Sin and Tortoises
One of the hidden secrets that adults don’t tell their children (or any children for that matter) is how difficult life actually is. It’s an unspoken truth, not uttered to children, perhaps in an effort to preserve their bright-eyed naivete about life. Perhaps we think that if we told the truth to children, it would be like Instant Coffee. Instant adults — just add hard-hitting life truth.
We tell children that Jesus loves us and saved us from sin. What we don’t tell them how utterly ugly, terrible, and grotesque sin is. We don’t tell them the kind of anguish that the Lord God, in human form, underwent when he took on every single sin of humanity, past, present and future. I cannot even begin to comprehend how utterly crushing that would be, to have the entire history and weight of the world on your shoulders. There are, right now, approximately 6.5 billion people living on this planet. This number does not begin to include all of the people who walked this terrestrial sphere before us nor the people who will in the future.
I’m beginning to understand that we don’t take life (and sin) seriously enough. Sure, we understand violence, infidelity, cheating, stealing, lying, and covetousness, among many others. But we don’t understand how truly heavy it is, how back-breaking it is. I think we’re so used to the weight of sin on our individual shoulders that we don’t know any better. Sometimes I wonder how a tortoise would feel if it suddenly stopped carrying its shell. Would it be shocked at a life without carrying a 200 pound shell on its back? Would it rejoice and go through life, suddenly feeling as light as a feather? Or would it feel so naked, disoriented and frightened at the feeling of sudden weightlessness that it would crawl back in its shell and continue to carry the heavy burden for the rest of its life, comfortable and conditioned to knowing nothing else?
Jesus once said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Maybe that’s why we continue to do the same things over and over and over again. We just don’t want a yoke with a light burden when we’re conditioned to the heavy burden.
Anything less is scary.
Anonymous says:
Yeah.
grandma_b says:
In light of the fact that today is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, we are also not told about difficulties that some Christians may have to go through in order to endure their faith. Yet, they do endure it because the freedom from the yoke of the law and sins of this world is much greater than whatever they have to endure.
labc7164 says:
Very well-written. I had to copy and share with my friends. Hope you don’t mind……
MattTheTroll says:
well put my friend. very well put.