From Sundi Jo: This is a guest post by Brandon Howard, writer over at Single Roots, a site that offers many resources to singles, including a review of the top Christian dating sites. For more information on Brandon and his career adventures, keep reading. Want to submit your guest post? Click here for the details.
I’ve always been a little jealous of Adam. I imagine him running around in his birthday suit in a lush, beautiful garden, eating giant grapes, naming peacocks and koala bears, and playing games with the local wildlife.
photo credit: kecko (creative commons)
“Red rover, red rover, let the cheetah come over!”
As soon as that routine grew boring, one Sunday afternoon after the Father delivered a fantastic sermon and he enjoyed a huge meal, Adam plopped down on the couch in his man cave and took a long nap. Afterwards, he awoke to a hot woman in her birthday suit who wanted nothing more than to spend all her time with him. Now that’s my idea of a Sunday. No man in his right mind gets bored of that. He had it made.
As the story goes, Satan manipulated the woman and Adam showed up shortly thereafter, just in time to passively disobey God in order to appease the woman. Both of them quickly figured out they screwed up and afterwards, bought the lie the devil sells along with sin.
“Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves, from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” Genesis 3:7-8 ESV
I used to think they were sewing on fig leaves because they didn’t want God to see them naked. Then, after reading the sequence of the scriptures, I realized that didn’t make sense. Never have I gotten up in the morning, prayed, and then stopped to say,
“Uh…God…can you turn around? We’ll resume this after I take my shower.”
However, that time in college when my crush walked into the wrong dressing room that I was using and we both screamed like four-year-old girls, that’s when I could have used some fig leaves. I’ve never felt physically naked in front of God, but I certainly have found myself in some embarrassing situations with the opposite sex.
Something occurred to me. Adam and Eve spent day and night hand-in-hand running all over God’s green earth with nothing on but a smile on and they weren’t the least bit ashamed of themselves. The minute sin was introduced; they couldn’t look down fast enough as they suddenly felt insecure, flawed, and inadequate. The intimacy of their relationship was drastically hindered by sin. Additionally, though running from God is a pointless endeavor, their shame caused them to attempt to hide away from Him too.
Christians engage in two types of sin: proactive and passive. Proactive sin was carried out by Eve when she chose the lies of the enemy over the commandments of her Lord. Christians are called to be spiritually naked before the world, living as Christ-like examples of the freedom we experience through the acquisition of eternal life and ensuing righteousness. Some will spend seasons lying to themselves and to others that they can engage in proactive sin without it affecting their witness or relationship. Ultimately, they become masked and unable to achieve the fullness of their relational callings because of the havoc disobedience causes.
Just as harmful is Adam’s passive sin: sin by association, sin that we just “fall into”, or sin that occurs because we aren’t proactive in standing up for righteousness. The devil is a big fan of passive sin because he convinces us of its harmlessness and yet he invades our minds with guilt so that we feel unworthy to approach the Father. Suddenly, one bad choice spawns a regression in our relationship because Satan has begun to lie to us about our ability to face God.
No matter its source or motivation, sin’s purpose isn’t to momentarily derail you. Satan wants to use it as a seed that grows into a tree of doubt, guilt, lies, and hopelessness ultimately intended to isolate you from others and from God. The spiritual fig leaves that we have to wear in front of others when we proactively associate with sin will provide strong inhibitions for exposing God’s work in our lives as its roots are completely contrary to selfishness and disobedience. All relationships can and will be affected.
Whether you turn toward it, away from it, proactively pursue it, or passively allow it to take root, unrighteousness can be bended and twisted in every way imaginable to mentally, physically, and spiritually isolate us, even as Christians. The enemy has been telling the same lie since the beginning of time, but Adam and Eve didn’t have the greatest gift of all available to them. The righteousness of the Lord cannot be compromised for sin and yet, it immediately overcomes it the minute we stop trying to hide and expose ourselves to His love and forgiveness.Don’t buy the lie. Stop the collateral damage that sin can cause.
W. Brandon Howard lives in Dallas, TX and is a 2004 graduate of Oral Roberts University. His career has ranged from waiting tables and washing windows to devising advertising strategies for Pizza Hut franchises. During an extended stint on unemployment in 2010, he specifically told God that he would do anything but sell insurance. A few months later, he became a licensed health insurance agent, a position he still holds today. You can follow Brandon on Twitter @brandon_howard.
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