Guest blog by Zach Hamilton
If you grew up in New England in the 20th century, you may have believed in a scary curse - but not connected to the Salem witch trials! The Curse of the Great Bambino hung over Boston Red Sox baseball for almost 100 years. When their best player Babe Ruth (nicknamed “The Great Bambino” for some reason) asked for more money in 1919, the cash-strapped team sold him to the rival New York Yankees. Babe Ruth went on to become one of the greatest Major League Baseball players of all time, helping the Yankees to win four World Series championships.
Without Babe Ruth, the Red Sox saw their fortunes fade. The decades rolled by, and every Boston team fell short of a championship. Passionate fans came to believe that trading the Great Bambino had cursed their team, especially after the Red Sox narrowly lost the 1986 World Series. They went to crazy lengths to try and reverse the curse, even holding an exorcism in Fenway Park! Finally, in 2004, the Red Sox beat the Yankees and went on to win that season’s World Series. I still remember video clips of priests and nuns celebrating in Boston.
Why go down New England memory lane? Because it demonstrates the desire humans have to control everything, even curses! Saying “God bless you” after a sneeze was originally about warding off evil spirits. We sometimes reduce negative events to a folktale curse, in order to then come up with a superstitious way to overturn that evil. It’s all fun and games...but what if a true curse actually clung to us? You and I would drive ourselves crazy trying to fix it, right?
Here’s the thing: if you’re the one cursed, are you really able to reverse that yourself? In Deuteronomy 21, Moses prescribed a specific punishment that represents shame:
And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. (vv. 22-23a)
The very point of hanging was to declare that this individual had transgressed the law. It served as a public deterrent to other potential criminals, but not to the one hanged! His fate was sealed.
In our next section of Genesis, we’re going to look at the comprehensive curse that the Lord Almighty pronounces on his fallen creatures. Their fate is sealed. Adam & Eve receive shameful, specific punishments for their rebellion. Our church may not be prone to minimizing the consequences of sin, but our society absolutely does! They don’t fear God or his commandments, so they have no fear of punishment, either. They think they can escape any divine curse because it’s just a fable.
With that background, is it any wonder that the world collectively yawns at the good news that Jesus came to take our curse on himself and offer restoration? A precious verse like Galatians 3:13 (“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us…”) means nothing to a heart that scoffs at the very notion of guilt.
That's why we must be sure to hold out the ugly fact of our cursedness alongside the beautiful blessing of forgiveness. Trying to control our curse is doomed to fail. Running to the Savior in faith and repentance is the only cure!