The cockroach infestation

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son."

I made a cockroach comparison in a past post that I want to revisit today.

Cockroaches are crawling all in my gardens, and in everyone's gardens. They are everywhere in this part of my state. And they are in my home.

These superbugs are survivalist extraordinaires.  They are the personification of survival on steroids. They are all about saving self. 

So if a person believes that the day is not far off when we will need to have a knowledge of survival, then maybe he should study the cockroach. Kind of like, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise." (Prov. 6:6).

Saving self. Isn't that the perfect description of sin? Jesus gave saving self low marks.  Right after rebuking Peter for trying to persuade his Master away from offering up His life for the redemption of mankind, Jesus declared to the  group of twelve, "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it." (Matt. 19:25). Doesn't survivalism make the cockroach the perfect comparison to the sinner?

Does that give a new paradigm for extermination? We want to squash every roach we see. But a minority group call us all "useless eaters" in need of mass euthanasia. They probably also call us cockroaches. What if God thought about them that way? Or us?Thankfully He thinks much differently. How do I know? I have read John 3:16. 

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

I've read this most well-known biblical text many times throughout the years and I'm convinced that it is telling the world the truth. Is the text reputable? It is as reputable as the Noah's flood text. Too many similar versions of the Great Deluge are found in hundreds, if not thousands, of cultures in the world. There are too many to dismiss the Genesis flood account as a myth. And if the Great Deluge sounds as miraculous as other extraordinary biblical events from the God of the Hebrews--the only true God--then all scripture is reputable and believable. That includes John 3:16.

Hardly any evidence of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is extant. Nothing to really boast of. No excavated city foundations on top of ten previous cities' foundations. No clay pots, no clay tablets. No nothing, just a barren plane and mounds of an odd chalky substance. But recent discoveries have been confirming the truth of the cities' destruction. So, if the parts of the Bible that are the toughest to believe are proving true and therefore believable, then why not believe...what?

 John 3:16!

John 3:16 is reputable and believable just like archeological finds that prove the Bible to be truthful! It's true that God does so much love humanity! So much so that He gave up His Only Begotten. Yes, it's all very true.

Dismissing the foundational texts in Genesis has led to a mass exodus from faith in God's love and happiness to redeem woefully sinful man.

So scientist Ken Hamm loves David's plea from Psalm 11:3, "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?" In our modern vernacular this says, "If the foundational scriptures are destroyed, in what way can the people of faith today give a reasonable testimony of His salvation?" It says, "If para-science has contrived enough hoaxes and frauds and bold-faced lies, and they have the power to control the distribution of all facts and information, so that the holy word of God is utterly flushed down the intellectual toilet of the whole world, then the godly have lost the only reasonable thing available to catch the attention of unbelievers and lead them to salvation by the promises from the same God who did the previous, great, omniscient, omnipotent, and provable feat that have been coming to light through archeology. But, for us to whom God has deigned to give us faith in His love, John 3:16 is very dear.

So, back to the cockroach. Our self-made righteousness is self-righteousness and filthy rags. Without Christ's robe of righteousness we are utterly wretched, inside and out. On our stinkiest day the human race is cleaner on the outside than it is on the inside.

God can't let us in to infest His most holy throne. We are cockroaches to the nth degree. We are survivalists and opportunists and number one-ists. But God's whole kingdom is built on a whole different paradigm. The only eternal government is built upon selflessness, self-forgetfulness, self-deprecation, self-denial, self-sacrifice, self-sacrificing love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. 

"Against such there is no law." (Gal. 5:23). That means that no free nation, no police force or sheriff's office, no private sector or civic group, would ever make laws, bi-laws, or moral codes that contradict or conflict with the above "self"-prefixed and related words. The resulting confusion would make life harder on themselves and invite their beloved organizations' demise. Infinitely more so is God's government more stringently founded upon selflessness than this world promotes. Therefore, His Laws are even more righteous and immutable.

How can the heavenly King restore Adam's polluted cockroach descendants to Eden, the pristine paradise that was a miniature of God's immaculate, impeccable throne room? It's hard to imagine, but that's His plan. 

"Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple: and He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them." (Rev. 7:15).

So, how did God make a way to get us cockroaches into heaven?

If you have a child, would you ever consider sending a sample of your DNA to a lab so that the lab could do their magic and mingle your genetic make-up with the genetics of a cockroach, so that that creeping thing born from such a human-insect union you could consider a special cockroach that would have better tastes for food than rotting matter?

Before you get utterly offended or nauseous at my ridiculous comparison, let me explain what I'm saying. Humans aren't cockroaches, literally speaking. God made us much better than every specie of the insect world and ruler over them all. I'm simply making a comparison. We need to wrap our heads and hearts around what God gave up when He gave us His Son, and how God has made it possible for us to return to our unmerited paradise.

When God so loved the world that He gave up His willing Son to become a son of Adam, it was exactly like you and I giving up our next child to be born a cockroach. 

Somehow that cockroach would be able to recognize your voice and you its voice. And, because it has some of you, you would love and watch over and protect that special cockroach. Your special cockroach would be able to communicate with the other cockroaches, to let them know that you are not as mean as they think. And they would hear what you really want from them, which is to stop sneaking around, eating your food, and leaving a trail of feces everywhere they crawl. Your special cockroach-child would successfully convince many cockroaches to obey and forage off of nature's decomposing wastes in the great outdoors. They would also escape the delayed, but soon-coming, extermination of your home's infestation of them.

Therefore, you would exalt your cockroach-child to nice clean quarters like it had before it had been born into the world of cockroaches, and the other cockroaches that vacated your premises were also rewarded with similar clean quarters inside your home, but now they no longer have the bent to climb all over in search for food... and leave trails. In fact they don't even feel like eating anything. Their natures are totally changed, like the lion's and leopard's, the bears and the snake's. Nothing will ever again defile your habitation.

Sound absurd? Or might it give a new appreciation for what God has done for us when He let His Son forever give up His perfect freedom as omnipresent Spirit to be encapsulated in a corporeal body, a gross human body weakened by 4,000 years of filthy rebellion.  True, His Spirit was never contaminated, and His body was purified by being burnt from the infinite wrath of God. Nevertheless, He is permanently entombed in that body, forever and ever. 

God has been very merciful to us cockroaches. He really, truly did love this world when He sacrificed His dearly beloved Son in order to bring us home again and set us before His Father.