by Eric Lies

Created on: March 01, 2010

Off the Straight and Narrow

The call to stay on the “straight and narrow path” is universal, but then so is our failure and our struggles to improve. To stay, and return, to a state of grace requires an understanding of what causes us to sin. Though the argument that the first sin was one of disobedience, and sin stems from humans' disobedience, it is more correct to say that sin arises from our natural insecurity.

A cursory glance through literature alone clearly demonstrates how insecurity leads to our downfall. Take “Paradise Lost” by Milton. The most basic answer to: “why did Eve eat the forbidden fruit” is that she felt inferior to Adam, and vastly inferior to God. She could not tolerate her ever-present fear of failure. She felt the need to prove herself to Adam, show that she was not as weak as he feared. Her insecurity in her strength and Adam's love for her caused her to face the temptation of Satan alone, and subsequently eat the fruit in an attempt to become god-like herself.

In Herman Hesse's “Siddhartha”, Siddhartha falls into the trap of materialism and its extremes because he was afraid he was not good enough for his love. He had nothing to his name but the rags he wore, but he wanted to reach enlightenment and felt that he had to learn of love and the world in order to achieve it. His fear of rebuke by the woman he chose to teach him led him to give up his simple life and become a merchant. He fell prey to wealth, greed, power, and hate, because he was afraid of being turned away by his lover. Siddhartha lost his path to enlightenment because of his insecurity.

These literary examples mirror reality, and as such real cases of insecurity leading to sin abound.

Take for example one of my friends. She is insecure about her life and she's insecure about herself. This has lead her to forsake her morals completely. She cannot have a healthy relationship or friendship, and pushes those closest to her away. She began using sex as a cover for her fear of commitment, and of letting people down. She recently began abusing drugs as another escape from her insecurity. If she would only realize that she is a good person, and be sure of herself, none of this would have happened.

Another former friend of mine is so insecure about her image that she will stop at nothing to be “popular” and liked by everyone. She went from being really nice, funny, and all around fun person to be with to a person who talks behind people's backs, and puts everyone she calls “friend” down. She had a firm belief in the sacred nature of sex and her body, but because of her fears, she began having sex, getting drunk, and doing drugs so she could be “cool”.

Disobedience may have been man's first sin, but at the root of that sin is insecurity. When we cannot look in the mirror and accept who we are and make efforts to fix what we dislike, we fall from grace. When we are not sure of ourselves, and secure in our lives, that is when sin creeps in.

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