Sin, God, Us

Sin has marred everything. That’s what I started this journey explaining. Sin has messed up everything. It’s infected as a virus, as a pungent smell of rancid meat, feel free to come up with your own illustration, whatever it is for you the fact remains it marred the face of creation.

Our relationships with everything changed the moment that sin entered the world. Our relationship with God, self, nature, and others all changed.

God.

Genesis 3:9-10 “Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ So he said, ‘I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.’”

How had the relationship changed so badly? This was Adam, the one who had walked with God, who had communed with him, who got to hang out in God’s creation, and now he was hiding from his friend, his creator … his God. What a shift. It feels like my last date ;-) … you know the kind ... things are great and poof it turns on ya, and your like “what changed??” God had to be hurt at the shift of relationship. His creation had turned on him seemingly instantaneously. But this was worse than “Aaron you’re a great guy but I just want to be friends …” no this was “God you’re ok, but we want to control our own lives.

And now Adam is scared of God. He’s naked and hiding from the one who sees him more clearly than anyone else. The relationship is suffering because Adam is pulling away, and it starts in motion the dangerous effects of sin. This really is the root of our problems. We have a marred image of God. Look a few verses earlier as Satan tries to get eve to eat the fruit, what does he use? He tries to change her image of God. When our view of God is messed up, then our are quick to follow.

Self

Genesis 3:11-12 “And he (God) said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?’
Adam finally realized that he was naked. He noticed that there was something wrong with this state. Odd that it didn’t bother him before sin, but now he was shamed and he hid. This is the second state that sin corrupts. We first have a corrupted view of God and we subsequently have a tarnished view of self. No one had to tell Adam that he was naked now, he just knew it. And something inside of him said he should hide because God was coming.
So many “worm theologies” want to show us how small we are, and how big God is. And in a sense they are right, however there must be a balance. We were created in the image of God, and we are something special. We are the only beings I am aware of that get to commune with God of our own free will. We get to love him and have him love us. We get to worship him and have him inhabit our praise. I am not advocating a false sense of grandeur for humans, nor am I advocating we all run around naked; however I am advocating a healthy sense of self worth. Not only were we created by God to be in his image but when that image was marred he crafted an elaborate plan to bring us back.
When our concept of God is marred, then we immediately move to a poor concept of self. At this point the sin cycle is out of control. God becomes this judgmental, all-powerful, all-judging critic. He is the all-seeing eye of Mordor from Tolkien’s Ring trilogy, looking for one sin so he can smite us as the all-mighty smiter. Once we start to view God like in this way, we become these little slugs who always have to look over our shoulder for our salt wielding creator. Any time our view of God becomes marred we immediately have a marred view of his creation, starting with ourselves.


(Next post Creation and others.)