What Have You to Do with Me, Jesus of Nazareth?

Inevitably, when we read the story of the Garden of Eden, my children try to imagine what life would be like if Adam and Eve had not sinned against God.

“Would we have to go to school?” they ask me. “Would we get sick? Could we eat whatever we want? Would we get older?”

I tell them the only thing I know for sure about a world without sin is that we would be happier. I can see confusion in their faces — Why? How? — but I have none of the concrete answers they want. I don’t know how to describe a happiness untouched by sin. 

The moment sin entered the world, a chasm erupted between God and mankind. There is now a space between humanity and the divine, a cavernous and seemingly impassable void into which God calls for us, unendingly. And because we are lost in the dark, and miserable, instead of following his voice when we hear it, instead we reply: “What do you want?”

“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”

Did the unclean spirit know, when he cried out all those thousands of years ago in Capernaum, that he was giving voice to a question which defined the human condition? They are the words of a demon, yes, but they are also my words. Far, far more often than I care to admit, when God is reaching for me, I look upon His hand with contempt and confusion. When I am grappling with a problem or a sin which overwhelms me, again and again I forget that I already know the solution.

The tragedy of original sin is not that we live in a world where we cannot eat what we want, where we age, and where we become sick and die. The tragedy of sin is that we have forgotten how to be happy. We look at happiness and we think: “What do you want with me?”

“If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” — Psalm 95:7

©LPi