Whenever the church offers "teaching," if we affirm some "doctrine," we are making some logical deduction from Scripture. The Bible nowhere says "Believe this proposition" or "This is what we believe in general about God, or humanity."
One deduction the Church drew from reading about Adam and Eve was a belief in "original sin." Obviously, the story of Adam and Eve isn't an interesting tale about something that happened to a particularly star-crossed couple once upon a time. Mark Twain was right: "I don't see why they get so much credit; I could have done just as well as they did." Same for you and me: instead of letting God be God, we try to be God ourselves. We rebel, we plunge headlong into foolish self-destruction.
But must we sin? Is the newborn infant born sinful? If we read Genesis 3, Paul's thoughts in Romans 3, reflect on our lives, and then piece it all together, we discover that although we are not compelled to sin, we inevitably do sin - and not just with a little peccadillo here or minor infraction there. We are in a predicament: we are stuck, curved in on ourselves, as if tangled up in some barbed wire of a life that is not of God, and the more we flail to escape the more entangled we become. When we look inside our ethical selves, we have "shabby equipment, badly deteriorated" (T.S. Eliot). Even our stalwart lunges at morality are laughably self-serving.
Since this disaster resides in every one of us, St. Augustine concluded that it must have been passed along through the sexual act, one generation to the next. We may wish to flick this ancient notion aside - but there is profound wisdom hidden underneath its naivete. Consider the way alcoholism, depression, or mood tendencies very much "run in the family" - or the way the venom of parents seeps into their children's souls, or combat within a family rears ugly psychological offspring decades later. Much of what plagues us is inherited. We are sucked into a vortex, not just as individuals, but as a society: try not to be materialistic, and you won't make it until lunchtime. It's the air we breathe. The biggest lesson of history is that we never learn the lessons of history.
...which is the thickest part of the problem. Anti-drug campaigns used to advise us, "Just say no!" But our proclivities and habits are far too powerful to yield to something as weak as a little human determination. The only antidote is the power of God's Spirit, the tender mercy of God's grace. In fact, it is only in the light of the awesome depth of God's grace that we truly understand the mess we are in - yet also the hope that is ours despite ourselves. Augustine cleverly devised this scenario: Adam and Eve were "able not to sin." But after they sinned, humanity ever since has been "not able not to sin." Yet we are rescued from the wreckage by Jesus, so that in eternity we will be "not able to sin."
James
james@mpumc.org
Coming up:
eBibleQuestions11 - Is Satan real?
eBibleQuestions12 - Why would Israel be God's Chosen People?
eBibleQuestions13 - Does God harden hearts?
eBibleQuestions14 - What about the Laws of the Old Testament?
eBibleQuestions15 - Why so much warfare in the Bible?
eBibleQuestions16 - What can archaeology tell us? and not tell us?
