Sin, the Pine Bark Beetle, and Yosemite National Park
In my previous post I described the grandeur and beauty of Yosemite and how what I saw there testified to the creative power and glory of God. But we live in a sin-saturated world and that is evident in Yosemite also.
Death is such a seemingly natural part of every living system in our world that we accept it as normal – everything dies. There is a season for life and when that season ends, we die. But death was not in God’s original blueprint for creation. Death is an affront to God. Death was introduced into God’s creation by the Fall. God warned Adam and Eve, “if you disobey me you will surely die”. Satan lied to them, “You will not die”. But they did, and as a result of their disobedience, all living things must face this reality.
But God will rectify this corruption of His creation. When Heaven comes down to earth forming the New Heaven and the New Earth, there will be no more death.
“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21: 4 NIV).
But for now, death exists in our world. And death is the consequence of sin, for the wages of sin is death (Romans 6: 23 NIV).
So, sin leads to death – spiritual, emotional, and ultimately physical death. Many commentators call sin, “missing the mark”. To me, sin is that, but it is more than that. I see three dimensions of sin mentioned in the Bible.
First, sin is described as a demonic or evil force or power. In Genesis 4 God tells Cain, “sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it”. The note in my study Bible describes the word ‘crouching’ as an evil demon crouching at the door of a building, threatening the people inside. Evil or this demonic force called sin, is all around us, crouching and trying to get into our hearts. In his commentary on Genesis, Walter Brueggemann describes sin this way:
“Sin is not a breaking of the rules (I would say not just breaking the rules). Rather, sin is an aggressive force ready to ambush Cain. Sin is larger than Cain and takes on a life of its own. Sin is lethal” (Brueggemann, Genesis, pg. 57).
Second, Scripture makes it clear that choosing something or someone other than God to be our ultimate source of value is a sin; also called idolatry. Jeremiah writes, “My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jeremiah 2: 13 NIV); “But you said, it’s no use! I love foreign gods and I must go after them” (Jeremiah 2: 25 NIV). Paul wrote about this sin of worshiping something other than God, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the creator” (Romans 2: 25 NIV).
Third, sin is doing what should not be done (breaking the rules); or not doing what should be done. What should not be done? That’s easy: read the 10 commandments. In the New Testament Paul gives us an extensive list of what we should not be doing: “He gave them over to do what ought not to be done . . . every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity; envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossipers, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil, they disobey their parents, they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless” (Romans 1: 28 – 31 NIV). That about covers it!
What should we do that we are not doing? Jesus tells us in the first part of the Sermon on the Mount. Elsewhere Jesus tells us we should love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love our neighbors as ourselves. Most of us are not doing these.
All sin, apart from repentance, leads to death. NT Wright writes, “Death is not an arbitrary punishment for sin; it is its necessary consequence, since the turning away from the living God which constitutes idolatry is the spiritual equivalent of a diver cutting his own breathing tube” (Evil and the Justice of God, pg. 109).
In Yosemite National Park I found an analogy for sin, especially sin as a force or power, our battle against sin, and how sin impacts our lives, including death.
In my previous post I wrote about the majestic pine trees in Yosemite – some over 250 feet tall, 8 feet in diameter, and hundreds of years old – including Lodgepole, Sugar, Jeffrey, Ponderosa pines. But today over 2 million of these trees are dead or dying. It is heartbreaking to walk through the forests in Yosemite, seeing one of these giants dead, like a tall straight toothpick, standing next to seemingly healthy trees and knowing that in a few years, if nothing changes, these beautiful trees also will be dead.
What is killing these giants, these magnificent sentinels of the forest? A small beetle the size of a grain of rice – the pine bark beetle. It bores into the tree and kills the tree from the inside out.
When I first heard about this beetle I thought it must be invasive. But it is not – it is an indigenous insect. It has been a natural part of these forests as long as forests have existed.
Why then are there any trees left at all? Shouldn’t they all have been killed off a long time ago? No. And here is why. Pine trees have natural defenses against the pine bark beetle. When the beetle begins to bore into the bark of the tree, the tree responds with sap or pitch, killing the beetle and plugging up its boring. As long as the tree is healthy, it is resistant or immune to the beetles.
