In the Bible what do you think the biggest sin is that people committed? Killing? Nope, God told Saul, the king of Israel, to eradicate a whole population that practiced ritual sacrifice of people. God even told Saul to kill the animals. That's right PETA, God is savage. (I should mention there is a verse in proverbs that says an unrighteous man is unkind to his animals. So I don’t think God supports violence to animals. I’m not trying to get canceled by some vegans out here.) Vegans would cancel God right away. I should mention in the bible that murder and killing a person is different because killing someone is based on the justice of consequences, murder is taking a person's life when they haven't done anything to warrant death.
Obviously today some would think homosexuality. I used to think that. But the old testament doesn’t actually talk about that in terms of relationships. It’s mentioned once in a negative way in Leviticus that man should not lay with a man as he does with a woman. Some people interpret that as a man shouldn’t lay with a boy which makes more sense. By the way, that's it. That's the only talk about homosexuality in the whole old testament. So yah, not that big of a sin.
Do you think liars are the biggest sin in the Old testament? You would be wrong. People lied all the time in the Bible. Abraham the father of our faith lied. Twice. About the same thing. He said his wife was not his wife. He thought he might get killed so he said she was his sister. (Technically he kinda is his sister according to the way families worked but even God was in pharaoh's dream like…Pharoah that's not his sister if you keep her imma end you.) God still used Abraham despite his well placed lies and called him the father of many nations. Who lied constantly before he was a dad. But I digress.
So I know what you're thinking. Gennie. What's the biggest sin in the old testament that people committed? I wanna know so I can stop doing it now. Ok. I got you. The biggest sin is….lying on social media like Carlee Russell did? No…not even that was close to what God cared about. But we do…for some odd reason.
The worst sin in the Bible is...wait…One more thing. The Bible was written in another language. Hebrew and Greek. Jesus spoke Aramaic, They didn't even write it in that language that I know of as it was a version of the Hebrew language in that area where Jesus lived. Then it was translated to Latin to keep it from poor people probably. Then it was translated to other languages that I don't know about because I'm not a scholar. Then it was translated to old English. Then into the king's English called King James Version. Then it was translated to what we speak today, which is dumber English (according to British people, probably). Words had different meanings when the Bible was written. Now we can translate meaning all day because there are really smart people who understand different languages and can translate very well. But like Qui-Gon Jinn said in Star Wars…”the ability to speak doesn't make you intelligent.” Just because you know what a word means doesn’t mean you understand the point of the words. Words have different meanings depending on the context of all the words, not just one word.
I love this quote too, “If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.” - George Orwell. When you don’t know how the Bible was written then anyone can tell you what it means and it will always make sense. I know from personal experience.
I still haven't said what the greatest sin was from the Bible did I? Ok. Here we go. The worst sin ever committed in the Bible. The main problem that God dealt with that he never really got rid of. The one that lasted throughout generations that still to this day isn’t even recognized is…..idols. You got it, American idol is the biggest problem America has ever faced. No, I'm kidding. Not that kind of Idol. Though one could say the celebrity culture creates unhealthy imbalances in how we see our self worth and life values in looks and purpose. That's not what I’m talking about either.
In the Old testament they worshiped idols and it wasn’t just like a ceremony. It was done in a way where you would commit your whole value and being to an idea through connection and purpose. The idol would usually be a statue or an ideal. It wasn’t just some ritual that you did daily, it was a way of seeing yourself and flowing your own hopes, dreams, and desires through it. People prayed to it. They meditated with it. It was a thing. Nowadays we don’t do that in America. In fact in America we don’t really use the word worship like they used to. We have science and social media. We don’t have to pray to anyone for rain to come. We know it's gonna come because of weather apps. All the reasons they had to keep idols we replaced with medicine and technology.
If you read through the Old Testament stories in the middle parts where the kingdoms started. First Samuel all the way to Lamentations(Lamentations is so depressing). There are always Bible verses that say, “And they kept the old idols in the high places.” No matter if the king was good or bad. No matter if people worshiped God or not. No matter if society was decent or terrible. The Bible often notes this as a passing thing that God hated. No matter how many laws God gave them. NO matter how many changes people went through. No matter what consequences they suffered because of sin, Idols still existed throughout the Old Testament. So here's the problem. Idols in our lives are still there. They don’t look like statues. They look like Bible verses. I know. Gennie, how could you insulate that the main problem in the Bible is the Bible? That's like a catch 22. I know. That’s like spiderman pointing at spiderman pointing at spiderman. I know. (Andrew Garfield is the real spiderman.) That’s like saying the problem with me is me. Yeah, we know.
