I learned about sin early

Published 6:39 am Monday, November 23, 2009

Waterford, Wis., as we often drive through it, brings back an early and important lesson. About age 8, I spent several days in the home of the local high school principal, because he was a family friend and had a boy my age. Something happened that made me think seriously about the consequences of sin. No, the experience allowed me to learn about the nature of sin.

My friend let me play with his Canadian Mounty, and I fell in love with it.

About six inches tall and made of iron, he wore a brown campaign hat and a gloriously red jacket with a high collar. A black leather strap extended from his left solder to right hip, and a thicker one around the waist displayed a brass buckle. A holster held a revolver on his left hip with the butt forward. His britches were black with a broad gold stripe. Brown boots came to the knees. The horse was as muscular as the Mounty must have been under his impressive uniform. Jet black, a white diamond spot adorned his forehead. His right front leg was lifted high as if returning a salute.

Email newsletter signup

I slipped the toy into a pair of worn underpants in my suitcase. Even before I put my suitcase down at home, I offered (suspiciously, now that I think about it) to drop my laundry down the clothes shoot. I extracted the loot and hid it under my mattress (where no one would think to look). I fell asleep dreaming of the paradise of playing in the morning with my acquisition. I’m not sure if I was still dreaming or just half-awake, but I immediately took the horse and its rider (not sure which impressed me the more) from its place and began to ride it over the mountains and across the prairie of my bed covers.

But I didn’t dare play with it openly and had to find a secure hiding place. Until I could devise a scheme, I buried the toy in the backyard. Every time I passed the burial plot, I longed to play with my new toy, but I couldn’t. Months later (I think it was), I dug it up with the plan just to admire my prize before burying it again. If all I could do was look at it occasionally, I began to wonder what I had actually gained. I found it a rusted, grotesque mockery of its former self. That which I had stolen, I had lost in the very act of deceitfully covering my sin. All I could do was return it to its grave and never see it again. What had I gained?

One might presume I confess a deeply suppressed guilt that has haunted me for 70 years. In fact, I had thought little of this childhood incident until we began driving through Waterford. What I feel is what I feel while writing this: relief and gratitude. I am relieved by the recognition I learned early a crucial lesson. I had learned sin does not pay—but exacts a heavy cost. I learned what is acquired by sin becomes an intolerable burden.

My gratitude is that I was so reared I was able to recognize my own sin and feel its guilt without being prosecuted. I fear this experience did not keep me from sinning again and more seriously. But it did enable me, perhaps, to sin less often and less seriously—and to repent more effectively and recover more successfully. I am grateful I learned early to see sin for what it is.

Whatever I might have gained from adult-level sin was worth no more than a rusted toy buried where it was no good to anyone.

Having learned this early, I had yet more years to live the truth that set me free.