There is a nature to things, and we rail against it daily. This nature is an order we did not create and cannot ultimately escape. There is real right and wrong, and anyone who disagrees only confirms it, because within a few sentences of their rebuttal, they will begin using moral language.
For all of our culture’s talk about protecting nature, human nature is the one boundary we increasingly refuse to accept. Gender is a construct, fertility is a disease to be treated, and anything that resists personal autonomy is recast as oppression. In the end, nature is affirmed—so long as it does not define us.
In our resistance, all kinds of unnatural deeds are committed—deeds contrary to the design and purpose for which we were made. And as Shakespeare reminds us in Macbeth, “Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles.”
Death is the first and primary result of sin. God told Adam and Eve, on the day you eat of the forbidden fruit, you will surely die.
We were created in the image of God. It is our nature to live in relationship with him—to find our joy, love, and peace in him. Sin is unnatural and produces unnatural death—both spiritual and physical.
The cultural pathologies alluded to above are glaring examples, but all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned, unnaturally, to our own way (Isaiah 53:6).
There is a way that seems right to man, but its end is the way to death (Proverbs 14:12).
“Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles.”
The backslider in heart will be filled with the fruit of his ways (Proverbs 14:4).
“Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles.”
By the mouth of the fool comes a rod for his back (Proverbs 14:3).
“Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles.”
At the end of Macbeth, we see what he lost due to his murderous ambition and avarice.
First, his unnatural ways led him to nihilism. He says,
“Out, out brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.
Signifying nothing.”
Macbeth does not merely suffer consequences—he becomes the kind of man for whom life itself has lost meaning.
Solomon learned this as well when he tried to live a life apart from God.
“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”
Life is indeed brief, but it is not meaningless with God.
Do you find life senseless and empty? Your experience of meaninglessness is an unnatural trouble that comes from unnatural deeds. You are not living the way you were designed to live, and it has emptied your soul.
There are other troubles Macbeth reaped from his unnatural deeds. As he is nearing death, he says,
“That which should accompany old age,
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have, but in their stead,
Curses not loud but deep.”
To die well, we must live well. Though not everyone who lives in rebellion to God will experience a lonely death like Macbeth, the curses, not loud but deep, will follow after this life has passed. Sinners will spend eternity where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles—death is unnatural, and we were not designed for hell. But it will be our fate, because each of us is guilty.
Unless—
there is one who entered our unnatural ruin. One who did not sin, who died the most unnatural death of all, death on the cross. He had no honor or love or troops of friends surrounding him as crucifixion took his life. He bore the curse not loud but deep. The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6). He then rose victoriously from the grave.
All who call on the name of Jesus can be restored in their relationship to God.
He makes all things new. He gives us His Holy Spirit and promises never to leave us or forsake us. He gives us eternal life, so that no matter what our earthly death will be like—dignified or undignified—we will live with him eternally in glory.
Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles, but Christ has taken our trouble upon himself, so that we might finally live as we were made to live.
Call upon him and be washed clean. Then, in the power of the Holy Spirit, begin to put away your unnatural deeds, and walk in a relationship with your Heavenly Father as you are created to do.
-D. Eaton
The Fight of Faith 