Pastor Tim Hager, an associate minister in the Washington
D.C. area, asserts that we suffer because we live in a fallen world. “When
sin entered the world, death entered,” he says. “Chronic pain,
illness, and disease are a form of death.” This comes from Genesis 3:16 –
19 where man and woman are told it’s not going to be “easy” anymore:
16 To the
woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pain in childbirth. You will bring
forth children in pain. Your desire will be toward your husband, but he will
rule over you.”
17 To Adam
he said, “Because you listened to what your wife said and ate from the tree
about which I gave you the order, ‘You are not to eat from it,’ the ground is
cursed on your account; you will work hard to eat from it as long as you live.18 It
will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat field plants.19 You
will eat bread by the sweat of your forehead till you return to the ground —
for you were taken out of it: you are dust, and you will return to dust.” (CJB)
It doesn’t seem to be until the New Testament that the “wages
of sin are death” (Roman’s 6:23), so how did this come to be since Adam did not
die the moment he ate the fruit. The “Law” does not have death for every sin,
only a sacrifice, which often was grain. So as far as I can tell the root of
sin = death is either derived from OT concepts, or was the teaching of the time
or was new with Jesus as he tends to “step things up” from OT topics.
So when Pastor Hager says chronic pain is a result of sin
because they are forms of death doesn’t add up scripturally. It’s an easy way
to say Adam was the cause of all this, but was he really? The question who did
Adam’s children marry is a huge one, was it incest or were there already people
from chapter 1’s account of creation and chapter 2 was the account of the head
of the nation of Israel? If it’s the latter than sin had already been in the
world and death was not a problem. Was “death” the separation of God’s holy
people from Him?
Blanket statements like Pastor Hager’s tend to make those
who believe in God and are suffering chronic illnesses bitter more than
comforted. I tend to think the chronic things is more from genetics and “evolution”
rather than God. God set up nature to survive and part of that is adaptation
(or one of the pillars of Evolution), part of that are mutations that tend to
cause problems rather than help. God eventually limited our lives and with us
mixing things around things Pastor Hager described just happen.
As for injuries, that’s just what happens in life …
accidents. Sometimes they are minor and other times they may bind us to a wheel
chair. That is not from God saying eating of the fruit is death, but rather
proof free will is in our world. From this I am starting to conclude that God
is more “hands off” than we think. Sure He will appear for some great miracles,
but for the most part this world is left to run on its own. The chronic pain
and illnesses are just part of this Pachinko Machine we call earth. God starts
our path and may nudge us along, but it’s more left to events than to God
pulling everyone’s strings.
NOTE – when God does enter it’s clear that “strings” we
pulled!