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Wellness Truth # 5: Suffering and Death Enter the World Because of Sin
To the woman he said: I will intensify your toil in childbearing in pain you shall bring forth children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. To the man he said: Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, You shall not eat from it, Cursed is the ground because of you! In toil you shall eat its yield all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bear for you, and you shall eat the grass of the field. By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, Until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; For you are dust, and to dust you shall return. -Genesis 3:16-19
As we read above, sin had a tragically negative effect on the nature of our first parents and continues to have negative effects on the rest of creation in the present day. We see sin as being the root cause of physical pain, a disharmonious relationship and the beginning of human death “to dust you shall return”. St. Paul affirms this in Romans 6:23 where he says “the wages of sin is death”. We even see the rest of creation being affected where the ground is changed and man will now have to work hard in order to produce food from it (Romans 8:21). As time went on sin increased in the world with its effects bringing an increased brokenness to the human race. Due to the envy of the devil in tempting and seducing Adam and Eve to sin, evil of every kind including death, illness and disease entered the world (Wisdom 2:24). It is important to distinguish that sin causes increased illness and disease, but not necessarily the personal sin of the individual who is sick. While it is possible for an individual’s illness of body or soul to be due to their unrepented personal sin, Jesus makes it clear that this isn’t always the case in John 9:3 when He says “neither he nor his parents sinned” about a man who was blind from birth.