Sunday 3 April 2022

Sin and its relationship to governance

Technically, we are not going to come up with a solution to our problems without recognizing that we can't code our way out of them.

Human governance models require an endless amount of policy making. In the courts this results in long delays for a decision and rightly some sort of due process. Process is due to a person who does wrong because such a node of the mystery of consciousness is just that - a person. 'How long' is a frequent cry in the Scriptures: How long O Lord - without any particular object. If it is appointed for a person once to die, and after this the judgment, will the due process take as long as it does for humans on the earth?

Financial modeling of trust is a mining operation for the forensic tracking of ownership and responsibility. The banks may earn us interest, but it is beyond our control to insist that they act for the good of the earth and divest their holdings in fossil fuels. So neither bitcoin nor dividends will save us.

Morally, we all have a sense of what is right for us. Unfortunately, we also have a legitimate self-protection and would be very happy for a quiet life, everyone 'neath their vines and fig trees... Self-protection requires self-defense even against those things where there is no defense - The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,... Job got no respite from human or natural calamity. Byron's poem though does show that protection from the marauding invader may have consequences for the invader.

...the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;

Genetically, one might think that the first fraternal murder recorded in one ancient text would have some helpful note. But even that was a religious war over whose sacrifice would be accepted. There was no angel of death for Cain or there would have been no economy for us to haggle over. Cain is told to govern in himself over sin.

Will it not be that if you do well you will be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin reclines at the opening, and its aspiration is against you, but you yourself will govern in it.

What about Seth - can we escape from sin through good breeding? Noah's children would give the lie to this. Sin seems to be pervasive even though it is noted only 15 times in Genesis.

So how will we govern? No simple answer, but I think we have to consider that sin is a problem for everyone and if we must govern with sin abounding, as it were, ultimately we must deal with God as well. I don't see any other escape from the divisions among us that arise from our culture, our land, our resources, our desires, our money, our freedom, our convenience, and so on.



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