Have you ever considered how relatively “small” the very first sin was? The first pages of Genesis don’t offer us a story about Eve’s illicit sexual escapades or Adam’s hard-core drug addiction. The story makes no mention of spousal abuse or rape or murder. Instead, all our first parents did was eat a piece of fruit.
The sin that brought evil into the world, that wrecked paradise and welcomed pain and suffering was nothing more than Adam and Eve’s refusal to acknowledge God’s meal plan.
Perhaps the message we should walk away with is not that God is a stringent killjoy, but that God does in fact sweat the “small” stuff. The sins we see as a relatively small problem actually reveal a not-so-small problem rooted deep down in each one of our hearts.
A deeper issue is lurking behind our dismissal of Divine instructions for what apples to eat, whether or not we cheat on our homework, or even the way we blow off speed limits. Just like Adam and Eve, we laugh off the “small” stuff, and we do it because each one of us has a heart that refuses to acknowledge the rule and authority of God. We don’t strive for obedience in every area, because we’re not actually obeying from a heart that loves and trusts God. We obey when it’s convenient, when we decide it matters, when we think the consequences for disobedience might be too damning.
But no one obeys the “small” stuff, right? True. But maybe our response shouldn’t be to dismiss the significance of “minor” sins, just because we all fall short. Maybe we should use them as an opportunity to wake ourselves up to what’s really going on in our hearts. Maybe we should let them drive us to lament how very fallen we all are and how much we need a Savior who is risen.
