Original Sin

So, what was the Sin? We are often told - exclusively it seems - that that first sin which ushered in the Fall and necessitated the coming of the Christ was the eating of the fruit - indeed apparently, just touching it.

But is this true? You see, the story presents us with two people, living with God in the Garden - in bliss apparently. The name of the fruit they cannot have is the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The serpent says if they eat it, they will become like God and God says that they will die on the day they eat it.

But they haven't eaten it yet. They don't know "good and evil." So we have a conundrum - how could they have sinned if they didn't know morally right from wrong - how could they have known that it was "evil" to eat it? They couldn't, so why is it that they are punished for having eaten it?

They weren't. The consequences inherent in an action are not punishments meted out to you. They simply are. So what were those consequences? Rather limited actually, and not a punishment at all. The result of eating that fruit is that you have made yourself morally culpable, and you know it. Oh yes, there was the banishment from the Garden (so that they couldn’t eat the Live-Forever-Fruit), and the consequence of having to actually farm a recalcitrant earth and experience pain in childbirth. Those are presented as punishments, yes. But they are nothing more than the consequences of being recalcitrant yourself. Adam broke the bond between God and the Creation and now the Creation will deteriorate just as Adam’s body will deteriorate. He won’t physically die on this day, but will begin to. He will also be separated from the formal presence of God, routinely described as death in Scripture. 

The import of the story of Cain and Able is just this – what do we do with that culpability?. When we learn the story of Cain (it isn't about Able even though we all like to identify with him), we learn a story of anger and murder. These are devices to set the stage for what comes later. Cain acts in a self-centered, angry, and murderous way. We often wonder about those sacrifices – what was it that was good about Able’s and not quite acceptable about Cain’s? Here’s the problem with those questions: the point of the story of Cain isn't proper sacrifice. At least as we understand that device in the story. You see, it doesn't really matter why God liked one over the other. They simply move us to the point of the story, which comes when God tells Cain that sin is crouching at the door and it is Cain who can choose to live righteously or not.

That's the point of the story of Cain - he and you and I are culpable because we can choose righteousness, having learned just what is good and what is evil. Having that knowledge isn't sin nor is the gaining of it.

The sin then was not eating the fruit; so what was it? The sin is the first choice Adam makes after eating the fruit and presumably learning discernment of good and evil - he hides from God. Having broken the connection with God by eating what he had been told not to, he acts out physically that separation. Adam as the representative of all humans separates himself from God intentionally and we have done so ever since when left to our own devices.

God spends the rest of the story trying to get us to come to our senses. He starts with Cain, moves through the prophets, and eventually comes as Jesus - he who has ears, let him hear.

Because Mankind is the crowning part of the Creation, our behavior impacts the creation and the earth is cursed, and the continuing of the race will cause pain. The earth will have to be tilled by Adam, husbanded even more strenuously than in the Garden, and pain will not be relieved; pain so great you might think you're going to die - but you won't. All these consequences, and here we might call them punishments because they feel like it, are the result of the actual sin, the separating ourselves from God.

The Sin, the first sin, the original sin is that of separating ourselves from our Creator and even our own makeup - His image. We run from God and we run from our best selves because we are afraid, insecure, and guilt-ridden. Like children who now know they've blown it, we hide with Adam when God comes to seek us out.

And we participate in Adam's Sin.

The fix is to come home; to live as Cain was urged - to choose righteousness.