slippery slope of sin

Anger Unleashed

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, “Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.” But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, “Raca,” is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, “You fool!” will be in danger of the fire of hell. Matthew 5:22-23

Anger
Rabbis of Jesus’ day sought to motivate people to obey God’s word and stay far from sin. One technique they used in their teaching was to pointing out that seemingly small sins can lead toward much greater sins.1 We see this in Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount when he first describes how in the Scripture, murder requires judgment, but then he says that even anger and insults put you in danger of judgment. A rabbinic source actually derives this same point by linking together several verses in Leviticus:

“He who violates, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself [Lev 19:18],’ will ultimately violate, ‘You shall not hate your brother in your heart [Lev 19:17],’ and ‘You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge [Lev 19:18],’ and even, ‘He shall live with you’ [Lev 25:35], until in the end he will come to shedding blood.” 2

It is fascinating how the commentary here pulls together several commands from Leviticus and points out the progression between them. It draws a slope of sin that is a natural progression:

Not loving your neighbor –>

Hating him in your heart –>

Taking revenge on him –>

Driving him away from you –>

Taking his life – murder!

Both Jesus and the rabbis are emphasizing that the time to confront a sin is when it is still minor, so that you can forgive and your relationship can be repaired. If you just internalize your anger, it will eventually lead to contempt, hatred and thoughts of revenge. After that it is a short step between insults, fighting, breaking up relationships, and even destroying life.

We all should examine our feelings toward others and consider whether we harbor grudges toward people around us. The time to confront and forgive is now—before we slip any further down the slope. Like Cain, sin is crouching at the door of our hearts. We need to keep ourselves from sliding down this terrible incline that can eventually lead to death.

1 & 2  Sifre Deuteronomy, Shoftim 187.11. As quoted in New Light on the Difficult Words of Jesus, by David Bivin, p. 98.

Photo: LilRoloHere

The Slippery Slope

Lois Tverberg
Temptation and Expulsion from the Garden

by Lois Tverberg

The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. – Genesis 6:5-6

We think of the point at which sin enters the world as when Eve takes the first bite of the apple. Some of us quickly leap next to the Gospels to read God’s answer to the problem. But it is interesting that if we keep reading we can get a lesson about sin and its consequences.

Temptation and Expulsion from the GardenWe see sin’s effects even after Adam and Eve are sent out from the garden. Within a few years, one of their own sons commits the first murder – a drastic worsening from Adam and Eve’s small act of rebellion of eating forbidden fruit. Cain is a man who doesn’t care about his brother and is prone to jealousy. His anger entices him to murder, just as the serpent led Eve to sin. A few generations later, in Cain’s line, we see a man even more vengeful than Cain – his descendant Lamech. Lamech said the following:

I have killed a man for wounding me, and a boy for striking me;
If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold. Genesis 4:24

Not only was Lamech more violent than Cain, he was even proud of it! Finally, evil reached its peak a few generations later in the generation of the flood. The scriptures say that this was a people whose only thought was of evil all the time, and God was sorry he made them. He wiped them all out with a flood, but the first thing man did after the flood was to build the tower of Babel — it was clear that the flood hadn’t washed the sin out of their hearts.

At this point, God began a much more long-term answer for sin in the heart of man. In the very next chapter, God chose one faithful man, Abram, and promised that through him he would make a people that would bless the whole world. Through him would come a nation that could be taught God’s way to live, and even if they struggled, could be a light to the nations around them. And God could use this nation to bring his final answer to sin – Jesus.

Through this we can see the amazing power of sin that starts out small and quickly grows powerful and ugly. But we can hope in the fact that while God’s answer also starts out small, it ultimately will triumph with redemption.

Photocred: www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Eva2.jpg