Schizophrenia:   (in general use) a mentality or approach characterized by inconsistent or contradictory elements.

From the moment of the Fall, humankind has suffered from moral schizophrenia:  neither able to deny sinfulness nor to acknowledge it for what it is. Alec Motyer, Look to the Rock.

Some of the best books are out of print.  Look To The Rock, by Alec Motyer, is no exception.  Motyer reflects on Genesis 3:7-10 and what these verses detail in regards to the breakdown that occurred as a result of Adam and Eve’s failure to trust God’s word and His Character.

From external to internal temptation

Genesis 3:7: “their eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked.”  Notice that the temptation of Eve came from outside – from the serpent.  Now – this side of the fall -  our temptations come from within (James 1:14).   In the Garden, it seems obvious that the innocence of Adam and Eve implied that they had no experience of evil.   God’s design was that mankind should “know the good by direct personal knowledge and experience the evil only as an external and theoretical contrast.” Unfortunately the fall made the evil become a first hand experience and now internalized.  “From now on temptation would not come from the outside but from within themselves.  From now on immediate, personal knowledge will be of the evil, and the good will only be known by contrast. The Fall stood the divine purposes on their head.”  This is massive!   The basis on which all knowledge rests has been corrupted and changed!

Moral Schizophrenia

Genesis 3:8: Motyer continues with a discussion of the personal breakdown that the Fall provoked.  When Adam and Eve discovered that the Lord God was walking in the Garden they hid themselves.  Motyer comments:  In Genesis 3:8 there is an inadequate awareness of the seriousness of sin, moral perceptions are clouded, and the self-centered view of values is well beneath the God-centered view…. they hide themselves, but within the Garden.  They cannot meet and keep company with the Lord God as before, but neither do they see that the consequence of sin is loss of paradise.  The blindness of sin is beginning to take effect, bringing atrophy of moral alertness, an inability to face the holy, and yet an equal inability to appreciate what holiness is. … Thus, like the man and woman we acknowledge sin but, by nature, we cannot grasp its seriousness.  From the moment of the fall, humankind has suffered from moral schizophrenia: neither able to deny sinfulness nor to acknowledge it for what it is..

Can we grasp how important it is, in repentance and confession, that we declare clearly who and whose standard we have offended and not equivocate?

Equivocate:  use ambiguous language so as to conceal the truth or avoid committing oneself.

Let us continue to pray fervently for deep and abiding repentance.