Now there’s a title for a message that makes you think, “What the heck is he talking about?”
I’ll tell you.
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First off, what the Bible says we can’t do is to stop sinning. Now, it doesn’t say that, exactly, but it does say we all have sinned and that everyone does sin.
We can see this is Proverbs 20:9, Ecclesiastes 7:20, Romans 3:23, James 3:2, John 1:8… , well, you get the idea.
These verses indicate that we can’t stop sinning, but I say it isn’t because we can’t stop sinning, I think it’s because we don’t want to stop!
We are all born into the original sin of Adam and Eve, even though it really should be Eve and Adam, I mean, if we want to keep the proper chronology based on who sinned first. And although most people think that the term “original sin” is a Christian thing, in Judaism we believe everyone is born with the Yetzer Hara, which is the Evil Inclination.
Pretty much the same thing. The Yetzer Tov, the Good Inclination, develops at Bar/Bat Mitzvah age, when we take on the responsibilities of adulthood within the community.
Freud, who was a secular Jew rejecting much of the spiritual parts but big into the culture, put it in psychological terms, identifying three parts of the human psyche: the Id, Ego, and Superego. The Id is made up of primal urges, amoral and self-centered; the Ego is our more reality-based, decision-making ability; the Superego is the internalized moral condition which sort of helps to control the Id.
(If anyone trained in Psychology sees a mistake in this, please correct it.)
All three are constantly battling with each other, and I see the Id as the Yetzer Hara, with the Superego representing the Yetzer Tov.
The bottom line is that I may be cynical (well, actually, I am) and so believe that sinning is not just something the Bible says we can’t stop doing. No, I believe it isn’t just that our Yetzer Hara causes us to sin, but that we like to sin.
Hey, let’s get real here! Sin is fun, no doubt about it, and that is probably because it is connected to our very nature, our primal needs. Overall, sin satisfies our desires and wants, more than just our needs, and it isn’t concerned with how it affects anyone else.
But eternal damnation is not fun- no siree, it is not fun at all!
That is why we need the Superego, the Yetzer Tov, and more than that, we especially need the forgiveness that God provided through the sacrificial system. Of course we have a problem with that- it is no longer available to us since the temple in Jerusalem is destroyed.
Thankfully, the need to bring an animal to the temple to have it accepted as a sin sacrifice was replaced by the sacrifice of Messiah Yeshua, so through faithful acceptance that he is the Messiah, and asking forgiveness by means of the innocent blood he shed, the Torah requirement to bring all sacrifices to the temple (Leviticus 17) has been replaced by Yeshua.
So, the simple message for today (of which I sort of got off track) is that we need to accept that we aren’t sinning uncontrollably because of our Yetzer Hara, or by accident (although that can happen), but the real reason we sin is because we consciously want to.
And here is my point: if we recognize and “own” this fact, i.e., that we want to sin, I believe that is the best way to begin taking charge of our primal desires (this is where the coach sends in the Superego) and slow down the sinning.
As I have said many times: we can never be sinless, but we can always sin less.
It is a choice we can make.
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That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot, Happy New Year, and an early Shabbat Shalom!