Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: "Not-Very-Original Sin"

Text: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

is an interesting thing, isn’t it?

It’s probably something that we could make really good use of,

if we could only figure out sure ways to channel it …

I can recall two or three occasions during my days in west Texas

when we had a work day out on the church playground,

and it seems like one of the tasks was always

to spread around a big ol’ load of sand.

It would have been dumped in a big pile

at the end of the playground where there was a double gate

that the truck could back through …

and we’d go after it with shovels and wheelbarrows,

moving that sand around

and piling it carefully under the play equipment

in the area they call the "fall zone."

For about the first 15 minutes, it was kind of fun.

Then, it started to get monotonous,

and your back started to hurt.

And after that, it was just downright irritating!

And inevitably, someone in the group would always come up with this plan:

"You know, there’s no need for us to be working this hard.

All we have to do is bring the Mothers’ Day Out kids out here,

give them little shovels and buckets, and tell them,

‘Whatever you do, don’t get in that sand!’"

What is it about us?

It’s not just children who have a hard time

obeying even simple rules, like

"Stay out of that sand," or

"Left lane is for passing only," or

"Don’t eat the fruit from that tree."

Now of course, there are certain periods in our lives

when we are particularly prone to disobedience or rebellion …

We may not remember ourselves during our Terrible Two years,

but we’ve probably experienced them

in our own children, or someone else’s children.

A two-year-old is working hard

to establish his or her own identity

as separate from the parents.

And the only way they know to do that

in their simple way of looking at the world,

is by not doing what their parents want.

Which is why, from our perspective,

we call them "terrible"!

And if you are the parent of that child,

it may be only small consolation to know

that if your child becomes terrible right on schedule,

it means you’re doing your job right!

That you’ve made them feel secure enough and loved enough

that they now feel safe testing the boundaries.

When you’re two, disobedience is the order of the day.

The same thing normally happens during our teenage years,

and for much the same sort of developmental reasons.

We want to define our own relationship to the world,

we want to seek out our own values.

But to the adults around us,

that search may seem like

disobedience to their chosen rules,

and rejection of their chosen values.

And then, many of us at mid-life

often begin to questions the rules we’ve lived by so far.

We realize we have missed out on some things.

The life choices we have made,

which seemed so right, and may have been right,

have nevertheless meant we had to choose against other things;

we never do get to have it all, do we?

We may decide we want to see what it feels like

if we make those other choices, instead.

We may spend a period of time

breaking rules we once obeyed quite happily,

just to see what happens, and how it feels.

We may eventually decide to claim our old rules back,

or we may write ourselves some new ones,

that allow some things that used to be forbidden.

But stages of life aside, now,

even in times when things are going smoothly

and we’re in a period of relative stability …

even then, it so often seems,

disobedience is a strong temptation.

The whole Adam and Eve story,

whether you choose to interpret it literally or figuratively,

suggests that humans have been that way since day one.

We are always tempted to do the wrong things,

to do those things which we ought not to have done, as the old prayer says.

Especially, it seems,

if someone has very directly and specifically forbidden it.

Look back at the Eden story.

God not only forbids Eve and Adam

to eat the fruit of that one tree …

God tries to insure their obedience by telling a little white lie –

did you ever notice this? – God tells them:

"if you eat it, you will die."

By which we can tell that God is like any normal parent,

who tends to exaggerate the consequences of actions

in the hope of eliciting obedience.

Like the old, "if you don’t stop that, your face is going to freeze that way."

only, in this case, on a much larger scale.

Unfortunately, Adam and Eve are normal human beings –

and you’ve got to remember, God has no prior experience with human beings;

these are the first ones –

so, the more powerful the prohibition against it,

the more powerful a temptation it exerts.

Don’t think for a moment that

that serpent could have tempted them to do the wrong thing,

if they hadn’t already been tempted themselves.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil?

Wow!

Wouldn’t that be a temptation even for us,

just to eat something

that would make our decision-making easier?

How often do we put off doing something

because we’re not at all sure

what the very best choice is?

Well, once the serpent assures Eve and Adam

that they won’t die if they eat the stuff;

in fact, they’ll become like God …

well, that clinches it!

It’s fruit-picking time in the garden!

And sin, in the form of disobedience, enters the world.

I suppose you can call it "original" sin,

in the sense that this story tries to account for

the origin and pervasiveness of sin in our lives.

But in our more common definition of the word,

this sin is hardly "original" at all.

It’s common to every one of us:

the temptation to be God.

This is a story that puzzled me for a long time:

why would God not want the humans

to have the knowledge of good and evil?

How would they know what to do;

how would they know the right choices to make,

if they didn’t know the difference?

Isn’t that what we try to teach our own children

almost from day one …?

How to be good, not bad?

Why would God not want

for God’s first children to have that knowledge?

I think there are two pieces to the answer to that question.

One is theological,

and the other, I guess you could say, is experiential.

So let’s start with the one that’s theological.

The first thing to remember, if you look back at the first chapter of Genesis,

is that when God created the world,

God kept affirming that all was "good,"

and at the end, "very good."

Nowhere do we hear God reflect and say, "that’s bad,"

or even, "oops, that didn’t turn out so well."

No, when everything began,

the creation as God imagined it and as God made it, was good.

Even the serpent is described as "crafty," or "subtle,"

but never as "evil."

So, since evil had no place in the original creation,

there was absolutely no need for the humans to know about it.

Everything they knew, or learned from the creation,

would be good.

That’s the theological part of the answer.

The other piece has to do with

how we use the knowledge once we get it.

Given that humans do now have

the knowledge of good and evil, however imperfectly,

the problem is what we do with that knowledge.

If we used it only on ourselves,

to make our own decisions and set our own priorities,

that would be no problem.

In fact, it would be wonderful.

The problem is, that’s not what we do.

At least, that’s not all that we do.

The serpent was right:

we use the knowledge to try to act like God.

We use our imperfect knowledge of good and evil

to judge other people.

And because our knowledge is imperfect,

we usually end up judging ourselves good,

and others who aren’t like us, as evil.

Our motives are pure;

their motives are mixed.

We are to be judged by our good intentions;

others, only by the flaws in their actions.

We always seem to be able to see evil

much more clearly, outside ourselves.

We sit in judgment on our fellow human beings.

And that responsibility belongs only to God.

We appropriate it,

but it is not ours.

The irony in all this is,

that in our attempts to be like God,

to play God in other people’s lives,

we actually become less like God.

When we give in to the temptation to judge others …

Especially when we judge the person and not just actions –

that is, when we go beyond just saying "That was a bad thing to do,"

to saying, "That is a bad person" –

When that happens,

we’re taking on ourselves

something that even God doesn’t seem to do.

And that’s the experiential part of the answer.

We’re often not very wise about utilizing

the limited knowledge that we do have.

Of course, none of us is alone in this; we all do it.

Our sin is not very original;

we learn it from each other;

we repeat it, again and again, generation after generation.

We don’t just want to try to be like God;

we want to be God.

And the interesting thing to me about that period

of Jesus’ temptation in the desert,

is that, even though he is God,

at that time and place he chose to be fully human.

He did not do divine stunts or miracles,

but hung in against temptation,

when he could have given in.

 

Which is what we have to do.

Whether you believe the Eden story

literally or symbolically doesn’t really much matter.

Because it is true that we all do have at least

a beginner’s knowledge of good and evil.

The question is, what will we do with it?

Will we use it to judge others and to crush them, playing God?

Or will we use it to become

the most fully human humans that we can be?

Now that would be original.

Amen.

© 2005 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)