by Ben Lewis

Created on: July 07, 2008

With Regard to God and Human Sin

I no sooner begin such piece as this, than I am confronted with the "evolution" so to speak of my own "spiritual" convictions. I am grateful for any readers I have and so I won't bore you with the entire odyssey of how I got to this state with regard to what I do and do not believe. Suffice it to say that I have run the gamut from total ignorance to evangelicalism to something like humanism today.

The title I've chosen to which to write is itself, a bit ironic in that it includes the phrase "human" sin. If one consults almost any version of The Protestant Holy Bible s/he will find that "sin" is "transgression of the law". Elsewhere we read that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom, 3:23 KJV). So, it seems that the Bible is concerned only with human behavior; animals are not mentioned. (Some articles I've seen recently in popular journals such as National Geographic, report on field research, which seems to indicate that some animals e.g. chimps, orangutans, dolphins, parrots, whales, et. al. may possess conscience and behave according to choice in instances not relating to survival.) Be that as it may, I'll try harder to stay within the parameters of the title given: human sin.

But ... do I have the cart before the horse? How can we consider the nature of sin (human, primate, fish, or bird) as a "transgression of the law" until we have acknowledged the proclaimed law-giver, viz God? This gives considerable liberties to all. Unitarians who reserve the right to remain undecided about some aspects of faith and practice, may still acknowledge a "god", while Pentecostals, who may speak in "tongues" and believe in the inspiration of every syllable of the Bible (e.g. the King James Version of 1611) and they may require THE "God", i.e. the one of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc).

So then, if God is the entity of whom we must seek mercy for our transgressions of the law, and that because God is all knowing, all powerful, and is present everywhere at once and always has been all of that (whew!)-obviously such an array of attributes identifies this being as far greater than we mortals.

If anyone is still reading, perhaps I can now proceed to say a bit more about this "sin", which I defined above as "transgression of the law". These days I find myself thinking more about survival of the race homo sapiens here on earth than about our "eternal" destination after we have departed this life. One cannot participate in this society

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