Christian Myths Exposed – the Sin Cycle, How it All Started!
Sin is not the problem in your life even though you may have been told that over and over! The problem lies in your reaction to your own failures that lies deep in your psyche, given to you by your parents. The solution to the sin problem is really very easy! Remember the words of Jesus in Matthews 11:30, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Our Bend Towards Sin…
Before we examine the most popular religious myths, I want to spend some time on what I call the Sin Cycle. It is crucial that you understand what you have inherited from just being a human being. First we know that we have received our sin nature from our parents and they received it from their parents and so on all the way back to the first humans. But there is something else that has been passed down to you that you may not be aware of.
Our sin nature is a given, we can’t escape the effects of it. We all sin and continually come short of the glory of God! Besides our bend towards sin, we have also inherited some destructive behavior that keeps us from experiencing the kind of unbroken fellowship with God that man had before the first sin. I want to spend some time with you and let you in on revelation that I’ve received over the years about how we should deal with the fact that we are in a fallen world with our flesh being part of the corruption. What I want to focus on here is how we handle ourselves when we find ourselves in disobedience to God or in sin.
In order to understand why the world is in the shape it’s in and why it is so difficult for mankind to get back to a place of trusting God we need to take a look at the first act of disobedience and how it affected the first man and first woman, Adam and Eve.
We all know the story of Adam and Eve, their creation and subsequent disobedience, and how sin came to be in the world. If we examine the first act of disobedience and how it affected the first humans, we can see a pattern that is now part of the human soul, deeply engrained in our humanity that keeps us from ever really trusting God and getting back to that intimate relationship that Adam and Eve enjoyed with God before their disobedience.
Jesus came to live with us on Earth so that He could empathize with our plight and be the advocate for us that was necessary to restore what Adam and Eve lost by their original disobedience. I want to invite you to examine with me the cycle that began on the day of man’s first act of disobedience and then became part of the human experience for all of the descendants of the first man and woman.
I want to show you the cause of your frustration and feeling of inadequacy but more important, I want to give you the cure! There is an easy way, given to us by God, to break this cycle and live a fulfilled life much like Adam and Eve had in the beginning.
“Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.” Romans 5:9-13
Through Jesus we have received “the atonement”. The word atonement in verse eleven simply means restoration. For something to be restored there must be a previous state to restore it to. In this case the previous state was the state of man’s relationship with God before the first act of disobedience. God, through Jesus brought complete restoration to that state of oneness with God!
You may be thinking to yourself, “If God restored everything back to what it was, then why do I feel so distant from God?” The truth is God has already finished this restoration for all of mankind by the complete work that Jesus accomplished while He was on Earth. It’s just a matter of understanding how to break the cycle that kept the first couple from unbroken fellowship with God and still works today to keep us in the same state of confusion.
Let’s take a look at the first sin and the reaction of Adam and Eve that is now ingrained in the human psyche and causes us to never feel really connected to God. Notice the subtitles, this is the sin cycle: clear=”all”
Sin
“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.” Gen 3:6 KJV
Shame
“And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.” Gen 3:7 KJV
Separation
“And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.” Gen 3:8 KJV
Separation Anxiety
“And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” Gen 3:9-10 KJV
Self Righteousness
“And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” Gen 3:11-13 KJV
I am going to take you step by step, verse by verse through this cycle in order to show you what you will see as an undeniable pattern that not only occurred when the original sin first took place, but has since become part of the interaction between man and God until this day.
First Eve disobeyed God. In verse six above she ate the fruit that God had forbidden her to eat, then she shared it with Adam. Sin entered the world for the first time since creation. Many events took place as a result of that sin, but the focus of our investigation today is only on the reaction of Adam and Eve, their attitude towards God, and God’s response to their disobedience.
In verse seven we see that they suddenly felt the Shame of not wearing clothes. This is an indication that they were ashamed of their disobedience with an outward result of realizing that they needed to be covered. Notice in the next verse that they actually hid from God in the bushes. The shame was not caused by the fact that they didn’t have clothes on, we know this because it obviously wasn’t an issue before they disobeyed God. Their shame was in their disobedience.
In verse eight we see God pictured as walking in the garden in the cool of the day, just like He did before!The shame caused by their disobedience had triggered something in Adam and Eve. They were now hiding from their creator with whom they had enjoyed intimate relationship with. Separation from God was a result of the shame they felt for doing something God had told them not to do.
In verse eight we also see the anxiety produced by the separation. In their minds they were now fearful of God and hid in an attempt to cover their sin. Separation Anxiety came as a result of their decision to hide from God after they had disobeyed God.
In verses eleven through thirteen we see the result of this Separation Anxiety, Self Righteousness. They began to look for a scapegoat, someone they could blame for their failure to keep God’s instructions. Adam blamed Eve, and then Eve blamed the serpent.
This cycle of sin to self righteousness has been present in the human experience ever since that day and is a continual force working to keep you and me from ever experiencing that intimate connection with God that the first humans experienced just after their creation. In the next article, “The Sin Cycle, How to Break it”, I will show you how I learned to break this cycle at the shame level and live in constant relationship with God, experiencing all of the goodness of God all of the time!
Probiotika All in 1000 – probiotischen Joghurt selber machen
Tags: bible, Bible Study, christian, Guilt, Jesus, Religion, Shame