The Un-Theme

 

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.  Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 

 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:8-13)

 

Today’s theme, as a theme, is a little difficult to describe musically. It’s not that sin has its own theme. Sin is like a virus. A virus isn’t alive. It uses the cellular machinery of other organisms to reproduce, meaning that it’s a kind of parasite. Likewise, sin isn’t really “alive” – it’s not really a thing – but it uses and damages the spiritual machinery of man to reproduce. It’s not that sin has a separate theme, but that it influences other themes.

The first influence illustrated by today’s passage is that sin is like a second conductor, telling the tiny orchestra that plays man’s theme to incorporate bits and pieces of God’s Theme. There aren’t enough instruments. They’re missing, perhaps, the flutes. So instead, the tuba section blasts forth, one playing the tuba part of Man’s Theme, and the other playing the flute part. It’s just not the same.

The second influence is that the instruments are out of tune. No matter how hard we try, that F# is a little flat. It’s not an F, but somewhere between the F and the F#, or perhaps it’s a little sharp.

The third is what I’ll call musical fight or flight. The theme involves separation not only from the God theme, but from itself. Its tonal quality either involved hiding or fleeing, or it involves attacking as part of the underlying theme. This is not part of the original composition, but something added by man himself in an attempt to improve on the original. I can’t think of an example for the fear aspect, but consider what would happen if the theme from Psycho were interjected in Moonlight Sonata or Unchained Melody. That’s what sin does to our theme.