When it comes to original sin (the eating of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden), the basic concept is that humanity usurped the authority of God by taking on the right to determine what was good and what was evil. Sure, there was a tempter there, but nothing grows without a seed. Adam and Eve had the seed of rebellion in their hearts (so do we, by the way), so the temptation only grew out of that seed.
It’s all about setting limits. In the beginning there was only one rule: Don’t eat that.
Then Moses came along, and God gave ten rules.
But that wasn’t enough. The people needed rules on how to apply those ten rules. Suddenly there were hundreds of rules, including how far a person could walk on the Sabbath and still keep it holy. Now there are rules on how and what to pay an employee, the number of days off, and even how to go about removing them from employment. Rules even for the number and placement of fire alarms.
Don’t get me wrong - rules are needed. If people internalized those ten rules given to Moses, and let them operate the way they should, we wouldn’t need to told where to put fire alarms.
When Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God and love our neighbor, that should include “Do Not Steal,” and all the rest of them. There’d be no need to steal because if someone was that far down on their luck someone with more material wealth would see to it they were taken care of. If we loved God, we would already honor our parents, we wouldn’t covet, we wouldn’t lie.
The thing about laws, though, is that once we get them people want to push right up against them to see how far they can get away with it. People don’t like limits, but people need limits.
So we have discussions about when it’s okay to kill people. Is it okay to kill someone who murders millions of his own countrymen, like Stalin did? Is it okay to inflict the death penalty on someone blowing up a building where there’s a daycare? How about someone who pushes a random person in front of a subway, or stabs and kills a jogger? What about an unborn child because it would be inconvenient? When does that child have the sanctity of life? Is it at birth, or at fifteen weeks of gestation, or is it at conception?
Humanity took on the right to decide by eating the forbidden fruit. Look where it’s gotten us - arguing about when it’s okay to kill. The right answer is only when Jesus says it’s okay. Since He’s God, we have no say in the matter.
In the Garden of Eden we took (stole?) the right to decide. Only when we voluntarily turn that back over to Him will we have peace, first in our hearts, then in the world.
A few weeks ago I asked the question of where is America’s Jeremiah. The answer is that Christ’s church is Jeremiah. We should be weeping for the lost as much as he did. We should be preaching the message the same way he did. If the world is going “there” in a handbasket, we have only ourselves to blame. Secularists don’t want any limit on their lives. They want to say what’s good and bad. But did you ever notice that boundary is always moving? If we don’t push back, like Jeremiah did, America will rightfully become another in a long line of nation-states that cropped up, thrived, rotted, and vanished.
We’d deserve it.
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