Our Original Sin
*-This is posted here with permission from the Lebanon Enterprise. It is scheduled to be published in the paper on April 19, 2023
In the story of our fall from grace, as captured in the book of Genesis from the Hebrew Scriptures, we discover that the first sin arises as humanity, in the form of the mythical Adam and Eve, displace God from the center of their shared existence choosing to partake of fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and ignoring the Divine commandment not to do so. From that moment forward the whole of the cosmos, as experienced by humankind, is thrown into utter chaos. Our first parents were cast out of the Garden of Eden, they would struggle and strain to bring forth sustenance from the ground when before it had just happened, and there would be considerable pain and anguish bringing offspring into the world. We, as a species, would spend the whole of our time on this planet as homeless exiles seeking, yet never finding, rest. From this condition, though, arose the second recorded sin—an action directed from one human to another in the story of Cain and Abel. In this myth, Cain believing that God loved Abel’s offering more than his, in a fit of jealous rage, kills his younger brother, leaving his blood to soak into the field and cry out to the Divine. In a scant two chapters of the Bible, humanity had dethroned its creator and as a result believed that violence to the point of death was a justifiable action. These two faults have largely determined the course of human history since then.
In the time immediately after the life, death, and new life of Jesus, his followers lived into two central commandments that would address these two original sins. They would strive to love God with all heart, strength, soul, and intellect in hopes of returning the Holy One to the center of life. At the same time, they would love their neighbors as themselves with their neighbors being whomever they encountered in the journey of life. So it was that the earliest followers set prayer and worship of the Divine at the center of their faith and a communal spirit within their fellowship with one another. They also, for about the first 400 years or so of story of the faith, practiced pacifism. This commitment to love their neighbor as themselves and thus refusing to serve in the Roman military angered the leaders of the Empire to the point of violent retribution against those early Christians including, but not limited to, imprisonment, exile, and using those earliest followers of Jesus as pawns for lions and gladiators in the Colosseum. The martyr tales that arose from this time go to great lengths to describe both the commitment that they had and the violence that was enacted upon them.
The commitment to pacifism and sacrifice lasted roughly until the Empire, under the leadership of Constantine, converted en masse to the Christian faith and those who had before been powerless soon grew accustomed to the clout that came with having the Caesar share your faith. As the Empire became more Christian, Christianity became more imperial and for most of the rest of its history this is where it has dwelt. Peacemakers became proponents of what Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, would call “Just Wars.” The rest, as they say, is history.
Monday of last week, the city of Louisville, almost an hour and a half from here, finally had their number come up in the most macabre lottery in the history of the known universe as a troubled individual legally purchased an AR-15, warned at least a couple of people close to him that he was about to go kill a lot of people at his place of employment, and then did so. Like Nashville before it, the mass shooting in the largest city in Kentucky caused a national clamor for meaningful legislation to be enacted in hopes of making this uniquely American problem, less so. I have no delusions that such calls will not be promptly ignored by those in power in the halls of the United States Congress. Moreover, in a state where just three weeks prior to the killings at Old National Bank occurred, those in power (though not the governor) had declared Kentucky to be a “Second Amendment Sanctuary State” it is difficult to see a complete reversal in that perspective. In their efforts to protect the Second Amendment, state legislators both wrested power from local municipalities to enact any kind of responsible gun regulations within their city limits while also preventing any governing bodies within the borders of Kentucky from assisting with any federal weapon bans that might be put into place in the future. At the same time, state representatives have resisted putting in place any kind of “Red Flag” laws that would prevent individuals deemed a threat to themselves or others from obtaining a firearm. Such a regulation could have prevented the tragedy that unfolded at the Old National Bank building on April 10th.
The reality is that in a state like Kentucky the vast majority of our elected leaders would claim to be followers of Jesus—the one who just a couple of months ago we with one voice declared to be the Prince of Peace. The problem is they just aren’t all that interested in the peaceful version of the faith. They want no part of the faith to which the earliest followers gave their lives rather than take up arms against another, nor the peaceful version of the faith wherein the savior warned his disciples that those who live by the sword will die by the sword as he chided his disciples that there would be “No more of this” when they wished to respond to Jesus’s arrest with violence. Moreover, in a country (and state) in which the vast majority of our leaders are of the Judeo-Christian tradition we have repeated the failings of our first parents by decentralizing God and placing the Second Amendment (and guns) as the most important part of American myth and we have reaped the same results as our first family as brother has killed brother over and over and over and over and over again. In turn, the rest of us have been left to clean up the blood of 6 year-olds, 9 year-olds, high-schoolers, college kids, grown folk, older folk and everything in between. And in making the Second Amendment and guns our god, we have by extension decided we have no choice but sacrifice our children in schools, our parents and grandparents in movie theaters, grocery stores, concerts, festivals, and now banks, and all kinds of faithful people in churches, synagogues, and mosques. And while I am sure I am not the first to declare it so, let me say, to hell with that kind of idolatry and sin. Literally.
At my church, United Presbyterian, we follow the savior who declared, “blessed are the peacemakers.” We ground everything we do in his commandments to love God and love our neighbor believing that everyone we encounter in our lives is our neighbor—none of whom deserve to be shot and killed. We believe that it is our calling to rebuild all that is broken in this world brick-by-brick, bit-by-bit, inch-by-inch until the day we are all called to come back home. We strive to place God at the center of our lives and even when we do so imperfectly, we do not deceive ourselves into believing that anything can or should be intentionally placed there. We are a church that works for change in our community, our state, and our world and we would love for you to come join us. We gather every Sunday morning at 11:00 for worship. We’ll save you a pew!
Image: Washington Post