What is the essence of sin? (Part 1)

The mind is a place in itself, and inside it one can turn Heaven into Hell or Hell into Heaven.  Satan, from Milton’s Paradise Lost.

The essence of sin is prideful imagination, and prideful imagination is the throne of Satan. 

Consider this.  Eve reasoned with independent imagination a rationalization of first sin.  She believed Satan.  Adam knew Satan lied, but disobeyed nonetheless.  Why would he do this?  Did he imagine that he and the woman could live forever in the solitude of rebellious love?  Was her love better than the love of God?  Were her words more pure than Purity Himself?  For God said to the man, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree I commanded you not to eat from…”  Adam listened to Eve, and Eve listened to Satan.  From Satan’s prideful imagination the man and woman believed they could be more like God than they already were.  We dare believe the same when we doubt Jesus’s name, the name above every name, the name above our names.  We claim for ourselves a place that belongs only to God:  the right to define reality, to determine the true and untrue, the real and unreal based on what we feel.  Our pleasure becomes the measure of life and death.  With every breath we defy our Maker and Creator when we imagine a world without Him.  A heaven without God.  A heaven of our own making.  We say in our minds, “My kingdom come, my will be done in my imagination as it is done in heaven…my heaven.”