Week 44 Romans 5
Next week the bible study group I’m in is looking at Genesis 3. So reading about Adam today prepped me for that.
Genesis 3 is one of the key chapters in the OT. It would be hard to make any sense of the bible without it. It’s the tipping point of everything.
A simple way to break down bible content is into three events:
1. Everything is Created & Everything is Pretty Good (Genesis 1-2)
2. Adam & Eve Make a Gigantic & Catastrophically Bad Decision (Genesis 3)
3. Almost Nothing is Any Good Any More (Genesis 4-Revelation)
Anyway reading Romans today I wondered about Adam & Eve.
I wondered about how they could be so stupid.
I also wondered how they got to make an insane decision that now affects me. (Of course that’s not a totally unprecedented thing. For instance some guy in Ottawa can make an executive decision that affects me and everyone else in the country.)
Mostly I wondered how it worked…. how Adam’s evil was transmitted. Paul says: sin entered the world through one man.
It’s almost like Adam was working in some isolated lab somewhere with – let’s say – a deadly virus. And then through his own arrogant and self-interested stupidity he opened a valve and every single thing in the whole cosmos got contaminated.
I don’t think sin is a virus-like thing that people catch. I think it’s monumentally worse than that.
But a lab spreading viral contagion is one way to think about total human degradation.
Note: quote from Romans 5:12 (NIV)