Blame

In our Adult Sunday School class on September 15 we read and discussed Genesis chapter 3, in which Nacash, the most cunning, devious and underhanded of all creatures in Adonai Elohim’s garden, chats to the woman about the marvelous fruit of the forbidden tree in the middle of the garden. Tempted, she eats, tells the man how good it is, and he eats. Thus, in what a member of the class called a fable of talking animals, earthlings, created to be gardeners for God, commit the first sin by disobeying the orders of the Landlord. 

Based on the writings of Saint Paul in Romans and First Corinthians, the Christian church in the second century groveled into the Original Sin doctrine that the first earthling’s yielding to temptation tainted all humans for all time. The sole anomaly being the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose mother Saint Anne was dogmatically excepted so that Original Sin was not passed on to Jesus. Depending on individual and/or denominational interpretation, it is not so much that we are guilty with Adam and Eve of their sin, as that their susceptibility to temptation, disobedience, wickedness, is part of human nature. 

In theological discourse, susceptibility to temptation would arguably be a created (by God) part of human nature, not an acquired (by human action) part of human nature, if for no other rationale than that Adam and Eve were susceptible, tempted and succumbed while still innocent. Thus, we've squirmed out of it again, and it’s not our fault, is it. We were set up. Further in theological discourse, the Blood of the Cross would arguably have washed Original Sin away.

We may take this any way we like. To me, the so-called “Fall of Man” story of Genesis 3 is a fun etiological explanation of why I am as I am. Which is to say, preferring a Sunday morning of sleeping in, reading the funnies, golf, fishing up Apalachicola River, boating to Shell Island -- preferring that to listening to some fool preacher in church. The preference is part of my “Original Sin” nature; I don’t become guilty until I smash the alarm clock against the wall, roll over, and go back to sleep. If instead, I get up grumbling and head for the shower, I still have the preference and inclination, but cursing the clock is not a sin.

That’s what it’s all about. To codify Genesis 3, a chortleable campfire tale, as the foundation for weighty, burdensome Christian doctrine is not jesuische, from Jesus Christ, but a nonsensical construct of dour Pauline gravity as ludicrous as the buck-passing Adam to Eve to Nacash. Nevertheless, here we are two-thousand years on. At least the church doesn’t require me to stand and recite Articles of Religion IX every Sunday morning:

1. Of Original or Birth Sin.
   
   Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk;) but it is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God's wrath and damnation. And this infection of nature doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated; whereby the lust of the flesh, called in Greek, Φρόυημα σαρκός, (which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire, of the flesh), is not subject to the Law of God. And although there is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized; yet the Apostle doth confess, that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin.

Jousting with this windmill becomes almost offensive the morning after yesterday’s unspeakable horror in the Washington Navy Yard. Consistent with though perhaps not as unspeakable as Shock and Awe, sarin, My Lai, Robert Bales, Kent State, 9/11, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, Newtown, ... . 

On a Monday morning some madman’s nature yields to murderous insanity. Some society’s culture lets such a man own such weapons. If he hadn’t the guns, he would have insanely mowed down children with his car at a school crossing. Was Aaron guilty, or can we pass blame to Adam. Or to Adonai. A creation of blame-shifting narcissists.

T+