Dogma 5: The Forgiveness of Sins

Mark Twain “translated” Adam and Eve’s first diaries. On a Wednesday entry, Adam records the following account.

Escaped that night and rode a horse as fast as [I] could go, hoping to get clear out of the garden and hide in some other country before the disaster should fall. But it was not to be. About an hour after sunup, as I was riding through a flowery plain where thousands of animals were grazing, slumbering, or playing with each other according to their want, all of a sudden they broke into a tempest of frightful noises, and in one moment the plain was a frantic commotion and every beast was destroying its neighbor.
I knew what it meant:  Eve had eaten that fruit, and death was come into the world . . . The tigers ate my horse, paying no attention when I ordered them to desist, and they would even have eaten me if I had stayed—which I didn’t. (62-63)

Adam delivers the tragic news that his horse succumbed to a tiger’s teeth. Death entered the scene. While Twain’s work is fiction, the results of sin are far from figurative.

To illustrate, fast-forward from time’s beginning to three hundred years after the birth of Christ. There we visit North Africa and request audience with Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. If you were to converse with Augustine, he would tell you of fruit, specifically the pear. With a fireside chat an impossibility, you will have to settle for his written account.

There was a pear-tree near our vineyard, loaded with fruit that was attractive neither to look at nor to taste. Late one night a band of ruffians, myself included, went off to shake down the fruit and carry it away, for we had continued our games out of doors until well after dark, as was our pernicious habit. We took away an enormous quantity of pears, not to eat them ourselves, but simply to throw them to the pigs. Perhaps we ate some of them, but our real pleasure consisted in doing something that was forbidden. (47)

You may think of stealing pears as paltry sin not worth the time it takes to confess. If so, you miss Augustine’s point and the overall dangerous stain of sin. Hear the Bishop again: "Perhaps we ate some of them, but our real pleasure consisted in doing something that was forbidden."

King David confessed directly to God that he “was sinful at birth . . . from the time my mother conceived me.”  And, in reference to his adulthood, the Hebrew leader declared in anguish: “I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.”

In our like state, we discover with regret our “natural” pull toward sin. The fruit, in the forms of lust, greed, power-seeking, fun-loving, peer-impressing, and boredom relief, shines its intriguing texture and exudes its delicious flavor. In our inner ear and perhaps in the outer, we hear the serpent’s call: “You know you want it; take and eat.”

So, before we get to believing in forgiveness, we need to believe in sin.
Sin hurts. Sin kills. “For the wages of sin is death.”

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Somehow I flung myself down beneath a fig tree and gave way to the tears which now streamed from my eyes, the sacrifice that is acceptable to you. I had much to say to you, my God, not in these very words but in this strain:  Lord, will you never be content? Must we always taste your vengeance? Forget the long record of our sins. For I felt that I was still the captive of my sins, and in my misery I kept crying "How long shall I go on saying 'tomorrow, tomorrow'? Why not now? Why not make an end of my ugly sins at this moment?"  (Augustine 177)

Perhaps you are stuck with a pear in your hand. Perhaps in regard to leaving your sin behind, like Augustine, you keep saying “tomorrow, tomorrow.”  But for the Bishop, God turned tomorrow into today and Augustine surrendered to Him and found forgiveness.

What return shall I make to the Lord for my ability to recall these things with no fear in my soul? I will love you, Lord, and thank you, and praise your name, because you have forgiven me such great sins and such wicked deeds, I acknowledge that it was by your grace and mercy that you melted away my sins like ice, I acknowledge, too, that by your grace I was preserved from whatever sins I did not commit, for there was no knowing what I might have done, since I loved evil even if it served no purpose.  I avow that you have forgiven me all, both the sins which I committed of my own accord and those which by your guidance I was spared from committing. (Augustine 51)

Have you experienced the mercy that “melts away [your] sins like ice”?

You can start the journey on the Way of forgiveness. Seek the Way. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6 NIV).

Get to know Jesus.

Ask for and receive forgiveness.

Live by forgiveness.

It all began with an apple. Jesus prepares “a table before you” and invites you to partake of the fruit of forgiveness. Your taste buds will leap with joy at the taste and the flavor will override the bad taste left in your mouth from your apple and pear days.

#ordinarylives

References:
Saint Augustine. Confessions. Trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin. London: Penguin Books, 1961.
Twain, Mark. The Diaries of Adam and Eve (Translated by Mark Twain). San Francisco: Fair Oaks Press, 2001.