Original Sin?

--posted by Brandon

A few months ago, Fenton was just shy of turning two months, and our house was invaded by box elder beetles. If you live in the Lansing area, you probably know these guys - black and red, long and thin, absolutely harmless but descending in hordes. Fenton thought they were pretty neat, and insisted on calling them "lady beetles." (I guess they do look kind of like ladybugs...)

So one afternoon, we were sitting together on the floor, playing with some of his toys, when a box elder beetle strolled across the carpet. Fenton pointed at it and said, "Lady beetle!" then went to pick it up. I had just gotten a few words out of my mouth about needing to be careful with the lady beetle when it was between his fingers and I heard a quiet "snap." Fenton looked down at it, then handed it to me and said, "Lady beetle broke."

It was a striking moment for me, seeing this child who I considered the most innocent creature on this earth kill something. I've never been a big believer in original sin - of course we're imperfect creatures, of course we all have the capacity to commit horrible acts, but I've never believed that translated into us being sinful from birth. Sin, to me, is an act, not a potential. But watching Fenton unintentionally kill this box elder beetle made me re-examine that notion. I guess I do believe in original sin, even if it looks a little different than traditional Christian doctrine.

Although the box elder beetle might have been the first thing Fenton killed directly, he's been responsible for death since the day he was born, just like all of us. For some of us, the easiest way to see this is in the meat we eat. For others, it's in all of the other resources we use up - the energy that goes to heat our house, the raw materials that built that house, the materials that made the clothes we wear. And even going beyond the materials, we all take up space that used to belong to something else. We live in a city that was carved out of the wilderness, causing countless animals to have their habitats destroyed for us. If we were being really honest with ourselves, we would also look at the way our country destroys lives all around the world to keep our "lifestyle" intact through economic exploitation and brute force.

Some of this violence could be averted if we made different choices, but some of it is inherent to being alive. Each day I'm alive, there are other things that die to sustain me. This has been true since the day I was born, it's been true for Fenton since the day he was born, it's true for all of us. We live off the life force of other creatures.

That's the way the world works, and it means I can only believe all of it is rescued by grace. Grace for all of the creatures who die every day, grace for all of us who are sustained by the life of something else. It's only with grace that any of this makes sense, the grace of a loving God who watches over all of the deaths and all of the lives and loves it all.