Sin Revisited (2)
And YHWH Elohim formed Man out of dry, loose earth dirt Genesis 2:7a (my translation)
Formed – We’ve learned that this occurrence of yatsar contains a double Yod. The rabbis tell us that this indicates the two impulses of Man, the yetser ha-tov and the yester ha’ra. It’s pretty clear that tov (good) and ra (evil) fit our experience, but what else can we learn about the word yatsar? What does this verb tell us about the passion behind these two impulses?
Twenty times in Scripture the word is translated as “potter.” Ten more times is it translated as “purpose” or “form.” This word is connected with God’s creative work, the formation of a child in the womb, the molding of clay or metal, the crafting of weapons, the making of plans and God’s election. The primary idea behind yatsar is cutting and framing. Yatsar is purposeful effort. The pictograph shows us the image of “making a person’s desire.” Yatsar brings desire into being. When God’s actions are yatsar actions, they accomplish deliberate purposes. The same it true of us. We express the image of God in our purposeful actions. We make. We create. We engage. We plan. We select. All of these acts are expressions of the image of God. The image of God in Man is not some kind of static quality or quantity like your blood type or your gender. The image of God in Man is what you do. When you do what God does, you express God’s image and become human. Every human being is capable of bringing desire into being. That’s what makes us human.
But there is more than one way to make my desires a reality. When we express what God does not do, we still engage yatsar but we do it in ways that undermine or subvert God’s purposes. We don’t express the image of God. We become something other than human. To sin is simply to engage yatsar in ways that do not express the purpose of God in the formation of His image. To sin is to use yatsar for our own purposes, independent of God’s intended desire. In other words, yatsar, that power that drives us, arrives without direction. What results from that passion to create depends on the direction we give it. It’s not without consequence that the homophone of yatsar means “to be in distress, to be frustrated, to be in a state of anxiety” (Job 18:7 and 20:22). Yatsar in the wrong direction has unexpected consequences.
When Havvah expresses her revenge toward “the man” who would not forgive her, she exercises yatsar in the wrong direction. She knows that this creative power to produce another “man” is tied to the productive purposes of God. She believes that she is partnering with YHWH in this ultimate act of creation. She thinks she is expressing something akin to divine energy. But her motivation is clouded and her method is deficient. She barters her way into a substitution for Adam rather than domesticating her creative power to the will of YHWH. We need only reflect on the enormous difference between Havvah and Miriam (Mary) to see the two directions in action.
Let’s apply these insights to the idea of sin. James tells us that temptation is not sin. He says that each man is tempted by his own lusts (epithumias). Once tempted, a man is “drawn out” (James 1:14) by these lusts and seduced. After this seductive conception sin comes forth. In other words, temptation is a directional signal. It seeks to divert you from the path. If you follow the arrow of the temptation, it will produce sin. You will miss the mark. But you don’t need to! You don’t have to follow the arrow in a new direction. You don’t have to get off course. The same passion that can lead to a different direction can be harnessed to push us along the Way. The same energy, the same desire, the same creativity can be put into action to go straight rather than get sidetracked. The key is to see the direction, to look ahead and notice that this small turn leads away from God’s purposeful image.
Today you will get up in God’s grace. You will open your eyes to His world. You will breathe. That fulfills His purpose. Each moment of the day that you are doing what you were designed to do, you are drawing closer to Him. Eating, talking, walking, working, enjoying, engaging – they can all be harnessed to follow the Way. The only actions you must eliminate are the ones that take you in the wrong direction. And you can eliminate them with passion!
Topical Index: sin, passion, yatsar, Genesis 2:7, James 1:14
So much depends upon our choices.. And as we are aware- every choice is followed by a consequence, whether good or bad. Then what are the good choices? The ones G-d wants us to make. “Follow me.” Do as I do.. – Follow me, and you won’t get lost along the way.
Well, how did we end up way over here, when He is way over there? Distraction. Up to and including lusts of the flesh, lusts of the eyes and the pride of life.
I was just saying to my recently graduated son, -you need to be very discriminating. Choose the good over the bad. Choose the best over the good. Our daily prayer can be: LORD, help me to find the good and to pursue it. May I turn from the bad and turn toward what is good. A turning away from and a turning towards or “to”. Turning from sin, turning towards the Savior.
We may do this in every area of our life. In our diet, (physical food) we should be more “choicy.” Quit eatin’ that junk- it’s not good for you! The same may be said about what we consume “mentally.” Some of the “stuff” (I tryin’ hard to be nice) on t.v…- I don’t need to go here do I? But here we are fillin’ our always active brains with “junk”. I’ve discover the “off” button and am loving it!
But don’t say “no” without saying “yes!” Say yes! – to the better. What is good for us? Our Father knows, and He will provide, especially if we ask.. -He said so! ” (so) Ask and you will receive..”
