Welcome to another blog post! This entry investigates the question “What Is God?” and will be shared in several parts. The Last segment is fhe Conclusion of the first Three parts nad opinions.
I hope you enjoy this conversation and again, as always, please feel free to engage in the debate and discussion, whether you agree with me or not!
Conclusions and Opinions
I believe that the concept of sin addresses people living in opposition to the Natural Laws that God designed. If you study the scriptures in Hebrew and Greek, you get a picture of a society that was structured to align, instead of resist. Other cultures have similar observances.
When evaluating what is sinful, I think we need to consider culture, time in history, location, and if the act is productively aligned with nature. In the parables, Jesus was critical of being non-productive, and natural law rebukes it.
Often through history we have seen societies and individuals who were measurably out of alignment with what is natural. The magnitude of those declines is well recorded throughout history. It is possible for people to exist in opposition to Natural Law if they apply enough resources to sustain that misalignment. It is also possible for someone to create so many resources from one successful aligned endeavor that they can be misaligned in another aspect. Never the less, that area of misalignment will eventually be corrected. The greater an individual or society strays out of alignment from Natural Law, the greater their eventual collapse will be.
The story of the Garden of Eden was an illustration and warning that the pursuit of knowledge without the balancing of wisdom is damning. It is a failing of humanity to desire knowledge in an attempt to overcome or improve on what is natural. This is the ultimate folly and is completely illogical. If we know anything about nature, as explained by Newton’s Laws of Motion, it is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Nothing can stay out of balance indefinitely, and it is impossible to improve on the order of the Universe. As I explain in my paper on Liberalism vs Conservatism, chasing knowledge is vanity without the wisdom to know what not to do, and humans have failed that test every time.
The original Laws of Moses were not actually laws in that they could be broken; they were rules that allowed society to deal with issues of that day and place. Some are universal, others do not apply to modern times or geographic locations. Two examples were eating shell fish and pork. In that time, in the Middle East, eating them was relatively dangerous and carried diseases. In other places of the world this was not the case. Similarly, the people of that time were relatively ignorant of science and biology. In the book of Leviticus, chapter 19, there are prohibitions against things like cross breeding cattle or plants, or even wearing clothing made from two different fabrics. Obviously these were cultural and we should treat them as such.
There were regulations, if you want to call them that, which dealt with other dangerous behaviors, either dangerous to individuals or unproductive and risky to society. These prohibitions involved having sex with parents, or siblings. Another was the practice of anal intercourse, which can transmit many diseases. I explore some of these topics elsewhere also, so there is no need to do so again here.
As I have discussed in other places, many people say they read scripture when what they actually read is The Bible, which is a translation of scripture. Scriptures were primarily written in Hebrew and Greek, and has been translated into thousands of Bibles. Those two languages are both highly descriptive and precise; English and most other languages are not. As such, when you read translations you are missing most of the nuanced messages that were given. One example of this, an important one, is that in Hebrew there were nearly forty different words and phrases that were all translated into one word, “wife”. That word in English is very limited in its cultural implication. In Hebrew, what was usually being described was very different from our culture.
Humans cannot understand the magnitude of a being that could order and create universes. We cannot even define the questions that could be asked. What we can do is study the laws of nature the Creator has given us and align our lives accordingly. There night be behaviors and regulations from our heritage that should be set aside as being currently nonproductive. Others might be resurrected, since they might contribute to solving issues we are dealing with. There are some things I have always found to be true:
If you are not getting the results you desire, the reason is usually that your belief driven actions are out of alignment with Natural Law.
You won’t solve your problems by doing more of what you are already doing.
Nothing can be gained by doing the wrong thing better, and when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.
Thanks for Reading. Have a Great Day