The following student report was submitted by Ambassador League Agent Richard P. during the 2009-2010 League.
Mission: Research on the Nature of Man
I call it the "Big-small rule." It's really easy to understand, helps to clarify things, and is fairly effective. Simply stated, it is: "The big one gets its way." The little one fails to get its way, and its opinions, feelings, and actions almost don't matter in comparison.
While the rule can be considered communistic, ruthless, cruel, sadistic, hopeless, amoral, base, and even ungodly, I haven't found any glaring flaws with it. After all, isn't our Lord the biggest?
The problems arise when people disregard God and misguided human nature takes the reins. Then it can become all of those names and more. Without God, "The way and the truth and the life" (John 14:6), men continue to do what they do best: worship. But they have little to base their worship on, so they choose what they can: cows, planets, gold, silver, life, death; the list goes on.
People prefer to worship themselves. They want to be the "Big One."
My understanding of worship has changed over time. I used to think it was just the songs during the service. Then I thought it was singing to God and reading the Bible. One day, I was sitting in a church small group and the leader asked us to define worship. After everyone bumbled around and attempted an answer, our leader cut to the quick. He said that "worship is worth-ship; it is whatever we consider valuable. Be it games or family, prizes or possessions; each can be worshiped.
My concept of worship grew even more when I heard this analogy. Consider a timeline of all of history. You have thousands of years before you're born, the short span of your life, and then thousands of years after your death. He furthered the analogy explaining that the line that changes the future to the past is called the present. He said that line, the smallest line you could create; is worship. What you are doing in the present is worship. It also begs the question: is what you're spending time on right now worshiping God, or is it worshiping yourself?
If you look in a catechism, you can find the question: "What is the chief end of man?" You'll find variations of the following, "To glorify God and worship Him fully." (1 Peter 4:11 and 1 Corinthians 10:31) This is just what all of human nature does – worships a god and tries to do so fully. While it may not be the right One; it is worship nevertheless.
Human nature without God is evil. You don't have to be a scholar to know that; just read the news. All day long, the news explores modern culture; from politics to pop celebrities, laws to lawlessness, international stories to investigations: it is full of scary headlines and bad news about human behavior. Even harder to find are people who have "the way....truth...and life," and let God refine their human nature.
Is their human nature different? No, they're people; just like everyone else. The difference is they’ve put some serious thought and action into what they're going to worship. They spend their time differently and aren't focused on themselves. They know that, "All have fallen short of the glory of God." (Rom 3:23) They understand that if left to themselves they will "[be] enslaved to sin." (Rom. 6:6) But they've caught the rest of the verse too which reads, "We know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the sinful body might be destroyed." Thus, they've "Confess[ed] with their mouth, "Jesus is Lord" and believe[d] in their heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." (Rom. 10:9)
These people have "been crucified with Him" and have put "...off [their] old sinful nature and [their] former way of life, which [was] corrupted by lust and deception." They've put to death not human nature, they've put sin to death. God created man, and human nature and He said that it was "good." (Gen. 1:31) The "Biggest of all" has said that what He created was "good." How then can human nature be evil? God created Man to worship Him; in the absence of God we can only worship ourselves, which is evil. We try to claim to be the biggest. We create evil by how we change the future into the past.
