The Common Nature of Sin

This is an excerpt from a much larger project that I am working on. I hope you all enjoy it.

            My whole life, I was brought up believing that pride was the first of all sins. Pride was thought to be the source of all other sins, but upon further reflection I really can’t hold to this position. Pride is related to most sins, but pride is not the mycelium of the fungus bodies popping out of the ground. Rather, pride is a mushroom all to itself. It appears more often than its siblings of decomposition, and it shares several characteristics with other sins, but it is not their mother. Pride may very well have been the first manifestation of sin, but the fruit of an organism is not the same thing as the organism. More accurately, the common nature of sin is unbelief.

            For the sake of explanation, think of the common tradition of the fall of Satan. It is thought that the old serpent became prideful: desiring to remove God from His throne. Then God cast Satan and a third of the angels out of heaven. This is why many come to the conclusion that pride is the beginning of sin, but that cannot be correct. The very nature of Pride- viewing ones self as more than one ought to- requires that unbelief come before it, for if Satan had believed God pride could not have existed. The very nature of God proclaims that only he is worth of praise (Rev 4:11), but Satan, in his unbelief, revolts against God. Therefore, only in connection to the mycelium of unbelief can pride exist.