The Greatest Sin...

Adam and Eve's sin had nothing to do with fruit.

In popular culture, everything from Desperate Housewives to the Real Housewives of Orange County (or Atlanta, New York, Bismarck? - pick your spinoff) depicts an alluring fruit in the hands of a beautiful woman and suggests that being a little naughty isn't such a bad thing. Good for Adam and Eve! is the subtext - if they hadn't taken the fruit, we would have had such a boring existence.

Not exactly...

Adam and Eve had it really good before they took the fruit. God himself would come and walk with them in the cool of the evening. They had a beautiful place to live. No suffering, no excessive pain. And they had each other. Even sex BEFORE the fruit was bitten was better than sex after the fall.

They had meaningful work. They were given a day to simply rest from their work and enjoy creation. Life was good.

Their first (and really the root of all) sin was to believe that they were better at being god than God himself. The fruit was there to make sure they let God stay God, and that the creations wouldn't start to worship the creation. As soon as that order was messed up, everything got worse.

The fruit didn't open up a beautiful and naughty world of little sins. It led directly to murder - from the hand of one brother to the heart of another. Abel's blood cried out to God from the ground...

I recently had a couple of my classes design their own god and share it with the class. They tried all sorts of ideas, but they all had flawed deities - much more flawed than the alleged flaws that so many find with YHWH, the God of the Bible.

We are all tempted with the fruit - to think that God should match up to our own depiction of who God should be. We all sometimes think that God would be so much better if He would only do what I want.

But I'm a really bad deity.

I don't want God's job.

Father, I trust you.

Amen.

It's Been A While...

Sorry it's been so long. I've started a second job. Lifesong is growing in faith and numbers and things are really good. I'll post more in the coming days, but I just wanted to check in and say I'm still here, God is still good, and I've got some new ideas to share in the future...

God's peace, Rich