We set out for a holiday this year to the north coast of South Africa. There is nothing like the big ocean, a wondrous mystery in itself. The sound of crashing waves has a calming effect, and the waves simply never rest. Noah often exclaimed, "Wow, what there!".
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| Mark of "sin" in the sand before the wave, 1 January 2022 |
As the day progresses and people fill the beach, soon footprints dent the sea sand in all shapes and sizes. However, the waves pick up momentum as the tide turns, and water is progressively pushed higher and higher up the beach. The water fills the dents in the sand and erases the footprints, resetting the sand and returning the beach to smooth and level ground. Although the sand levels out, the imprint sometimes leaves a stain from the former dent or a scar in the newly levelled sand.
I find it a cool analogy to explain our own human defects. God made us in His perfect image and likeness. Adam and Eve did not really eat the apple, and then suddenly, humanity was corrupted forever. No, the story we all know too well from Genesis is a literary style used by the writer to describe how the original or first sin entered the world. The snake symbolising the once mighty but fallen angel, now better known as the devil, fell because his pride and envy got in the way of wanting to be equal to God. He then tempts us human beings to fall into the same path.
Sound familiar?! We probably can trace pride and envy to so many instances in our own life or circumstances around us. For example, nations have conquered nations throughout history to take something deemed superior for themselves. Today, politicians seek power and control and do it at all costs. Criminals who steal more often than not have come from a background that lacked material means. It becomes attractive to take from those who have more materially. I recall in grade 7 wanting the latest skateboard shoes just because they were the latest fashion. They were expensive and actually impractical, but I wanted them. Most probably because someone deemed cool had those shoes.
"By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called "sin" only in an analogical sense: it is a sin "contracted" and not "committed"—a state and not an act." (CCC, 404)
None of us want defects, but we have a tendency to be tempted into pride and envy. As Christmas is still fresh in our hearts and minds, we know that the infant Jesus brought the most essential gift to this world. He came to wash away and redeem us from our sins, bringing an antidote to the poison of pride and envy: faith and humility. God cleanses us from our sin in baptism like the wave smoothed out all the footprints, dents, and sandcastles in the sand, but there is a scar or a reminder left in the sand of that former dent. We call that scar, original sin, passed on by our first parents, Adam and Eve, and passed down the generations.
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| Mark of "sin" in the sand after the wave, 1 January 2022 |
No wonder history looks so familiar. Every century is marked with cruelty, hatred, and murder. Two millenniums ago, early Christians were killed for being Christian. Lives were shed in the rise and fall of empires while colonisers traded lives for prosperity. Communism oppressed millions. Today babies are aborted without a thought.
However, to every bad story routed in pride and envy, the antidote has impacted and overshadowed the negative consequences. Christian's martyred watered with their blood the seeds of the universal Church. Empires fell to develop democracy founded on Christian virtues. Slavery was deemed immoral to make the world realise we are all human beings created in God's image and likeness and not by the shade of our skin. The iron curtain of communism was shattered by a polish man who scathed death far too often and later became the Pope and now St. John Paul II.
Today, we have many issues abortion, materialism, rife politics, and all sorts of identity confusion. However, we shouldn't become despondent but read the signs of the time to indicate how sin is contracted from nation to nation, generation to generation, and parent to child. As Christians, we are people of faith and humility, and our small actions may seem meaningless in the broader scheme of things. A drop of water in the ocean appears irrelevant. Still, every drop falling into the sea raises the volume of water, which adds to the volume and size of the waves. Those waves come crashing down harder, pushing further up the beach, eventually filling more dents and defects. Our desire and will to grow in faith and humility impact the world around us no matter how small the contribution.
I think 2022 has reason to be a year of hope! The pandemic may not be gone, but it no longer has the same grip over social interaction as it formerly did in the past two years. When negative things around us make us feel despondent, we should remember all this can be traced back to original sin. A Christian attitude will give us the impetus to pray with faith and the humility to trust God has not abandoned us. I heard in a podcast recently an excellent new year resolution to follow this year, to try to oversee the defects of others, as hard as it may be at times.
"Don't make negative criticism: if you can't praise, say nothing." (The Way, 443)
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