LIVING ON INSTINCT

LIVING ON INSTINCT

October 4, 2015

The message for this morning’s church service was very appropriate for the topic I want to write about today—living on instinct.  The pastor started on the introduction of his sermon series: NUTS AND BOLTS – THE BASICS OF CHRISTIANITY.

Indeed, life would be much happier and satisfying if people were only living true to themselves, and to base their truths on the basics of what we are inside, that is, people who are fallen and sinful by nature, but who were redeemed by a Savior who gave Himself up for us, and therefore, to act with the humility and love this truth necessarily entails.

Most people who live on instinct are those understood to exhibit animal-like qualities of putting selves first, always looking out for their interests believing that the rest of the world is out to get them or trying to put one over them.  And so, most people who say they are instinctive are actually brutish and rude when dealing with other people.

But if we understand the word on what really happens in nature, we realize that living on instinct should not really be as beastlike as it is purported to be.   We learn from biologists that all creatures are related to and dependent on each other in a kind of universal symbiotic relationship. Even the Lion who is king of the jungle, actually depends on other creatures (the pride for protection and care, and even the enemy hyena to clean up the mess), respect some (the stronger and bigger cattle and elephants, the poisonous and stinging small insects) and choose their prey (the small, sickly and weak) based on the orders of nature.  Nobody tells them how to observe these because they have been born with it, and are JUST SIMPLY ACTING ON INSTINCT.

All animals in the wild are only trying to survive, from the smallest insects to the largest cattle.  For the most part, they are harmless.  They only kill for food and just enough to survive for several days until the next hunt (unlike some people I know, who, in order to get rich or protect their positions in government and society, do so with impunity, or those who overeat and over-accumulate to the point anyone wonders when they and their lives will burst like a balloon to a gazillion pieces of wreckage), and virtually do not steal from one another (unlike some people I know again, who often use their positions in society and government to openly rob from others who spend blood, sweat and tears in order to eke out a living to support their families, and doing this too with impunity, that when caught, outright deny the same or justify them by saying it’s all part of taxes or regulation).

Our country is very graciously known as the only Christian nation in Southeast Asia, but the news everyday shadows what’s good in us and highlight the names and numbers of those who are living on instinctively low morals, no matter the size of their bank accounts, the high levels of education they attain, or the breadth of connections they maintain.

I agree with the pastor that most people have lost the basics of their Christianity, and instead of observing its simplest principles (love, humility, acceptance, temperance, sacrifice, willingness to serve others, selflessness), choose to live lives that are lower than being simply instinctively animalistic but actually monstrous.  It’s high time the caveman in us (who spend virtually all hours in front of our technological gadgets to replace the charcoal scratches and drawings on the cave wall) give up those insane traits of putting ourselves first but embrace our true humane nature that GOD has designed for us to live by.  We should be living on the instinct of doing good and being nice, inside and out.