SIN-Just what is sin and where did the idea of sin come from? Well, in the first instance, the Book Of Genesis tells us that Eve disobeyed God’s command and ate of the ‘forbidden fruit’. Consequently every human and animal alike have been branded with the curse of that Original Sin. In the second instance, during the Israelites exodus from Egypt, they became unruly and paganistic. Their leader, Moses, decided on a plan of action to get them under control—he concocted the Ten Commandments. When presented with them, the Israelites scorned Moses and went their ‘merry way’. Moses then presented them with a new set and proclaimed them to be God’s rules—any breech was known as sin from that day forward.
Now lets address the Garden of Eden story. It would seem from the story that all animals were peaceful and loved each other—they lived in perfect harmony. They surely all could talk because snakes could. What I want to know is who put the snake up to tempting Eve? If the snake dreamed up the idea herself, then she would have been the first sinner—I say ‘she’ because females have always been branded as being the source of all evil. Also, presumably, all animals could talk. so why didn’t many others attempt to talk the snake out of deceiving Eve? Secondly, presumably at the moment Eve bit-in, all the animals would have turned ferocious. How could Adam and Eve have possibly escaped the ravages of all the Lions, tigers, grizzly bears, T Rexes, crocodiles, etc.—they were busy making loin-cloths from fig leaves—no way they could have survived. That entire story sounds very, very ‘fishy’ to me—it in no way reflects the God and the universe I know. I believe, without any doubt, that it represents the imagination of some person(s) attempting to explain a condition from a platform of total ignorance. Never-the-less, that story persists today. Everyone is free to take it or leave it—I prefer the latter.
Now lets talk about Moses and the Ten Commandments. He is to be commended for constructing such a good set of rules for civility in society. The only two of those rules which seemed to matter as time went on were the 6th and 9th. Of course, they were of paramount importance because a woman (wife) was a man’s property—any unfaithfulness on her part was punishable by stoning to death—pretty serious stuff.
All of this ideology about sin was developed under the pretext of ‘displeasing’ God—that’s what sin was/is. If God were displeased which he was perpetually, then some form of recompense had to be developed to ‘please’ God. So, the idea of sacrifice was developed, deployed and maintained even to this moment—God must be appeased at all cost. And ‘cost’ it did. The High Priest got filthy rich and the peasants got poorer.
Then Jesus came along and guess what—he saw two major problems with the entire set-up. Number one, he saw the miniscule restrictive idea that the Jews had about the nature of their God. He understood the self-serving nature of their philosophy. Number two, he recognized the fallacy of their understanding of their relationship with their God. In other words they had no realistic idea who God was: neither did they have any realistic idea about love—one of the most basic attributes of Gods nature—his perfect love.
With that understanding, he set about attempting to instruct them. He tried desperately to get the to see that God was in everything and that everything was/is in God. Likely we shall never know whether or not he was successful. The surviving written word we have has been so distorted. Just look at all the dozens of times it has been rewritten, reinterpreted, and re-invented. So where do we go. I know where I went—I pursued a determined path to the truth.
As I investigated and studied, it became readily apparent that the essence of no deity had ever defined explicitly. It also became readily apparent that without that essential definition , any talk about a deity was just random jargon and totally meaningless. Accordingly, my determination allowed me the freedom of thought and understanding to make that definition—God Is A Perfect Rational Being. That perfection means it cannot possibly be pleased or displeased. God knows all and is all including Perfect Love.
Jesus, seeing the universal evil of selfishness, the only sin and knowing that he and everything in existence were mirror images of God, knew that he must die that God could be Perfect Love. He was the only human to ever see that—what a terrifying thought—he was the messiah—he was the sacrificial lamb who paid the price for us all—what glorious beauty. Our only just and worthy response is a great big thank you.
I have full explanation of that and much, much more in my two little books Wilderness Cry and Peace in Spirituality, both published by Covenant Books—Press Releases and video trailers attached
906242_Press Release for Wilderness Cry
Press Release for Peace in Spiritiality