The Pathway Of Adam Vs. The Pathway Of Christ Series

There was a pathway I was on for many years. It was a pathway with many bright lights and beautiful things. So much technology and media, so many songs, and movies and events, giant arenas and commercials and billions of dollars in industry.

I walked that path day by day, it was at times beautiful, at times vicious and vulgar. I was swept along by that path. I was controlled by it and consumed by it.

Every once in a while there would be a slight twinkle of something else. An old church building that I walked by. Some random mention of God or the Bible. A little card in my Halloween candy.

But, it was hard to notice. South Park, Beavis and butthead, Michael Jackson, Nickelodeon, Backstreet boys, Puff Daddy, Dave Chapelle, new age mysticism, SNL, weed, pills, Foo Fighter concert, Jay Leno, Korn music video, Star Wars, I built my life around these exciting things in media.

I mocked the old faith I was brought up in, the Catholic mass, the old dry religion, the old myths of the past.

I was on the pathway of destruction. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was.

Yet something inside me that was once so entertained with this whole world, began to feel increasingly empty. As I sat for hours playing videogames and watching videos, I felt sad. I longed for meaning. I longed for something more.

And step by step, my life began to fall apart. The debauchery made me feel gross. The drugs and drink made me feel trapped. The sin life was so very cold. And I felt dissatisfied and angry. Oddly angry. I felt I had been tricked. Deceived.

Little did I know, I was living out a scripture from the word of God, from Romans chapter 5.

It says this, “12 When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.”

I was walking in the pathway of Adam, the pathway of rebellion against God. And it was leading toward disaster. Not only that, the entire world system was built around the pathway of Adam. So it naturally drew me in.

I live in Chicago, and I’ve been making the drive back and forth from Chicago, IL to Gary, IN. Every day I drive past a beautiful church called Progressive Baptist church, a powerful and effective ministry from what I can tell. Seated in a key position, biblical and bold.

Yet towering next to it is the 137 million dollar facility called Guaranteed Rate field where the White Sox play.

That I think exemplifies our situation in the world. The church, the body of Jesus Christ has a powerful voice in the world, yet compared to the thundering lights and billion dollar entities among us, from baseball teams to billionaires to mega corporations, the voice of the church is one voice among many competing voices.

Why is that? It’s because of the pathway of Adam. The pathway of Adam is sin, it’s the default setting for planet Earth.

Any change that is affected to that pathway comes at great effort and cost to many. Have you ever seen the movie The Matrix? In that movie, it took great effort to bring one person out of the matrix and into the real world. Similarly, the entire system is set to keep people lost until they die. When anything other than that happens, it's a miracle of God, and it takes great effort to manifest.

It takes dozens of Christians praying, evangelizing, teaching, and discipling, just for one person to be born again, saved, and sanctified.

A person who desires to escape the pathway of Adam must be born again. They must leave behind their old life and embrace an entirely new life.

As it says in Romans 5:13-14: “Yes, people sinned even before the law was given. But it was not counted as sin because there was not yet any law to break. Still, everyone died—from the time of Adam to the time of Moses—even those who did not disobey an explicit commandment of God, as Adam did. Now Adam is a symbol, a representation of Christ, who was yet to come.”

There’s this great illustration of two pathways. It was making the rounds on social media I’d say about a year ago, you can see it above, but it always stuck with me. We get so swept up by this world. And it pulls us along. Little do we realize, we’re being manipulated and pushed down a pathway that is wrong.

As the scripture says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death” (Proverb 14:12).

That is so true. We are so sure our way is right, but it isn’t. It seems so right. The lights are so bright. The structures so refined. The tower so high. Yet, it’s pathway leads to destruction.