Taxonomy of Transgression

Taxonomy of Transgression

Cast:  Two friends any age.  One friend looks frazzled.

Set:  Any set.  No props.  Action proceeds with fast paced dialogue.

You look like a mess.

Tell me about it.

How about you tell me instead?

OK, yeah, sure…It’s Leviticus.

Really? And?

I just don’t get it.

Get what?

There are all sorts of things that seem crazy but God has to tell his people not to do them anyway.

Such as?

Don’t sleep with your aunt or marry you sister.

Sounds good to me.

Don’t make your daughter a prostitute.  Really, who would do that?

I don’t know anyone who would.

Don’t practice sorcery.  Isn’t God talking to his own people?  Did he really have to say these things?

Actually, if you will keep reading in Leviticus, God explains that the people which he drove out of the land promised to his own people actually did all of these things.

Wow!

Sure enough.

But I am still a little confused about why some things came with a death penalty and others with being separated from the people and yet others were just declared to be a bad thing and no punishment was prescribed.

You are trying to compose a taxonomy of transgression.

What?

You want some rhyme and reason that makes sense to you.

Yes!

Well try this on for size.  Sin or transgression means to miss the mark.

Like in archery.

Yes.

Sometimes we miss by a lot and sometimes by a little.

Yes, but a miss is still a miss.

But targets have 10 points in the middle of the bullseye and 5 points for a little farther out and even just 1 point for barely hitting the target.

And trying to keep score seems natural for us.  It just seems to be in our nature.

I just want to make sense of it all.

Here is what makes sense.  None of us ever hit the bullseye all of the time.  We just can’t do it.

We all miss the mark?

Yes, we all fall short of the glory of God.

Seems hopeless.

It would be except for this wonderful thing that we know as grace.

Forgiveness that we don’t deserve.

Exactly.  We have all missed the mark but God’s love is bigger than anything that we can mess up.

So I don’t really have to keep score?

God calls us to confess our sins to him knowing that he is always faithful to forgive us.  It is a promise that we can count on.  He doesn’t want to keep score.  He wants to forgive.

It beats keeping a scorecard that never seems to add up anyway.

Grace is way better than any scorecard.

Grace hits the bullseye every time.

Now, we are on target.

Thank you God that you chose love over rules, mercy over sacrifice, and that there is nothing that I can mess up that you have not already made right.

Amen to that!

The end.