I hope I made you think, and I am sorry if I scared you away.

 Some time ago a friend, who use to live in this area and attend another church, stopped in my office for a visit. After catching up on family news, I asked this friend a question, because it is a great concern of mine. I asked, “In ten years with all the church hopping by many of the people in town, why haven’t they ever visited our church? After all we are very spiritual and community service orientated. They haven’t even given us a chance to strike out.”

  My friend let a smile creep across her face and said, “They don’t know you and they are afraid of you because you seem to live on the edge. They like safety and are afraid of things that make them think to hard.”

 

  I smiled back and said, “Well I can’t change that can I? After all we Presbyterians believe God is very involved with the world, and forcing us to re-examine life daily. Change is the agent of God and a teacher of God forces people to change by challenging them to think.”

  “They don’t want to think. They just want to feel good,” replied my friend.

  “So I get the ones who want to think and the feel gooders just keep searching?” was my conclusion.

   So today, let me make some of you think.

  In Genesis 3:22-23 it reads, “And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’  So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.”

  Wow! God made Adam and Eve leave the Garden because they had become like God knowing good and evil. And God and the other “us” in heaven didn’t want these now all knowing humans obtaining eternal life. Here I thought it was because they had sinned.

  Maybe the lesson is not about the acts of sin, but the consequences of sin. As I reflect on my travels in the world and in theology that makes sense. I have heard and even taught that we some times make to much of specific acts we call sin. It is much more important to examine why we sin and not what sin we expressed. All sin is a deliberate act by humans to do something outside the will of God. It is the times we play God and are self-centered in our actions. No person or spirit makes us do it. We choose to do it. Life is a series of choices and each choice has consequences. If the choice is in the will of God the consequences are good. If the choices are outside the will of God the consequences are evil. That is how life works from the very beginning of time to the very end.

  Now I hope I made you think, and I am sorry if I scared you away.