Sin is a Child of Yin. Yin exists as does Yang. It is a reflection of the dual nature of God’s creation. There are unified pairs throughout His creation. Yin and Yang are core attributes of the world we live in. Yin, the dark side, is an attribute of sin. So sin is a child of Yin.
I don’t wish for this—a post apocalyptic world where Yin is eliminated. There is only light. We lose free will and become incapable of sin. Worse, a self-indulgent Christ who grants every wish, gives us every pleasure, and intercedes to prevent us from misery or harm. That’s a St. Lucifer tactic we should resist.
I’m building a world around Inger’s Finger. That world is purposefully messy. It is in a warring states period. There are regional fiefdoms aligned on geography and culture that don’t get along. In the scale between heaven and hell it is closer to hell. OH THE HORROR! HOW DARE YOU! YOU HERETIC!! YOU APOSTATE IDIOT!!!!!
The Quiet Part
Are you done? I’ll wait. Now . . . my question. Is this world, this hot mess we live in, closer to heaven or hell? Has sin left the chat? No? Yeah . . . thought so. Meaning my dystopian world is closer to reality than a soothing romance novel. Misery, harm, rebellion, temptation persist.
The dystopian Inger’s Finger world mirrors reality more honestly than any soothing utopian theology that airbrushes away the shadows. It refuses the fantasy of a post-apocalyptic “only light” where free will evaporates because sin is impossible—where we’d be puppets in perpetual bliss, incapable of saying no (or yes) to anything meaningful.
Fearing Satan, living anxious that we might slip up, might transgress, gives St. Lucifer a guest room in our lives. Anxiety about sin makes us easier prey. We’ve been waiting two thousand years for Christ to return. I wouldn’t wait up if I were you. Maybe exhale and do the next right thing.
No Singularity
In the beginning there was nothing. The nothing became something. The something became two then the two became many. And on the seventh day He rested. Ever since, science has been trying to prove a myth about the creation of our world—and failing. What’s cool is that across geography and tribes, some version of this creation myth is told. I’m a storyteller. I don’t bother with proof. Though, millennia have passed, we are today billions of people and this myth lives on. Meaning all mumble mumble billions of us are deluded or there is something to the myth.
Day eight, Monday, nothing living is conscious of duality. That’s a God thing. Two things in the Garden of Eden were off limits—knowledge of good and evil and eternal life. For realz? Death and knowing what’s good and what’s evil are features, not bugs.
Does a snake love God? Maybe. I never asked one. I don’t speak Parseltongue. I’ll never know if snakes have the knowledge of good and evil. Though . . . if they do it’s not the same as our gift because of Eve‘s sacrifice. No, I can’t fact check that. Just go with it.
The Loud Part
The Psalms included in the Daily Prayer app keep making a similar wish—if the penitent keeps the LORD’s laws and remembers his testimonies things will go well. It’s a good prayer. Bad shit happens to good people and there isn’t always an easy answer why. But if there was no darkness then bad shit wouldn’t happen to good people, right?
Sorry. You live here. Bad shit is possible. And if that bad shit is the pain and sweat needed to get your fat ass in shape so you don’t need all those cardiac meds . . . is it really bad shit? The other wish, that Christ will return and all the bad shit that bedevils you will go away, never to return. It will be kittens and marshmallows forever after.
Well . . . why? Why can’t God eliminate the bad shit? Why did he create a world with both yin and yang? Duality is so ANNOYING! Yeah, ok, zoomer. Always sunny and 21°C for you, am I right? tbh–a world stripped of duality would be worse. Like, no heat in my chili? Pass.
The Whole Enchilada
I’m not good with battle mode. The idea that there is an eternal war between good and evil. Maybe there is, but we also have dominion over heaven and earth. And free will. We had this before Eve did that thing. So all the minions, even the Evil One Himself, can’t disobey when we tell whatever is tempting us NOW, to shut up.
I’m not a fool. This world has bad shit that happens to good people. And the contrary is true, that good shit happens to bad people. We were born into a life where dualities exist. Also one where evil devotes itself to tempting us away from light. So the battle rages between good and evil. We can opt out, though.
My imagining: post apocalypse the dualities we live with will unify. The fundementals of God’s creation won’t change. What will change is how we perceive it and how we treat each other. About that . . . we can change how we treat each other. “Treat others as you wish to be treated” isn’t just a nice eight word phrase. It is one of the practices that get you closer to heaven.
Infinity
God, our infinite God, created the universe we live in.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:8-9
Not everything is explicable through reason and science. Some of what God created is absurd. The Bible, read as rational fact, quickly becomes stupid. So I surrender my need to understand fully. I know dualities exist. Hot/cold, love/hate, liberty or safety, and so on. 陰陽 depicts these halves of a unified whole. I’m not good with the battle motif some Christians push: light vs. darkness as eternal moral combatants in a near-stalemate. It’s asymmetric—God supreme, evil a rebellion or privation (Augustine-style)—but amped up, it feels like perpetual standoff. I prefer the unified halves: Yin/Yang as complementary poles in God’s creation
Sin is a child of Yin because Yin is the dark side of that duality. Where Yin is an attribute of God’s creation, something that has existed since one became two and two became many, sin is a possibility in this post-Fall world we are born into. Next, what is love if we can’t hate? Or what is good if there is no bad? We know things by their opposite. Free will makes possible love or goodness worth having:
Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.
Scrum
We are, at every moment, both as good as we can be, and could be better. The choice to keep walking toward the light, toward God, is always before us. I drove a cab for twenty years, cumulative. I’ve seen the dirty underbelly of our world. So my discipleship as a Christian and my evangelism of “give grace first” comes from hard living. I coulda, woulda, shoulda made better/worse choices. I made these choices that put me in a warm house, typing these words, and building my legacy.
This world is a mess, a scrum, where winning and losing coexist. As I type this our military is bombing Iran. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead. This war is only days old. Whether it is a just war is something I can’t say. Islam and Christendom have been enemies at times. My particular church calls Islam a cult. What then? Get all hot and bothered about the players in this bloody circus? Maybe. Or maybe not. The doings of our leaders, of our Senators and Kaisers, doesn’t really reach me. My bathtub won’t drain. The water in it comes from the sewer pipes in the street. Woo.
The world is also a neutral playing field. We can choose better. We can also choose worse. Some people do both. Others choose worse and never recover. It is what it is. As for me, I’ve bee walking toward heaven since I was a kid. The closer I get to the light the further darkness fades into the distance behind me. Good enough.