LECTIO DIVINA FRAGMENTS: Original Sin

When I apply my Lectio Divina (Philippians 2:5), then sit back and wait, here is what I received. You judge its value for you.

• Original sin reflects human nature and how evil and good coexist within humans, not as a place but as the consequences of our choices.
• Humans, like butterflies, are created good because that which is good created us. Genesis is a compilation of oral traditions and stories that teach how human choice is not evil, but that choice can be detrimental to our human progress.
• What happens if humans are created in God’s image and likeness (good)? Genesis is a story about why humans do bad things and yet are good by nature.
• Here are some ideas about why you see some people do bad things with no consequences and where does evil exist? In God? In humans? Outside of humans?
• Genesis is an archetypal account of human nature as perceived by the multiple writers of Genesis.
• It is indeed a story of creation with the notion that God created all that is and that once created, he hired Adam and Eve to be gardeners or caretakers of his Garden. Thinking about if the Garden of Eden historically existed or not may divert our attention away from the core meaning of Genesis. What actually exists is that people (at least four literary traditions) all came together around one God as a creator of good, and Adam (from the earth) and Eve (mother of humanity) made choices that were bad for them, even when they knew it was bad. Evil is one of the choices humans make to find meaning. In Genesis and the remaining Old Testament and New Testament, God tells us what is suitable for our nature and what will cause it to die (the wages of sin is death).
• Scripture is a history of how well people did in taking God’s advice or not. Genesis and the Fall are about why humans want to choose what they think is good for them but actually harmful. Sin is harmful. The story is a literary device to focus the readers on why humans are in the big mess they find themselves in when they follow what the world says is important.
• When Israel and also the Church are with God, good things happen. Bad things happen when they follow their whims, and Christ is not the center.
• Jesus is the result of the reparation humans had to achieve to restore (redeem) themselves with God. The Hebrew word “Gaal” means a kinsman who goes to the pawnshop with a ransom for that which was pawned and buys it back. https://biblehub.com/hebrew/1350.htm The price of that buy-back is a voluntary reparation for the sin of Adam and Eve. In the case of Christ, the sign of contradiction is voluntary death on a cross (the ultimate sign of abandonment of Christ’s humanity).
• Christ became our kinsman (the Word became flesh and dwelt among us) to serve as a ransom for many and establish the tie between humanity and divinity by lifting us up to become sons and daughters of the Father. This final step is the culmination of our humanity, the result of our evolution, and our victory over death.
• Genesis (Adam and Eve) is the type of what it means to be human. We were created good. With that, we received the gifts of reason and free choice. God told Adam and Eve what to avoid and how to use that gift. Adam and Eve are archetypes for all humans. With our humanity, we have to learn how to use it properly. Adam and Eve chose poorly. There are consequences to this sin(missing the mark of what it means to be human). We live the consequences of this choice: we must work to eat and learn by accumulation, we die, we are at dissonance with the Nature of God, we now know that we are naked, and we shift responsibility for our mistakes to someone else. “The snake made me do it.”
• Without Genesis, there is no humanity. Without Adam and Eve, there is no sin (Romans 5). And without Genesis and its poignant discourse of why we do bad things are who is responsible, there can be no redemption. Without someone (a kinsman) to pay the ransom for many, we remain in the darkness of purgatory, waiting for someone to be a ransom for the many.
• The Father said YES to all creation and to making Adam and Eve in his image and likeness. He offered them to work this reality and be Lords of the Garden. Adam and Eve said NO to the offer, and so God banished them from The Garden until someone would come to restore the resonance of what is real. Humans could, once again, become what their nature intended all along, to be now adopted sons and daughters of the Father (not just the hired help) and heirs to all that is real.
• Next is the Christ Principle, the logical, intelligent progression from The Genesis Principle. This next step in our collective journey begins with a YES, but not from Christ. Mary, as the type for all humans, t did what Adam and Eve would not do; she said YES. “Be it done to me according to your word.” Like Neil Armstrong’s first step on the Moon pales in comparison to Mary’s YES, the first one by a human, our second Eve. That YES changed time itself. (spiritual time, that is).
• Jesus is the fulfillment of everything in the Old Testament meant to point out that Israel is the point person for God’s initiative for all humanity— to know, love, and serve God in this life and to be happy with God in the next. (Baltimore Catechism, Question 6)
• Like the propaganda of false or fake disinformation about Ukraine from Russia and China, the Devil is also a propagandist. The whole movement away from Christ by 25 countries trending more and more to give up on God is the degree of success by Satan. Here is a secret. It was always that way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYJ15by205Q
• I guess, like the quote from G.K. Chesterson, “Christ has not been tried and found wanting but rather has never been tried at all.”
• As one who chose the Lay Cistercian WAY of life on what is TRUE, the LIFE, I prefer nothing over the Love of Christ.

That was a big basket.