So, you see, I were thinking; What is sin? And why are somethings talked about as being no no's in the Bible important? I mean what is wrong with some stuff? Why do God care? For example, why is it wrong to have sex before your married, why was it wrong to wear braids of two different materials, why is it that men are supposed to be the head of the household? Why was it wrong to eat pork? Why does what is right and wrong change? What was so bad with this fruit that Adam and Eve ate?
I have heard quite a few explanations to it, which for the most part goes something like "It is bad for you, and God knows what is good for you, so you have to trust God in that" which, for some may be a satisfying explanation. But for me it doesn't really cut it, sure some things to, such as you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall have no other gods, and so forth these are rather straight forward things. But some of the other things?
Then, somehow, recently I started thinking; What, actually, is sin? And the answer that we, sort of, are told over and over again is: Rebellion against God
Cool, but, I don't really rebell against God... Well, you do people then say. But how do I rebel against God really? You don't have God as the ruler in your life.. How do I have God as ruler in my life then? You follow his commandments.
Typical, sort of back to where we started there... But.. If I instead of looking at it that way, look at is this (circumspect)way (I'll get to my point eventually):
In the beginning we have God.
God for some reason unknown to me, but most probably known to "him", decides to create a world.
God creates this world to be a good world.
God creates fishes and plants and insects and animals and planets and suns and stuff (Whether or not this is done through a massive explosion or on God's 6 day holiday is unknown and unimportant).
All these things are good.
God is not quite finished yet though, there is one thing that is missing, things similar to himself, things that can think and imagine and talk (and, eventually, write on computers).
So, enter humans (again, an improvement of the ape, or molded dust is irrelevant).
God creates humans to have a relationship with them, to talk to them, to be worshiped by them, to care for them etc. Thing is, there need to be a way for humans to somehow obey God. And how can something obey something else if there is nothing said that could be obeyed? So God gives the humans a very difficult command: You can do whatever you want, but, don't eat from that tree.
The humans then, wonder of looking at the tree thinking. It do look pretty good that fruit don't you think? Yeah, it sure does. Wonder why we shouldn't eat it? Lets ask this serpent thingy, they are supposed to be clever, the serpents...
And so, they do.. And you know what happens after that. Clothes, No tree of life, Toil, Crushing of heads and so on and so forth.
Now, coming to my point here, think back to earlier when I asked why eating this particular fruit was bad, is it because this fruit was very bad? (admittedly, the Bible do say that God said by eating this fruit they would become like us) I'm not so convinced about it being the fruit in and of itself, I'm more inclined to think that they;
disobeyed God by doing the only thing God told them not to do.
which brings me somehow to what I think sin is:
Not obeying God.
And, how do we obey God? Well, we do the things God tells us to do. These things don't necessarily have to be in and of themselves bad for us. In fact, if I were to ask you to not stab yourself in the eye with a blunt screwdriver.. Now, unless your rather mad, you would not stab yourself in the eye with a blunt screwdriver, but it would not be because you think so highly of me and really really don't want to disobey me (you could of course, but not very likely) but it would be because your not a complete idiot. If, instead, I asked you to mow my lawn, or give up using the internet for a year.. These things are things you don't particularly want to do, but if you did have a high opinion of me and wanted to show that, well, you'd do this (possibly). Now this is what I think many of the laws and stuff in the Bible are for. Opportunities for us to show God that we respect and love him. Sure, God knows that we tend to be naturally destructive so some laws are for our benefit.
If I look at it this way many things make sense to me. For example, we tend to want to put "sins" in some kind of hierarchical order. But it seems like God don't. Now, if the sin is to disobey God, well, then it makes sense that not eating pork, and not killing people would be on the same level of seriousness. But, the impacts for you and me here and now are rather different. If I eat some pork not much will happen, but if I decided to kill someone I'll go to jail, and won't exactly be the most popular guy in town.
So, having this as a base, when someone says:
Why is it wrong to have sex before your married?
I can say:
Because God asks me not to. And, because I want to and can't see anything inherently wrong with it, it is a great opportunity for me to show God that I love and respect him.
Not sure if I built this argument up particularly well or anything, but, take it for what it is. Me writing down my thoughts.
Till next time
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