Original Sin
Random Religious Texting: The Great Commission Goes Wireless!
So I’m sitting at my desk at work the other day just wrapping up with a customer, and my cell phone beeps with an incoming text message. (I like my phone to make an old-school “beeper” sound when I get text messages, because I’m an ironic hipster. Hey! Remember beepers?)
Anyway, I assume it is my wife, since she texts me about 247 times daily- and since it’s nearing the end of my shift I assume she wants a bottle of wine to have with dinner or that we are out of sour cream to have with the Greek Potatoes. I check my phone as soon as the customer leaves, and there is a message from a number I don’t recognize. It’s from a different area code- 519 (Western Ontario, about 5 hours away)- I don’t know anybody who lives there. The gentleman sending me the message is Philip W. (I assume, since he signed the text “Philip W.”) and he’s either mistyping phone numbers into his phone or randomly texting people about their “walk with God”. I’m not sure.
Here is what he wrote- and how I responded:
I was really hoping he would have texted me back. That’s the ”great” thing about the Great Commission though, you only need to speak the Word- if people don’t want to listen that’s their problem….. even if it is cryptic and insincere.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 5 so far )Taking On Theology Pt. 1:Original Sin, And Why I Think Christians Have Misread Scripture.
Authors Note: Before deciding to comment on this post, please read other posts on this blog. I was going to hell (or not) before I wrote this post, and my personal opinion of a longstanding Christian doctrine is the least of my problems, assuming you have some brilliant insight into the veracity and mind of your God. This post is meant to challenge the doctrine of original sin, and if you think it falls short-the comment box gives you a place to argue your case.
From What Is Clearly Seen…..
When I was a boy, my mother used to read “Bible Stories For Children” to me at bedtime. The second story in the book was about Adam, Eve, and a talking snake. It was a watered down but engaging version of the story of “The Fall” from Genesis 3. When you are a child, you don’t worry yourself with talking snakes, or eternal curses. What I took away from it is four simple things:
- When you are given an order, even if it seems stupid and unreasonable, you may not fully understand the reason why it was commanded, or the consequences
She obviously grabbed the wrong "low-hanging fruit"
of disregarding it.
- Peer pressure can get you in trouble.
- If a snake starts talking to you, you should really just walk it off.
- God should have made the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil bear walnuts instead of fruit, at least then it would have made it difficult to eat. Or at the very least mangoes, because they taste like crap.
As I got older, and started becoming active in church, I learned that other people had interpreted the story entirely different from myself. There were a few new lessons that I guess I was supposed to garner from Genesis 3.
- Women ruin everything. They are incorrigible. Men are the head of the household because just look what happens when you let women get their way.
- I am born evil. Adam passed his evil homunculus down to every succeeding generation, making me and my progeny forever culpable from conception for displeasing God. Way to go, Jackass!
Here’s the thing though. I read that story in my storybook and in my bible. I just was not seeing it at all. So I read it again. Still not seeing it. I asked someone else. They said “Ahh, read Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, and it will all make sense.” So I ran to my bible, thinking I had finally got the key that was going to unlock this whole issue. I read Romans. Then 1Corinthians. Then Romans again. Then I thought, “really?”.
I’m looking at the text, and I’m not seeing man as having a “curse of Adam”, or being born sinful, or depraved. I think there is something instructive about the comparison between the two, or else why would Paul draw the comparison. Something is being taught here, I just want to examine what that is. Let’s go verse by verse (All passages in red are from NKJ Version): (more…)
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