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Roy Doorenbos's avatar

Great post! I just had to comment on the link to "Eden, Death, Evolution and the Fall"

You connect in the Christian creation story morality (sin) with mortality (death), where morality arises from defying God and eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowlege of Good and Evil. I never really thought about it, but the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil might be renamed the Tree of Death, "for the day you eat of it, you shall surely die" (vs17). It is near near the Tree of Life "in the midst of the garden". With sin comes a "death-saturated existence". That's a phrase worth remembering.

This death-saturation is rooted in the Christian understanding of creation as ongoing, not just a single event some billions of years ago and then God stepped aside to watch what happens. Rather, God is actively holding it (and me!) in existence. Sin is rejection of God; therefore sin rejects the source of our ongoing existence, therefore the more that we choose to sin, the more that we orient ourselves towards death. Sin drains the spiritual soul of its life bit by bit and the physical body loses meaning and direction. It cannot long sustain such an emptying before it too dies.

Fear can lead to life: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom", (Ps 110:10) gives us a clue. The "servile fear" of the consequences of sin can drag us down into a vicious cycle of shame and guilt that destroys, but it can also act to restrain us and may actually be the beginning on a "filial fear" which arises from the love of God. This love of God is a relationship that lifts us up to divinity, not just a set of high and noble ethical demands that can drag us down when we fail to meet them. Out of love, we want that relationship with God and we fear anything that restricts our communion with him.

Roy

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