So where does Satan fit into all this?
Do you suppose that we give way too much credit to ha-satan? What role does he actually play in the Tanach?
The first and second Commands are about which god we will serve. I was thinking yesterday about things we ‘give’ power to. Can I give YHVH power in my life? What power would that be? Why, the power I already possess, of course, which is the power He gave to me. So what is a false god? Something other than Him that I grant power to in my life: literally, OVER ME, or, SERVE. Yeshua came to grant us the power of the Ruach HaKodesh , which is that “power to become the sons of G-d”. So what happened to ‘my’ power here? Don’t I already HAVE power to become the adoption into the Father’s Kingdom? (The New Age teaches that we do; and, for all practical purposes and intents, sadly, so do many churches, I think (the work-your-way-to-heaven ones).) Well, yes and no.
When a knight swore allegiance, he would dedicate his sword to his liege lord: he would ‘give’ over his power to the power he swore fealty to. We don’t use words like that in modern English. For one thing, we don’t do those things that way, as we no longer think we should bind ourselves with loyalty of that magnitude to another human being; it goes against our religion of Self these days; but, in that religion, do we not merely do those actions to OURSELVES instead? Do we not turn around and grant our power to ourselves? There is nothing inherently wrong with allegiance to another person (and certainly not to G-d!) ; it all depended on the person of course: what they would use that allegiance FOR (and there is something amazingly humble and beautiful about that level of allegiance, I think), but when I turn around and plow dedication at that level back into ME, well, is there a person on planet Earth that has ever yet been able to rise above the inherent narcissism of the yetzer ha-ra to harness THEMSELVES to righteousness? Could not the religion of Self be the single most diabolical invention we have ever “sought out”? What is even more insidious is that we bring the paradigm we were born into, which is this mindset that The Power Stays At Home, and, in the flesh, anyway, don’t we at least start out with a tendency to ADD religion – allegiance – ON TOP of that fundamental dedication to Self? Don’t we bring, so often, that Self-dedicated power to the altar, like Cain, with a flourish, and say “here I am, in my neat little package of One, ready to see What’s In It For Me?!
So what should I do with the power I was given, if it was not given me so that I could ‘make mySelf good’? OH, y’all, my apple, I have found to my sorrow, is rotten to the core. I find I want to ‘grant’ G-d (like some sovereign queen) some space in my life (as long as He ‘proves’ Himself, of course!). I find I want to act as if the power I ‘have’ (see, even the language shows the level of corruption!) is enough to get me to that altar, and the ‘sacrifice’ I bring, such as a polluted limited allocation of space in my life (all for Him, of course!) I fully expect Him to fall over in delight about, and immediately – in gratitude for my magnanimity, of course – wish to grant my every wish like the genie in the magical bottle we have turned Him into. Further, from ‘my’ sovereign position of All Power, I find I wish to bring sparks of my own kindling to start that altar fire with: I mean, if there is anything the religion of Self learned from Cain it is that the biggest mistake he made was to leave the fire of approbation up to G-d! In the church of Self, the only one who has to determine the pleasantness of the sacrifice is me, of course! And G-d should agree! As any grantee should!
But it gets even worse; much worse, in fact. I think what scares me the most these days is that the deception of Self as a legitimate starting point has essentially corrupted the dialectic polarization on both modern religion sides – the Work Your Way To Heaven crowd, as well as the Greasy Grace crowd – to the extent that there is a danger they could merge into a synthesis, an agreement, along the lines of this mutual religion of Self. How can this be? Well, first, I think any time we attempt to separate what G-d hath joined together, which is what the artifice of a dialectic must always do (and which I think has been done here, too), you lose the inherent essence, or power, for good in either one. Mercy-and-truth, Righteousness-and-peace, Law-and-grace, are examples of things that G-d hath joined together. I think we attempt to separate them to our danger, sorrow, and ruin. I don’t know exactly how Self is going to show supremacy in both, but I think I can at least smell the rot. IF I am starting from the position of Self, I can believe that there are elements to righteousness that could ORIGINATE with me. Some discernment of sin, some ability to repent, some power to muscle my way to favor. But I can also see that, starting from Self, I could retain the ability(!) to determine FOR MYSELF what manifestation of god (be god male, female, life force, energy, or just ME in my essential divinity), as well as what Law (well, things naturally evolve, don’t they?). If both sides decided to merge, then wouldn’t one side agree that they would determine what god and what law, and the other would then determine what method and what way? And if you think Laurita is just gone off into wild speculation, I would ask you to take another look around you, and then look again. I am afraid this whore is already here, and already consorting in a side chamber at the North Gate of the Temple… And who let her in? Why, the high priest of Self, of course! YHVH save us all!