Languages develop from primitive concrete items and images. The imagery behind “sin” is “missing the mark”. The word “Torah”, often translated as Law, has the imagery of arrow or direction. So the Law is an arrow aimed at a target, and sin is the missing of that target. But what is the target? It seems that we concentrate so much on not hitting the target of sin, that we actually reversed the imagery of the early language. Spiritual texts should be used to help us hit the target of grace. Do we really need so much help to miss the target of sin? Listening to so much of what gets preached these days, it would seem that we do. I believe that hitting the target of grace – unconditional love for all people – requires active effort. I don’t have time or energy to keep looking at the stuff I’m not aiming at anyway.
