So the Old Testament reading at church on Sunday was Adam and Eve and the Forbidden Fruit, paired with the tempatation of Jesus in the desert from the New Testament. So this is my brief observation:
Have you ever given any thought to the fact that the story about Adam and Eve is one of sin? We kind of take it as a given, because we’re just used to it. We use it to criticize believers as too focused on sin. But here’s my pet theory: I think there was a more fundamental reason why the story of the first people is the story of the first sin. Because sinfulness is probably the key element in defining humanity.
OK, that seems over-the-top. But there are so many ways in which people try to demolish the uniqueness of humans by finding ways that animals seem to use tools, problem-solve, show emotion, and the like. Yet consider the case of a lion just having taken over a pride of lionesses, and killing the cubs so as to bring the lionesses into heat, and replace the ousted male’s progeny with his own. Has he sinned? Of course not. It’s preposterous. (I tend to use that word a lot.) But what of a human, say, a man abusing the children of his live-in girlfriend? Do we say, well, that’s just nature for you? No, we jail him.
And, if you imagine the long path from our primate predecessors to homo sapiens, and you lined them all up, and you time-machined your way back to their lives, somewhere along the way there would be a point when you move from “oh, that’s just nature” to “that’s inhumane!” To be human is to be capable of sin.
Or rather I should say, “the species of human beings is unique because of their ability to sin” since a small child cannot sin (that is, doesn’t have the understanding of the world to intentionally sin), and yet is human. But still – anyway, I thought it was interesting, as my mind was wandering during the homily.
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