The problem in America is our ability to take a Bible verse and make a god out of it. Not just any god, God God. As in if you don’t see this Bible verse my way then you are against God himself. That way of thinking is the idol I'm talking about. It’s the idol of tradition. It’s the idol of, this is the way we were taught. It’s the idol of, it's always been this way. Look before technology and science do you know why people worshiped statues. Because everyone else always did it that way. It was tradition before tradition became tradition. In fact the Bible way of thinking that there was only one God was kind of a cult and not popular when it was started. That's why they fought wars with everyone because everyone believed in idols. Everyone believed in, “this is the way my daddy taught me or this is the way the south is.”
The reason why God hated idols and the reason why I believe this way of thinking is so dangerous is because God is not a book. God is not even human. He is so far on another level of thinking and understanding that in order to explain who he is he tells Moses in the Old testament, “I am.” Moses is trying to figure out how to explain God and God doesn't call himself any fancy names or try to show his awesome power he just says I exist as everything. That was the easiest way God could help Moses understand him. And now even in today's world when we take up the attitude that the way we learned about God is the only way to understand God we take God from being “the great I Am" to the normal book with bible verses I remember. We take God from being whoever he is to being whoever we think he is. And I don’t know how to explain this to you but when you decide who a person is and you post it on the internet and everyone starts thinking that person is what you said, 9 out of 10 times that person starts to become that thing. The bible is like the internet. These bible verses are the social media of our spiritual life. The ink on the pages of the bible are like your facebook feed.
If all you care about is corn. Guess what commercial pops up. Corn. If all you want to know is how many shoes you can buy. Guess what facebook group gets suggested. A shoe store. If you learned when you were a kid that the worst sin you can commit is something that's not even that big of a deal in the old testament then you will ignore the real things God had a problem with and you focus on things that God dealt with in passing. Then we will treat the worst things as just little hiccups and little issues as major roadblocks. Skip to the time in the Bible where Jesus is asked the question, “what is the greatest sin I need to avoid?” Jesus gets the guy to quote the commandments and Jesus pats him on the back. Then Jesus gets serious and says Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. All of the law and the prophets and the murder and the lying and the stealing and the bickering and the idols and all of the problems of sin are handled in this one thing.
If you do this idols won't have a hold on you. If you do this the worst sins in human history won’t be a match for you. If you do this, you will have completed obeying all 600 plus laws from the Old Testament. You will live a good life. So now the problem in life is not the statues we solute but the person next to the statue we judge. The problems in life are not the levitical laws we break but the condition of how we make knowing God out to only be a set of rules. The problem in our life is not how many times we’ve read the bible but how many times we've been there for the people next to us. The problem in our life is not if you know what spiritual affirmations mean but is God first and are people who can't do anything important still important for you. God says if you want to get rid of idols, if you want to find your best life, then put God first and love your neighbor as yourself. Allow every bible verse to flow through that. So now when I read, I do not permit a woman to speak or have authority over a man from Paul. I don't see a stern command of how women should act, I see a neighbor who needs attention. A lot of it. Even Paul was like…good Jesus these women wont stop talking. Oh my good.
The point of the Bible is not to worship the words. Like an idol. Its to see the one we should worship. The point of the Bible is not to decide who people should marry but to understand that no matter who you marry God expects love to exist there. The point of the Bible is not to control the way people live but to understand that everyone is capable of love . Everyone is a part of God’s plan and God’s plan isn't just certain people. God’s plan isn’t a religion. God’s plan is bigger than us and more than pages in a book. So I’m not saying I’m right about everything I’ve written here. Only a fool thinks he is right about everything. What I am saying is our biggest problem in society is not that big. Our deepest problems in race relationships are not that deep. Our worst issues in social problems are not that worstist. Okay, I gotta work on my writing. God has a plan and every day you live out your life you are a part of it. Every day you get up, you're doing the right thing. Sure we get some things wrong but guess what? That's a part of God’s plan. Sure we fail but guess what. God's plan accounts for that. Even if you are the worst sinner that has ever existed ever and God has a plan to take care of you. Because the problem with man is not his sin, it's his desire to find new sins in others.
It’s the idol of my way is the only way. My tradition of seeing God is the only way of seeing God. My way of reading the Bible is the only way to read the Bible. Our idol is that we see God through the eye of a needle and no one can get saved but the ones who we say are worthy. When God is in a box of bible verses and who he is, is based on our denomination or our likeness or our church agenda then we make Bible verses into an idol and miss the point of even reading it. We have made a statue out of the Bible. Instead of worshiping the great I Am we worship the great bible verses. Instead of following what Jesus led us to, we follow what popular trends in church tell us to do.
The biggest problem we face is not to make America great again. It’s not the social agenda of politics or the great problems of conservative vs liberals. It’s not the housing market (seriously this is a problem, i can't find a house to save my life that doesn’t cost someone's arm and or leg.) It’s not even that weird Jason Aldean song I heard the other day. It’s not even woke people. Woken people. Whatever. None of those are real problems. It’s idols. We are all being led into a bad life by idols. The longer we keep these things in their high places in our way of thinking we will always have issues in the future history of mankind.
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