Immediate Gratification, Long-Term Suffering
Genesis 2:15,17; 3:1,7
by Rev. Randy Quinn

During Lent this year, we will be exploring the lives of people who made changes in their lives; they traded one thing for another. I hope we will hear in their stories an invitation to make changes in our own. In fact, each sermon will end with an invitation to discipleship. By that, I mean to offer you an opportunity to change, to trade something in your life as we learn to walk more closely with Jesus.

Our story today is about the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, who unintentionally traded away paradise. I say unintentionally because as I have read their story, I’m not sure they understood what it was that was going to happen.

I know that when most people read this story they immediately make a leap from the story itself to the Christian doctrine of “original sin.” That sin, according to people like John Wesley was about unbelief that begot pride.1 He said it was pride that led Adam and Eve to seek their own will rather than God’s will. From the moment they made the choice to act on their own, they began to experience a separation from God. God’s glory departed and they became dead to God.

God told them they would die, but as far as we know nothing had died yet, so they wouldn’t have known what death was. They simply saw the fruit, thought it looked good, so they ate it.

What we hear in their story is the story of our lives, though, the story of our tendency to act on impulse, the tendency to seek immediate gratification without considering the cost.

Think about it. How many times in the past year have we heard the statistical evidence that as a nation we have become increasingly overweight? Obesity can be traced directly to our desire for immediate gratification. Fast food, snack food, processed food have all made it easy to grab something quick and easy -- and in the process our health is suffering.

Our entire financial system has also been compromised by a desire for short-term gains, even if it yields long term losses. Quarterly earnings reports rather than annual reports, for example, and daily reporting of stock market values put enormous pressure on business leaders to make short-term decisions, to act on impulse as they respond to the daily news rather than sound business practices.

Or think about the economic crisis that began a couple of years ago, something that we may or may not be working our way out of today. There were people who were borrowing beyond their budget. They wanted to have the biggest house and the most expensive car and the fastest boat -- and they wanted it now. So they borrowed on the future to have their immediate desires met. But it was built on a house of cards that came tumbling down. [continue]