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Photo courtesy of Jason Valendy
What was the first sin?
For many of us we understand the first sin was when Adam and Even ate from a tree that was “off limits”. This was the first “answer” I was given when I was younger. It makes some sort of logical sense. There was a prohibition and then that prohibition was broken and thus there you have it, the first sin.
This way of thinking about the Bible story in Genesis is good if you are trying to instill into a child that they need to listen to authority figures (parents, teachers, etc.). It is a way of teaching young ones that rules, even rules you may not understand, are put in place in order to protect you and to violate those rules comes at a cost.
As we get older we come to see this is not true. There are plenty of people who violate rules but do not suffer any consequences. There are also a lot of rules that are in place that are unjust and do not make a lot of sense. Then when you drill down into Christianity, you hear that we are saved by grace and not the law, that we are in fact not bound to the law. When we read the Genesis story and are told the “moral of the story” is that we need to abide by the law, but were we not told that Jesus comes to liberate us from the law we scratch our heads. Are we free from the law or are we supposed to follow it so as to not be like Adam and Eve?
The Bible is a set of stories that are full of symbol and depth of meaning. Pay attention that Adam and Eve ate fruit. In other parts of the Bible we learn that fruit is a metaphor for that which comes after something else. For instance, we bear fruits of the spirit, after we receive the Holy Spirit. We will bear fruit after we abide in the vine (Christ). Fruit comes after.
Adam and Eve’s consumption of fruit ought to prompt us to ask, what is the thing that comes before? What is this fruit they are eating? Not what sort of fruit as in apples or pears, but more like is this the fruit of love or the fruit of hate? Even demons bear fruit. Not all fruit is good, but if we act with hatred, we will bear the fruit of hate.
And so if fruit comes after, then eating the fruit cannot be the first sin. The first sin has to happen and the first humans are eating of the fruit of that first sin. And so, what is that first sin?
There are a lot of arguments on what that first sin would be. Perhaps it is worth considering that the first sin is not disobedience or pride, but redirection. Redirecting our desires away from what God desires toward what we desire.
When Adam and Even desired what God desired, then the tree in the center of the garden was not even a blip on the radar of Eve or Adam. It never even bothered them, because their desire was mirroring what God desired and God desired them not to eat from that tree. It was only when they no longer desired what God desired that Adam and Even were able to eat of the fruit.
And thus, the first sin is not a choice of produce but a choice of desiring something other than what God desires.
This Lent, consider the actions that you and I might call “sins”. Chances are these sins are not sins, but evidence (fruit if you will) of the sin that came before. Consider what James 4:1-3 says:
Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.
The conflicts and disputes among us are fruit - they come from somewhere. And where do they come from the author asks? They come from our choice to abandon the desires of God and pursue our own desires.
(This is adapted from a sermon delivered on February 28, 2021)