In a few of my other comics, I have mentioned and gone into the linguistic sides of things when it comes to the Bible. When you compare English to Hebrew, you will find that English has a lot of words that are borrowed from other languages. Words that may seem similar are not necessarily related. Biblically Hebrew has root words, words that all other words stem from. Words that are similar are probably related.

When trying to find the meaning of something, these root words help in that definition. The word in Hebrew for sin is חטא (chata) which means "to miss the mark", just as I have shown in the comic.

An opposite type word, meaning to throw (especially an arrow) or aim or direct is ירא (yara). This word is the root word for what we translate in our Bibles as "law": תורה (torah).

Sin is missing the mark; torah is aiming for the mark. This is why in many comics I point out that "law" is a poor definition for the word. It is better translated as "instruction" or "direction".

Too many of us have been taught through church teachings that sin is this big vague thing that we all do because we are human. That we can't keep from doing it. That we sin every day and don't even know it. Or that the law is some burden that can't be kept.

However, that isn't what the Bible teaches at all. Sure, there is instruction for unintentional sin, sinning without knowing you sinned, but those instructions don't make it sound like this is something you are doing every day of your life. Just as with the definitions I am pointing out, we have a definition of sin. It isn't some vague thing, but something that we can knowingly direct our lives away from. It also says the law is easy to do.

Will we stumble at times? Maybe, but just because we might stumble doesn't mean we don't try!

I often see memes about the Bible being an instruction manual for life. The meme is right, however I fear that most that use the meme disregard the part of the Bible that contains those instructions.

https://thestraightandnarrow.cfw.me/comics/701

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