It just occurred to me that original sin could be seen as an attempt by Adam, rather than to accept his surroundings, to be “pro-active” about changing them.
As the joke goes, “how many ‘real women’ does it take to change a light bulb,” to which the answer is, “none, they accept them as they are.”
Well, once the couple decided they would trump the Holy Spirit and learn to control things themselves, they were chagrined to realize what we were getting into. Once they saw it, there really was no way to go back because only God can forgive sins to the degree of wiping out all temporal and eternal ramifications connected thereto. They tried telling themselves, “jury, please strike that fact about the apple,” but too late, the seed of knowledge had been planted and they never could find themselves innocent. It took a man not descended from Adam in the physical sense but only in the societal sense, to fill in the missing or damaged part of man – his divinity. Thus, the “son of man” fixed what man as a father could not do. He brought eternal life to man whose days were limited by Adam – much like some passage I can’t find says that when a man has a good son, then he can rest in peace knowing his work will be continued in good hands.
Similarly, God tried to rest and just watch His kids play in the garden, but they had to go getting themselves into trouble, peering into areas on knowledge they should not. (Since then this has been a problem for all parents of teenagers.) Who knows – maybe it was on Sabbath and God wanted a break and didn’t get it – maybe that’s why He was so angry.
So rather than just go smite everyone and forget (and thus forgive) the whole of creation, He decided to let the trials (and toils) continue so that man may have self-discovery. Problem is, people only knew one side of the law – that which accuses, convict, and kills in order to bring behavioral control – so He had to send a different kind of son, with an operating system kernal built to resist even the most subtle of temptations. Gosh, some of them, such as the rebuke by Peter, “certainly not, Lord” or whatever it was, were actually considered pro-life by those who didn’t understand the full meaning of prophecy.
Christ got rid of the insanity of a single-minded individual who knows good but not evil. The problem with these people is they dispense evil in the name of good, because they do not know evil. For this reason, Christ said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”
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Every time you forgive a sin you are feeding pure spiritual nourishment to the least of Christ’s brothers – yourself.**
In addition, if the sinner knows of the forgiveness (and accepts it only because they considered you worthy to judge) it can give them encouragement according to the Beatitudes, as God makes evil into joy, peace and comfort. Forgiveness is like a tool we have in God’s factory to build the kingdom.
Alan