plan of salvation, no matter what happens in this life. You can, too.
