By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM
Part 25
Haven’t you met Catholic people who question the gravity of Adam’s sin? They do believe that all humans stem from a single couple, yes, but they find it hard to accept that stealing an apple is such a big deal. Surely God could not be that much offended by that!
Such people argue in this manner because they do not understand the seriousness of original sin. The fact is that our father Adam committed a very serious sin. It was very serious for several reasons:
First, Adam knew perfectly well that God had warned him of the consequence of his disobedience: He would die. Period. “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Gen. 2:17). And death here has a double meaning: a) spiritual death, whereby Adam would lose divine grace; and b) physical death, whereby the gift of immortality would be removed from him.
Second, the command was easy to obey: In simple terms, “Just steer clear of the tree, and you’ll be fine”; the gifts he enjoyed compensated him by far for having to do such a simple act of obedience.
Third, there was also an element of bad will, because Adam was not the victim of passion or caprice: He acted from cool reason and on full deliberation, which showed the calculated malice of his sin.
Fourth, the tempter’s promise was “to be like God” in the knowledge of good and evil, so that he might be his own director and decide for himself what was good and what was evil (just like the moral relativism of our days). This is a most important aspect, which deserves closer scrutiny.
Fifth, he sinned, not as a private individual, but as the head and representative of the human race.
Unlike certain liberal politicians and churchmen today, Adam was not an idiot: He knew perfectly well that he was not divine. He knew that God, His creator and master, had laid down the rule of law: If you disobey, you will do evil and be punished by death. Now, the tempter tells him and his wife that if they listen to him — the tempter — and not to God, they will be like God and decide for themselves what good was and what evil was. They would be like God.
Adam should have known, also perfectly well, that by eating a fruit (or whatever it was that God has forbidden; it does not matter here) he would definitely not receive divinity. No apple or any other fruit is so good that makes you like God just by eating it. So he believed the word of the tempter; he made an act of faith in the message of the tempter, and turned away from the word of God. He sealed the pact with the tempter by eating the fruit. In later days, the tempter would make people sign a contract with their blood in order to receive the promised gifts.
Here is a most important aspect: Upon believing the word of the tempter, and abandoning God’s word, didn’t Adam commit a sin of Satanism? That is what Satanists do: They believe in the promises of the tempter and turn away from God in order to receive the gifts promised by the tempter. And they fall flat on their faces in a hot place, because the Devil, being the Father of Lies, does not give what he promises.
Now, here is the mystery: Why did he do it? Especially since he knew perfectly well that it could not work. He joined Satan in his “non serviam!” (“I will not serve” — Jer. 2:20) war cry. He preferred to do things his way, not God’s way. And by losing all those preternatural gifts, we, his descendants, are born without them. Just as in the case when a man loses his fortune in gambling and is reduced to poverty, his children inherit his poverty as well, not his previous riches.
It is interesting that we say “the sin of Adam” even though Eve is on record as being the first to eat the wrong food. The fact is that, besides being Adam the husband, the head of the family and of the race, he was also the keeper of the garden. And he failed in his job, because he allowed the tempter to slither in.
Have you readers ever asked yourselves this question: What on earth was that serpent doing in the Garden of Eden? How did he get in? Only because Adam failed in his duty of being the keeper. How it happened we do not know, but some Bible interpreters suggest that the serpent may have threatened to kill Adam and he, out of fear of death, allowed his spouse to be exposed to the Devil. Exactly the opposite of what the Second Adam, Jesus, did: He laid down His life for His Spouse, the Church.
We also learn that as soon as Eve ate of the fruit, she gave it to her husband, and he ate it. Which means that he was there beside her when the tempter started the conversation. What kind of a weak husband is that, who allows a total stranger to have that sort of private conversation with his wife under a tree? Why didn’t he stop it and kick the serpent out the garden? In short, why didn’t he protect his wife?
Well, he had already given in to the tempter. Hence we call it “the sin of Adam” not “the sin of Eve.” And yet it does remain a mystery that both of them fell for it. Here we see how free will is both a blessing and a danger. A two-edged sword: We’d better use it well, lest we hurt ourselves.
The great St. Thomas Aquinas points out that Adam’s sin was a sin of pride, which manifested itself in an act of disobedience. He was a human creature who wanted to be like the divine Creator using means explicitly forbidden by God. If he had desired to be like God in a manner appointed by the same God, it would have been a totally different situation, and one blessed by God. But he, Adam, wanted to do it his way, or rather, the Devil’s way, not God’s. Every time we sin we act in the same manner as Adam. We want to do things our way, not God’s. Such a father, such children!
Next article: The main consequences of original sin.
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(Raymond de Souza is an EWTN program host; regional coordinator for Portuguese-speaking countries for Human Life International [HLI]; president of the Sacred Heart Institute, and a member of the Sovereign, Military, and Hospitaller Order of the Knights of Malta. His website is: www.RaymonddeSouza.com.)
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