Review Part TwoWith much gratitude and excitement I received my copy of Christopher Mlalazi’s novel Many Rivers with its incredible cover design which I will talk about in later reviews!. It truly has been a great joy reading the publications of the Lion Press Limited. This is why with equal excitement I can now present my second instalment of reviews for Bernard O Antwi’s work, “Breaking the Chains of Shadow Beliefs – Discovering what stops your progress”.
As a quick recap, Antwi says that “shadow beliefs are binding chains that can keep you stuck in patterns of failure”. The first shadow beliefs that Antwi tackles are Sin and Fear. In this review, we will concentrate on sin!
Antwi describes sin as “the most powerful source of human downfall.” With a punching statement like that, we ought to pay attention!
The word sin is widely used in our vocabulary today but mainly as a source of light humour. For example “Eating chocolate is one of the seven deadly sins.” You would hardly hear someone say, “He committed a sin by killing that boy”. Instead we would say he committed a serious crime or we would label him by calling him a murderer.
So, the question is - what is sin? Antwi says that many people think that sin is breaking any of the Ten Commandments that were given to the biblical Moses by God. (Many of you will remember Moses from the blockbuster movie, The Prince of Egypt or if you’re older you may remember Charlton Heston’s great performance in the movie ‘The Ten Commandments’) Antwi says that this is not entirely accurate. I will extract a piece from Antwi’s work for you to see what he says “However, the bible lets us understand that sin was there before the law was made. ‘Romans 5v13 states, “For until the law sin was in the world but sin is not imputed when there is no law’” (Chapter One, Page 12)
Antwi then goes on to explain what he believes is the true definition of sin before giving a deeper explanation of the scripture given in Romans 5v13, above. Personally I believe that further explanation would have helped those that may not be so familiar with the biblical stories to understand what he is saying. Nonetheless, the use of the scripture is entirely accurate.
What Antwi and the scripture are saying is that before God delivered the Ten Commandments to his people, sin was already in the world, but no one could be accused of being a sinner because there was no law. Meaning, a crime is only a crime when you have broken the law. That is why when you are accused of a crime, the police, lawyers, jury and judge all study the evidence to determine whether you have broken the law or not.
Therefore, according to Antwi, if sin was in the world before the law was given, sin is not just simply breaking the law, as in the Ten Commandments. Antwi says, and I quote “The biblical interpretation of sin means “to miss the mark,” showing the standard of perfection established by God and the evidence of Jesus Christ”. If I understood correctly, Antwi states that sin is falling short of, or not meeting God’s standards and these standards are reflected or demonstrated in/by Jesus Christ.
In a nutshell, Adam was in the garden of Eden and he disobeyed a specific command from God by eating the forbidden fruit that he was persuaded to eat by his wife Eve. God was truly ticked off and he kicked Adam and his wife Eve, out of the garden. God kicked Adam out of the garden because, according to Antwi’s definition, he had fallen short of God standards. In this case, he had fallen short of God’s standard of obedience. He had disobeyed God and from that point onwards was called a sinner. The bible in Romans 5v12 says that through Adam’s one act of disobedience ‘sin’ entered the world. God was so ticked off by sin that the result of any sin was death. The definition of death here means separation from God, hence Adam being kicked out the garden. The Garden of Eden was a representation of God’s presence and when Adam disobeyed, he was kicked out of God’s presence (God’s life) and this was death – separation of your spirit from the presence of God.
Therefore, even without the existence of the Ten Commandments, the destination of Adam and all his descendants was death. Even though his wife, children and descendants had not eaten the forbidden fruit like Adam, their destination was death. We all inherited death from Adam. If you are born into this world, even a million years after Adam and Eve, you are born into sin – born into death. Antwi quotes this scripture in Romans 3v23 (New Living Translation) “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard” (Seems like tough terms – one person messed things up for everyone!!)
The question then remains – if everyone’s destination was death after Adam’s action, what was the point of the Ten Commandments.? Antwi has not elaborated on the answer to that question as it may be out of the scope of his teaching. Nonetheless it is a valid one. In the simplest of terms the Ten Commandments was given in order to give definition to sin, or as a guideline to show us where we had sinned. Remember, without a law there are no grounds for accusation. It is because of the Ten Commandments that things like stealing and murder are considered sins. The world today calls them crimes and has attributed specific standards of punishment to them.
Antwi states that, “Sin makes a person become a slave and condemned to death”. He also states that “sin cannot be sized or weighed”. Sin is sin whether it is adultery, lying, stealing or murder.
Therefore, sin has grave consequences. Sin, which results in death, is definitely a shadow belief. It stops your progress in life – in fact, it kills you. It will be very comforting if Antwi were to give us steps to guide us out of this. Is it possible to be in a place where you will never sin or face the consequence of death? Surely it would be great to live a full and prosperous life – or indeed live forever? Eternal life is a constant subject of fascination used in fantasy movies of today. The scripts have villains that kill off everyone that stands in their way of getting the magic potion that, if they were to drink, would give them eternal life. “Stardust” starring Charlie Cox, Sienna Miller, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert De Niro, Ricky Gervais and Peter O’ Toole is a classic example!
But in today’s real world, without the access to magic potions, could the concept of eternal life be realised? Is it possible to overcome sin, considering the human frailty and weakness that we are all familiar with? In the next series of reviews of “Breaking the Chains of Shadow Beliefs”, we will find out what Antwi has to say about it. I look forward to it!