But today in Yosemite, the trees are not healthy. They are stressed! The stress is the result of an 8 to 10-year drought that has weakened the tree’s ability to fight off the ‘angel (or beetle) of death’. Once the beetle bores through the bark, the stressed tree has no ‘strength’ to fight back and quickly dies from the inside out.
Just to be clear, let me define stress. “Stress is the organism’s response to an environmental condition. Stress is the bodies method of reacting to an external condition such as a threat, challenge, or physical or psychological barrier” (I got this definition from the internet). In the case of the pine trees in Yosemite, the drought is not the stress. The drought is the external condition that causes stress in the trees. I don’t know what pine-tree stress looks like. But whatever it is, it causes the trees to shut down certain functions so that only the most critical processes continue to operate. Apparently attacking and killing the invading pine bark beetles is not one of these critical functions.
As I reflected on the destruction that the pine bark beetle is causing the forests in Yosemite National Park I thought, “this is an analogy for the effects of sin in our lives”. Like the beetle, sin in the sense of a demonic power or force, is a natural part of our environment. It is all around us, like a prowling lion. It is always looking for ways to get into our hearts. But if we are spiritually, emotionally, and physically healthy, including for Christians connected to Christ, it cannot easily get into our hearts. And if it does, we can call upon Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to defeat the enemy – to deliver us. But if we are ‘weakened’ by external conditions a door can be opened into our hearts for the enemy to enter and begin to ‘kill’ us from the inside out. Stress can be caused by many external conditions – illness, death of someone we love, loss of a job, financial troubles, abuse, or many other things. Stress in our lives is our reaction to these conditions.
Different people react to these external conditions, most of which we cannot control, in different ways. Some of the more common types of stress are anger, hostility, resentment, bitterness, unforgiveness, fear, and anxiety.
When we allow these different stresses, also called sin in Scripture, to dominate our hearts we can be drawn away from the Holy Spirit, the source of our protection against the powers of the dark world, the spiritual equivalent of the pine bark beetle. Jesus reminds us that He is the vine and we are the branch. If we stay connected to Him we will live; if we become disconnected we will die. He is like the ‘sap’ or ‘pitch’ that kills the invaders (is that a bad analogy?).
For many people the major source of stress in their lives is emotional, sexual, or physical abuse, especially when they were younger. Largely in response to this external condition, people will choose other gods to convince themselves that they are good enough or medicate the pain with drugs, alcohol, or acting out. And we all know that the pain of abuse often manifests itself in anger, fear, hatred, resentment, and unforgiveness. All of these negative emotions are our response to the external circumstance, all are sins, and all of these ultimately can lead to death because they open the door to darkness in our lives – killing us from the inside out.
But unlike pine trees, we can choose our behavior, our attitude, and how (and where) we will live our lives. And unlike pine trees we have access to a power greater than ourselves. When adverse circumstances come, like the drought for the pine trees, we might not be able to change these circumstances, but we can change how we respond to the circumstances. Even nonbelievers can cry out to Jesus – “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.” There is healing for all of our wounds in Jesus. Paul writes, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6: 23 NIV). That gift is available to all people – Jesus died for all human beings (see 1 Timothy 2: 6). But not all will receive, accept – in other words, choose – this gift. Not everyone will trust in Jesus.
“But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit” (Jeremiah 17: 7, 8 NIV).
If we trust in Jesus, He will deliver us from the snares and accusations of the enemy. Jesus told us that in this world we will suffer. When we trust in Jesus, we can surrender and submit our lives to Him. And when we surrender and submit to Him, we can rest in Jesus. So, no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in, we can rest expectantly in the Lord. He will bring us through, at least spiritually and emotionally, if not physically. And we do not need to fear death – because He was resurrected, we will be too.
When we trust in Jesus and rest in Him in the midst of difficulties, we show the world the glory of God just as much as the tall pine trees in Yosemite National park.
Constantly amazed by Jesus,
John