No, I Really Don't Think You Understand

"God created us sick and commands us to be well." - Christopher Hitchens (paraphrasing Fulke Greville)

Side Note: Christians, please stop saying Hitchens recanted on his death bed, it's shameless and disrespectful and while I'd would have liked nothing more than for Hitchens to see the light, he did not want to and such did not happen, PLEASE STOP LYING ABOUT IT!  Just wanted to get that off my chest, and now to the article.

No, I really don't think you understand what Sin is exactly. Sin is not only murder and hatred and rape and pain, Sin is deteriorating health, Sin is Death, Sin is Blindness, Deafness, Muteness, Sin is Down Syndrome, Sin is Autism, Sin is Near-Sightedness, Sin is Cancer, Sin is the common cold, Sin is everything wrong with everything. Before I continue, I should point out that I am NOT saying that those afflicted with Down Syndrome and Autism and Cancer are greater sinners than others, after all Jesus refutes that line of thinking in John 9:2-5 and Luke 13:1-5. What I am saying is that their afflictions are a result of Sin, prior to The Fall, such things as cancer, down syndrome, autism and yes, even the common cold did not exist. All of these things were unleashed unto the world because we disobeyed God. For those of you who think it's unfair for all of us to suffer sin because of what Adam & Eve did, allow me to ask you, are you obeying God at the moment? Have you lied? Have you stole? Have you swore? Have you even prayed to God? Do you listen to Him and follow His teachings? Do you even believe in Him? You see those simple actions are what caused The Fall in the first place. Adam & Eve chose not to listen to God, and you're not listening to Him either, so you can hardly point fingers, now can you?

I'm not pointing fingers either, I'm not obeying God perfectly either, You, me and that guy over there would've done the same thing Adam & Eve did, we do it everyday. In my case, I have a MAJOR lust problem, my vice is pornography. Had God placed me in the garden with a computer, well we'd all be in the same boat we're in today. I recognize I'm a sinner and I have a problem. While your problem might not be as server as mine, you might have other issues, disbelief, alcoholism, unhealthy practices (over eating, promiscuous sex which can and very often does lead to STDs,) and a whole slew of other issues that are results of The Fall.

Suffering befalls us all and IS NOT a result of lacking faith as many who call themselves Christians have fooled people into believing. While Suffering and Blessings are outside of our control, there are certain behaviors that can lead to a better or worse outcomes. For example, if you smoke 5 packs a day, don't be surprised if you suddenly develop throat cancer (Suffering) [I bring up the topic of smoking because Christopher Hitchens was a notorious smoker and throat cancer is what claimed his life] and if you balance your diet  and refrain from such things as cigarettes and alcohol, the likelihood of you living longer is increased (Blessings).

We need to understand that God did not CREATE suffering, suffering is a result of His rules being disobeyed. If you loved others as you love yourself there would be no reason for murder, there would be no reason for war or hatred. A young girl once asked The Pope, "Why does God allow children to become prostitutes?", I think the question should be "Why does man allow a world in which prostitutes even exist?". God is not the one whoring out children, Man is the one who created the idea of prostitutes. God created sex to be a wonderful and enjoyable thing, for the purpose of pro-creation and unification of men & women, but Man simply reduced it to a thing for pleasure and as such, Man took what God gave them and used it the wrong way and because they did suffering happened. Now you have STDs, Unwanted pregnancies, abortions, prostitution, pornography and a whole bunch of other things that weren't in the original blueprint.

As you can clearly see, Sin even effects our thinking. Sin is a virus, a virus that was introduced into society and hasn't been cured, it just keeps infecting people more and more in greater and lesser degrees. There are some people who commit murder without a second thought and THANK GOD sin doesn't effect all of us in the same way, but there are some of us who can steal without thinking about, someone of us can engage in unsettling behaviors without so much as a fleeting care, and because of these lesser and greater degrees of sinfulness our world will have an ebb and flow of suffering & blessings. But because we're made in the image of God, we're able to recognize that there is SOME sort of order, some way things SHOULD be even though we can't quite grasp it. We know murder is wrong and we all agree it's wrong. We know suffering is wrong and THANK GOD there are those who seek to do something about it!

We have doctors who recognize that certain parts of the body should function a certain way and when they don't function the way they should, the immediately know something is wrong. However would they know that if they've NEVER seen a healthy body? The image of God that we possess allow us to see and understand things MUCH better than any other creature on this Earth and therefore we know when we see something that's not right, we feel bad and wish to do something about it. Doctors see a child with bone cancer and know that bone cancer isn't supposed to be there and he helps him because he knows bone cancer is wrong. That bone cancer is there NOT because God gleefully struck Him with bone cancer, that bone cancer is there because Sin is here and it does nothing but destroy.

The quote above reveals Christopher Hitchen's awful understanding of Christianity, it was not God who created us sick, God created us and The Bible says IT WAS GOOD, we made ourselves sick when we let sin into the world. The real quote should be, "God made us well, we made ourselves sick and have been actively refusing the cure ever since.".  Sin is that which goes against the very nature of God and the laws of  God. God has a ZERO tolerance policy when it comes to sin. Sin must be punished. In order to understand this I'd like to give you an example:

You wake up and go to your parents home, they greet you at the door and you spit in their face, you then take a sledgehammer and proceed to gleefully destroy the house all the while shouting obscenities at them, you destroy their heirlooms, let the air out of their tires and torch the car for good measure. And why not kick the family dog on your way out? When this entire episode is over, ask your parents how they feel about you now. Chances are they will still love you, however they will be EXTREMELY and RIGHTFULLY angry and broken hearted with you. Now imagine if you repeated this every single day, would you expect them to endure this without you receiving some type of punishment? I hope not, because that'd mean you're a sociopath.

If you can understand this, then you can understand why God has NO tolerance for Sin. Humans were created in the image of God, therefore we are able to exhibit His characteristics in a very limited fashion. Because we are in the image of God, God (ie, Jesus) is the standard to which we are compared to and therefore must meet. The entire crux of Christianity is to become like Jesus (that's Christianity in a nutshell). After all, The Bible references Jesus as The 2nd Adam (the only time where being Number 2 is a good thing), where as Adam was the 1st representative of Mankind and absolutely failed at it, Jesus did what Adam did not do and that was follow God PERFECTLY. Because Jesus followed God perfectly, Jesus did not die but was resurrected. And if we follow Jesus' example of following God, we too will be resurrected, and that's The Gospel in a nutshell.