The Latter Option

In a nearby town there is one of those Mom and Pop Pre-read book stores.  It is the kind of place where you buy used books cheap and take your old books for store credit which is totally unlike the franschise book stores which sell books by the millions.  It is only open two days a week and today I happened to be at the right place at the right time.  One of my finds was a book by Oswald Chambers entitled "Not Knowing Where" and sub-titled, "A Spiritual Journey through the Book of Genesis."  Since I have read Chamber's classic devotional, "My Utmost for His Highest" for over fifty years, it was not hard to buy the book.     

As the author writes about the creation story and how humanity manifest the image of God, he said, "Sin does not belong to human nature as God designed it.  Therefore, to speak about sin as being eradicated or rooted up is nonsense; it was never planted."  As I read these thoughts over a hundred years old now, it made me aware of a changed way of thinking which has been growing in me since I retired and came to live midst the creation at the farm.  As one taught early on that we were born in sin, it was hard to be open to the idea that we were born with the imprint of God's holiness upon us.  The Word says we are created in His image which stands in stark contrast to the thought that we are sinful as we are born.    

Maybe such things do not trouble everyone.  This doctrine of original sin that we have learned to embrace was conceived in the mind of church fathers like Augustine and then became something so orthodox that anything else bordered on heresy.  I have always had trouble looking at a new born baby and thinking "sin."  Some say it is more like seeing a reflection of the face of God.  In these more recent years that have given the gift of time for reflection, I have taken a seat in the congregation of the latter.