All Good Gifts
November 25, 2005

We know that Adam's sin was pride, but many of the old English poets stressed the love that his pride repaid with disobedience. In other words, they saw that the fundamental manifestation of pride is ingratitude. So George Herbert portrays Christ reproaching us on His way to Calvary (I'm quoting from memory here):

Then all they do condemn me with that breath
Which I do give them daily, unto death.
Thus Adam my first breathing rendereth:
Was ever grief like mine?

I've been thinking about that verse these last few days. It's easy enough for the Christian to remember to thank God for at least a few of the good things He has given us. We might even remember once in a while to thank God for the breath in our lungs, for our mere existence, since it is with each of us as it was with Adam, that God has taken some dust from the earth and breathed into it, that we might be a living soul.

But Adam in his pride wanted to seize for himself what he saw as a good thing that God had not given him. In his disobedience he showed himself ungrateful for what he was given (since he wanted even more), and ungrateful for what had been withheld from him (since he judged that he might provide for himself a fairer enjoyment of goods). He forgot to thank God for the prohibition. Another way to look at it is that he forgot to praise God for the inequality between himself and his Maker. The rest