John, clearly an in-depth response to a difficult subject. I might just throw in another dimension on this one by suggesting that how you view sin will depend on how you understand the nature and reality of God to be.
If you hold to the traditional concept of God as a "supernatural being" then sin and judgement of the same are very different children to that which you will conceive if you hold to God as the "ground or essence of all being" as some of us do.
Grace & Peace. Allan
Hello Allan, you are right. As we peel away the layers of thinking we discover that there's more!
I'm up bright and early but my day today will be leading me away from the computer, so I must be brief.
You've thrown in two factors which have to be taken separately and then integrated.
The first question is Sin. The second question is God.
I'll deal with the first factor only in the briefest terms and explain it from a pathological perspective which I have seen evidenced in some (not all) of my folks in one of my congregations.
I'm dealing with a parishioner who has a warped sense of salvation which stems from the 1940's when she came to Christ. Her background was nominal at best. Her parents were not church goers but they had their children 'done' in the local CofE. Meg (a fictitional name) somehow realised something was missing in her life and she gave her life to the Lord. Her theology was accepting that "the blood of Jesus" had covered her sins. The preaching she came under was the usual 'hell,fire and brimstone' stuff that was gradually disappearing from the pulpits of the day. She felt convicted that she was a sinful person through and through. On the cross, Jesus, cancelled that sin. Now she had the requirements of living a sin-free life, lest she fall back into the mire of despond.
Well, Meg still lives as if she is still living at the edge of that "mire of despond". She accepted Jesus as her Saviour to be saved from hell and destruction and to live the sin-free life. If she wavers from that walk with God, she'll be back in that quicksand in no time. Yep, the straight and narrow is the way, the truth and the life. Because if she doesn't walk it straight, she'll be back on the damned side of the ledger in no time at all.
Now what's the pathology here. It has very much to do with the concept of sin and the nature of God, and whether your theology begins with Genesis Chapter One ("In the beginning God ... and God saw that it was good") or Genesis, Chapter Two (Adam & Eve's fall from grace).
Meg believes she was born in sin. She does not believe that she was born in goodness and love. This is a common thread amongst older people in the church who sat under "hell,fire and brimstone" preachers. It took her years to join a church, because she thought she was never worthy enough to become a member of "God's Army". And from that never worthy enough to receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion. To my knowledge, she was never confirmed, but after Uniting made a member of the church so she could become an Elder!
Meg is the one person causing the most fuss in our church re. homosexuals. To such an extent that when our Moderator quoted from Eph. 2.14 (For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. - NRSV) she blew a gasket and shouted: Paul was talking about Jews and Gentiles, NOT about homosexuals!) The context of the quote, if you'll remember Dean Drayton's letter, was about Christians learning to live and get alongside each other, despite our differing views on sexuality. Meg cannot understand this.
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I'll swing away from Meg for a moment. My uncle-in-law Harry was of a similar vein. When I first met him (before I married) he was a "discarded" Methodist lay preacher. His little country church had been closed and he was out of a job. A friend of his invited him to join the Gideons and I was invited to come along with them for a bible-placing ceremony at a Motel connected to a club on the other side of the Murray River in NSW (He lived in Victoria). It was a strange and unsettling experience for poor Harry. Forget the fact that he crossed the river into New South Wales! <grin> He was going to a gaming venue - where they also sold alcohol - and goodness knows what sort of other things! Now Harry had always been a faithful member of the Independent Order of the Rechabites but he wasn't sure about this Gideon business of visiting hotels and motels placing bibles. You know what motels and hotels are used for! I was travelling in the back seat of the car (invited guest minister) with Harry as we travelled to and from the club motel. He kept on muttering out loud to himself: "You gotta stand by the word of God; if you don't stand by the word of God; there's nothing you can stand by!"
Uncle Harry (God bless his soul) is now on the other side of the river, and NOT in NSW! He's in heaven. Well done, Good and Faithful Servant.
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I've told you a couple of stories to outline, for the moment, the concept of sin that clings to so many of our older folks who will come out in droves to any rally that (depending on the subject matter) is trying to uphold the "straight and narrow way". Harry's got one hangup, Meg's got another. It doesn't make sense to any of them that God could be calling people to salvation without the requirement first of repenting of their sins before they can be saved.
I call this "Schmuck Theology". I used to be a proponent of this line of thinking. It's a sort of warped Calvinistic view where you are told "You are Schmuck, but God loves you anyway." The Good News is that Schmuck are loveable. Jesus loves Schmuck people! But the Guilt News is that once you'll repented of your Schmuck you've got to spend the rest of your life keeping it off of you! The Good News becomes Guilt News.
Contrast this with the opposite view, which I now hold: "God made you and he doesn't make Junk!" In spite of ourselves, God have been loved cherished and redeemed by God even when we were far away, caught up in our own self-centredness. The Good News is that even though we might feel like Schmuck at times, God has never viewed us this way. We are all children of God, everyone in the world. It's the "Jesus Loves me this I know" theology which we teach our children. Sin might cling onto us at times, but Sin cannot destroy the real you and me. For "If God be on our side, who can be against us?"
If you begin with the premise that all humanity was born in goodness and love, you will read the Scriptures one way. If you begin with the premise that all humanity was born in sin and depravity, you will read the Scriptures a different way.
When you get into a debate such as homosexuality it becomes a crisis of faith for some in our church to even conceive that a person with a different sexual outlook in life could be "wired underneath" with the goodness of God. Isn't homosexuality, gambling, smoking, drinking, drugs, etc. etc. all things of the devil? Now people are telling us black is white! And Gay is now OK? - It's too much!
We are dealing with a pathology where some (not all) of these people can't even conceive of an aboriginal person of being worthy of goodness. Some (not all) of them view aboriginals in the same way they vew gays. A sweet 95-year old person told me just the other day, "You know what they do up north? Mom's are feeding their children rat poison! I know it's true because Gladys told me and she's a good Christian person!
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There are a lot of layers that need unpeeling here. Taken to the extremes any theology can become pathological. But it boils down to the nature of God and our understanding of that God in whom we live and move and have our being.
There's the convenantal/confessional factor. The Good vs. Evil factor. God as Love vs. God as Judge factor.
Somehow as Christian people we can find ourselves swinging (or winging) through it all.
What happens to the "old time religion" person when the road that they once thought was "straight and narrow" enters into a new realm (or dimension) of understanding?
You end up with two groups of people, those joyfully daring to go where no one has dared to go before, those who are freaked out by the new journey (off the map and off the road) ... And those of us who want one foot in the air and one on the ground!
Christ's Blessings & Shalom,
John M.
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