Two months ago, a friend said that her "favorite analogy for sin is cancer." My response, half-finished, has been sitting around since then with the other drafts I still have left on blogger, but I'm completing it now to use for the Lutheran Carnival. Hope it's not too disjointed after the pause.

My friend's statement on sin/cancer is a very interesting analogy. But perhaps it is slightly misplaced. Cancer, I think, might better represent original sin than sin in general.

In the Formula of Concord, in the first article, Original Sin is described as something that clings to our nature and corrupts it. Tappert's translation is that it "inheres" to us. That is an elegant word, though the way the dictionary defines it crosses over into the Manichaean errors described in the antitheses. Rather than "inherent," what Tappert probably meant was a play on the word "adhere." Original sin is IN us and clings to us and corrupts us, so much so that we cannot tell it apart from our human nature. Nevertheless,

"We believe, teach, and confess that there is a distinction between man's nature and original sin, not only in the beginning when God created man pure and holy and without sin, but also as we now have our nature after the Fall. Even after the fall our nature is and remains a creature of God. The distinction between our nature and original sin is as great as the difference between God's work and the devil's work." (FC, Ep:I, §2.)

In the Solid Declaration, the authors elaborate on this first affirmative thesis, along with the second (from the Epitome; they're different in the SD). They build them into a very beautiful exposition on the Creed, to show how fundamental this distinction is:

• In the article on Creation, in that even after the fall, we are still creations of God, yet God is not the author of sin.
  
• In the article on Redemption, that Jesus was made true man, in every respect like us, yet without sin or sinful corruption.
  
• In the article on Sanctification, that God cleanses and receives us into his grace, but is forever the enemy of sin.
  
• In the article on the Resurrection, that we will be raised again, with our own bodies, and yet without sin.

As it should be, the distinction between original sin and our human nature is defended on the basis of Justification and the Gospel.

How well does cancer fit as an analogy? That's a little more difficult, but there are various elements. Cancerous cells come from your own body. They are corrupted, with broken controls for regulating cell growth and division. They can become feral (metastasize<G>) and spread through the body, and it's hard to attack them without harming other things. I'm not sure, but maybe they can sometimes corrupt normal ones too. Overall, cancer (and sometimes its treatment) can cause a condition of general sickness, even if the corrupted cells themselves are not universal.

Still, some things great down. You can distinguish cancer and normal cells. Metastasized cells might be a good example of cancer being 'in, with, and under' the body. Tumors, though, are harder; they are things that can be found and removed. Does this suggest that if we only got rid of these sins that have presented themselves, we could make ourselves right with God? That the fallen nature is only frailty, not fault? Finally, cancer can be beaten. Christ has redeemed you, but your body won't catch up here. People who think they can be rid of sins in this life are just wrong. Nevertheless, the real strength and seriousness of an analogy of cancer to original sin is this: people, especially the elderly, often react to a diagnosis of cancer as though it were a death sentence.

So, cancer is good for explaining the fallenness of man. It seems to handle this line of the article on Original Sin well enough:

Dr. Luther calls this sin "nature-sin" or "person-sin" in order to indicate that even though a man were to think no evil, speak no evil, or do no evil—which after the Fall of our first parents is of course impossible for human nature in this life—nevertheless man's nature and person would still be sinful. (FC, SD:I, §6.)

But is there something else that could describe the character and effect of ongoing rather than original sin? The evil that we 'think, speak, and do'? I'd like to offer up "shock" in its place. The book I'm consulting for this kind of gives two definitions for shock. The formal one is "a widespread lack of tissue perfusion with oxygenated red blood cells that leads to anaerobic metabolism and decreased energy production." The other is the comment it leads the chapter off with: "In 1852, American surgeon Samuel Gross defined shock as "a rude unhinging of the machinery of life.""

Without getting too deeply into it, there are some different types of shock, dealing with pump failure (heart), too little blood or the veins all dilated, not getting oxygen to the blood, etc., but they all lead to the same thing. There are also some phases or stages to shock.

In compensated shock, your body is coping pretty well. Your heart rate goes up and your blood vessels constrict, but your body is getting by with less. Blood is shunted away from the skin, so it's pale, cool, and clammy, and goes where it's needed more. They might have an altered mental status too, which may be subtle, like anxiety or acting funny.

In decompensated shock, the body gets tired and has trouble keeping this up. The blood pressure starts falling. If they aren't unconscious already, they will be. Cells are deprived of oxygen and switch over to anaerobic respiration, which means they're producing lactic acid and other waste products, and they're dumping potassium out to try to maintain the right pH. But, because of the reduced circulation, these waste products start to build up in the capillaries. Eventually, as the body tires further, the muscles in the blood vessels can't take it anymore, and they dump a whole lot of this waste into the body at once.

In irreversible shock, the person is finished. Maybe you replace the lost blood, relieve the heart some, etc., but it's only a delay. At this point, the cells in the body's vital organs have taken too much damage, and they start dying. This dumps more waste products in itself, makes the rest of the cells have to work harder, and so on. Also, the blood vessels going into those organs might not open back up once they've collapsed. Still, you don't know when a body has passed from decompensated shock to irreversible. This is probably how it was for the student at CTSFW who passed away this spring. CPR might get someone's heart beating again (meanwhile, compressions don't exactly perfuse well through the whole body), but they're not a save until they walk out of the hospital. The teacher in my Critical Care class was somewhat fond of saying about this kind of shock, 'The body is already dead, it just doesn't know it yet.'

We were also told that everyone dies from shock. And this is true; if someone has a heart attack, it's still the lack of oxygen to their cells that kills them. Cut off their head, it's still a lack of oxygen. So, anything short of a nuclear blast, I guess. I'd like to suggest that shock would be a good analogy for sin. It's not a pre-existing condition (I'm disgusted when people say that asystole, a flat line, is a "stable" rhythm), but an ongoing insult to the person and their body. There's that altered mental status besides the lack of an X-ray; we don't know the dire straights we are in with sin. And sins, all mortal, are doom for the body, even if it doesn't die right away — so this analogy even fits Adam's situation. And yet, it doesn't try to claim that a person has been inflicted by God because of a specific sin, because all this is a progression.

However, I'm not sure that what I have presented is truly an analogy. This isn't 'sin as cancer,' but rather, 'sin as death.' That's the progression I described above; what if, instead of analogy, it is how it really works? Is this example of shock just the body catching up with sins, death, and original sin? 'We're dead, our bodies just don't know it yet.' I can't say.

It would be misery to do a post all about death and to not offer consolation at the end. We're not exactly dead, are we? Paul has much to say about this in Romans.

• Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (7:24-25)
  
• [T]he law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. (8:2)
  
• [I]f Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. (8:10)
  
• If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (8:11)

All of those things I described about shock work because the body is fearfully and wonderfully made. That is the kind of fight it puts up, even though it gets tired. This same body also receives the physical elements of the sacraments. Maintaining the distinction between human nature, though corrupted, and the original sin which corrupts it ought to help us appreciate what God has given us and what it is He has redeemed. Our entire experience of receiving God's blessings thus far has occurred while in our bodies, and the resurrection comes before the wedding feast of the Lamb. So, while our bodies rightly fear and fight death, we can rejoice and remember that it cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ.