Adam's Sin isn't passed biologically. It's passed socially.
Each act of disobedience results in exile, and each exile results in more sinfulness. Adam and Eve were exiled from Eden, and God locked the east entrance to the garden. (Gen. 3:24)
The finger-pointing in the first parents passes down to their kids. One kids murders the other, denies responsibility. He gets exiled to a land "East of Eden" where he restlessly wanders. Notice his parents already were east of Eden. If Eden represents what humanity could have achieved, it is becoming an ever distant dream. (Insight from a pastor's message today: Whenever someone gets exiled, either by divine or self-mandate, it's always to the east: Gen. 13:11, Lot goes east; Gen. 11:2, people move east and build Babel; Jonah 4:5: Jonah, angry at God, camps to the east of Ninevah. Not sure how important this is.)
Sin multiplies with people. Lamech's senseless killings result in further alienation.
There's a generational curse passed down where the conflicts of brothers become conflicts between cousins and then becomes conflicts between families and whole peoples. There's a crescendo of sinfulness that always results in more alienation, more scattering, more restless desperation. That regress is vividly described in the O.T.
If I could shake out the general effects of original sin as it plays out in the dramas of the Old Testament, it's that (1) when people sin, they exile themselves further away from their own paradise, and (2) when people sin, they exile themselves further away from each other.
C.S. Lewis wrote a story once about how people live in Hell. They can make houses simply by thinking it, which is pretty awesome. But they can't put up with each other. So they keep moving away from each other, enlarging hell and living at its fringes. They keep moving away until each person only has himself to hate. And that is hell. Hell is self.
Each act of disobedience results in exile, and each exile results in more sinfulness. Adam and Eve were exiled from Eden, and God locked the east entrance to the garden. (Gen. 3:24)
The finger-pointing in the first parents passes down to their kids. One kids murders the other, denies responsibility. He gets exiled to a land "East of Eden" where he restlessly wanders. Notice his parents already were east of Eden. If Eden represents what humanity could have achieved, it is becoming an ever distant dream. (Insight from a pastor's message today: Whenever someone gets exiled, either by divine or self-mandate, it's always to the east: Gen. 13:11, Lot goes east; Gen. 11:2, people move east and build Babel; Jonah 4:5: Jonah, angry at God, camps to the east of Ninevah. Not sure how important this is.)
Sin multiplies with people. Lamech's senseless killings result in further alienation.
There's a generational curse passed down where the conflicts of brothers become conflicts between cousins and then becomes conflicts between families and whole peoples. There's a crescendo of sinfulness that always results in more alienation, more scattering, more restless desperation. That regress is vividly described in the O.T.
If I could shake out the general effects of original sin as it plays out in the dramas of the Old Testament, it's that (1) when people sin, they exile themselves further away from their own paradise, and (2) when people sin, they exile themselves further away from each other.
C.S. Lewis wrote a story once about how people live in Hell. They can make houses simply by thinking it, which is pretty awesome. But they can't put up with each other. So they keep moving away from each other, enlarging hell and living at its fringes. They keep moving away until each person only has himself to hate. And that is hell. Hell is self.
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