This is an old biblical concept that many people don’t bother to ponder too deeply. They figure that it is simple enough just as it seems. If you “sin” you “die”, and since we all “sin” we all get the privilege of dying. It is akin to the idea that since we live in a community and we therefore get the privilege of paying taxes as a result to help pay for the expenses of our common community. For many, death is God’s way of punishing us for disobeying him in the first place. If Adam and Eve hadn’t eaten of the “tree of Knowledge of good and evil”, then we might all still be living in the Garden of Eden. And as long as they lived there, there was no death. So death came as a result of our original sin as human beings. God had to drive us from the Garden of Eden before we ate of the “tree of eternal life” and had to live in an imperfect world forever. God figured it was better that we die a mortal death and then enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, rather than have us suffer an eternity on this imperfect world. So in the end our dying is actually a part of the “Grace” of God to us, who wants us to have ‘life in all its fullness.” But is that all there is to this wisdom from the Bible? Is there perhaps a deeper meaning than just a reason why God has allowed us to die.

This Lent we have been doing a lot of studying on the Jacob Cycle of stories in the first Book of the Bible, Genesis. This has caused me to do more thinking about the concepts of sin and death and the root causes to things. Jesus said:, “You have heard it said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27) The very thought of thinking about it was a sin and not just the act. I can understand that, but now I wonder if there isn’t more to this. Is the “sin” the momentary thinking about it; or is the “sin” the act of allowing yourself to think about it on an ongoing, or recurring basis ; or is it that there is a deeper underlying “sin” that you haven’t dealt with? Are you thinking about it because there is a “sin” or problem in your overall sexual life? Perhaps that would be more to the point of a “sin” to deal with, rather an battling what might really be just an indicator of a deeper issue. Is the real “sin” the fact that we have an unaddressed issue in our life that is causing a more surface problem. On the other end of the spectrum it might have just been a random thought brought on by some other stress? I very much doubt that Jesus would consider random thoughts to be “sins”.

I originally thought of this not because of the quotation on adultery, but because someone said that a friend of their’s was a “motor mouth” and they considered this to be a sin that they should work on this lent. I wondered if being a motor mouth is the sin or if perhaps there was a deeper issue or cause that needed to be addressed? Perhaps that person was chronically lonely and needed to more find suitable social relational outlets. Perhaps the talking was a stress reliever and they were really trying to open up a topic that was not comfortable for them. There may by many reasons why someone might talk too much. I know one person who talks too much every time they get nervous and their “Sin”, if you would call it that, is that they have low self esteem. Perhaps we need to more reflective and patient with ourselves and others regarding our would be sins. If we looked for, and dealt with, the root causes, it might be easier to change the surface behavior. That in itself would be a very worthwhile lenten spiritual exercise. What “sin” is the Lord asking you to look at this lent that will bring you to a new happier Easter life? Let me know if you have any ideas on this.

Rev. Tijs, at St. Giles Presbyterian Church.

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