As I Was Saying…

Last week, I tried to suggest that the Christian doctrine of sin is rooted in an extremely lofty–rather than extremly low–view of human nature.  Today, I came across this bit in Debra Rienstra’s book that made the point much more clearly:

Maintaining a robust view of sin, paradoxically, is the best thing the world for self-esteem.  If we truly value ourselves, we will not be satisfied with some mild, namby-pamby version of good enough.  The highest standard of goodness is the one that most highly rizes our humanity, most fiercely insists that we were designed to be something so much greater than what we are.  Christianity is picky about sin because of the magnificence of its goal: full reconciliation with God–perfect peace, perfect shalom.  Nothing less can satisfy the longing in our hearts and God’s.

….As long as you think you are good enough right now or could be soon, you limit yoruself at best to a dim shadow of goodness in this life.  Christians believe that even the brightest of these dim shadows is still a shadow, still an address in the neighborhood of sin.  But you could have something infinetely better: an entirely new kind of life, made possible by God’s power.  Sin is the lock on the door to this life; you can’t open the oor unless you recgonize there’s a lock and that you need a key.  This is not a reason to be discouraged but a reason to be glad.  Now you know what kind of problem you’re facing.  (Debra Rienstra, So Much More, pg 58-59.) 

I hope it’s not a sin to say I wish I had written that.

Feeling Fine

 

“Well,” said the woman , “I don’t know what happened.  I felt fine.” 

The eighty-something year old woman was laying in a hospital bed.  Machines beeped, nurses scurried, tubes dripped all around her.  She was there because she’d taken a fall on the sidewalk outside of her home.  Her legs had simply given out under her.  And she was baffled.  After all, she felt fine.

Later that day, the shroud of mystery surrounding the fall was removed.  The doctor came in and rattled off a long list of ailments afflicting the old widow.  I can no longer remember them all, but somewhere on the list was a virus in her bloodstream, pnuemonia, dibitating diabetes, and a pair of kidneys that could hardly function without the help of machines.  She was hardly fine.  No matter how she felt.

Human beings, it would appear, have an incredible ability to adapt.  We can get used to almost anything.  Our bodies can be filled with cripplying diseas and yet we can insist that we are fine.  The standards we set for ourselves can be remarkably low. 

At the center of the Christian message is the good news that Jesus saves.  But sometimes, it’s hard to believe that we are people who are in need of saving.  Me?  Really?  But I feel fine.  I don’t cheat on my wife or look at dirty pictures on the internet.  I never tell lies (or at least, not big ones).  I give money to the church.  I’m a nice guy (most of the time).  Humble too.   Why would somebody like me need a savior? 

 And then I remember my old friend in the hospital.  And I think:  Maybe my standards are a little low, too.  Maybe there is a terrible sickness in my soul–a sicknesess that I’ve grown so accustomed to living with that I no longer notice it is there.  Maybe I’m grading myself on a curve–and the curve is being set by a bunch of people who are also anything but fine. 

In an oft quoted line from Isaiah 64:6, the prophet laments the human condition.  All of our righteous acts are like filthy rags, he says.  Its a rather grim assessment.  But it seems to me that within this statement their is a hope that human beings have the potential to be more than we ever imagined.  If even our best works are like a pile of old shop rags, what might we be like if we were being the people that God made us to be?  In his famous sermon, The Weight of Glory, CS Lewis said that if we were to see each other as God made us to be–living up to the glory of God rather than falling short of it–we would be strongly tempted to worship one another.  We would be so much more than “just fine”!

But of course, right now, we are not.  We are people in need of a savior.  And in Jesus Christ, that is exactly what we get.

Sin and Salvation

The essence of sin is we human beings substituting ourselves for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for us. We…put ourselves where only God deserves to be; God…puts himself where we deserve to be.  (John Stott, The Cross of Christ)

Sin 101

I’ve given myself the assignment of preaching on the 10 Commandments this fall. I’ve covered #1 (or at least preached a sermon on it) already–but just ran across another good bit from NT Wrigth that I wish I could have included somehow. It’s good fodder for thinking about the 1st Command, but also our approach to the rest of them:

When we begin with creation, and with God as creator, we can see clearly that the frequently repeated warnings about sin and death, referred to as axiomatic by Paul, are not arbitrary, as though God were simply a tyrant inventing odd laws and losing his temper with those who flouted them, but structural: humans were made to function in particular ways, with worship of the creator as the central feature, and those who turn away from that worship—that is, the whole human race, with a single exception—are thereby opting to seek life where it is not to be found, which is another way of saying that they are courting their own decay and death. That is to say, with the entire Jewish tradition, that the basic sin is idolatry, the worship of that which is not in fact the living creator God.(NT Wright, Paul, pg. 35)

The Trouble with Grace

I had been dreading the conversation for days. Weeks.  Months actually.

Someone I know was stuck in a rut. They were clinging to a certain sin (or their sin was clinging to them–I’m not always sure which way it goes). They didn’t want to give it up. They didn’t even want to categorize it as “sin.” And they certainly didn’t want me to put it in that category for them. So I’d been dutifully looking the other way. Pretending not to notice. Pretending it really wasn’t there.

I thought about saying something earlier. But really, who wants to be “that guy”? You know the one. The Christian who is “good” in the worst sense of the word (as Mark Twain said). The preacher whacking people over the head with his ten pound King James Version, whipping out the bullhorn to declare God’s judgement and wrath on those who have violated his commandments. After all, we are supposed to be people who model Christ’s love. People who show the world his grace.

But that, it seems to me, is the rub. We’re supposed to show the world grace. That’s a kingdom value. But does showing the world grace mean that we can no longer talk to the world (or to each other) about sin? Does it mean that the right thing for me to do with my friend would’ve been to look the other way?

That’s a popular idea. People often say things like: “More grace, less judgment”. What they mean is that yes, I should keep my mouth shut. I should accept my friends no matter what. I should show grace, not judgement.

And of course, there is something right and admirable about the impulse. But I have to admit, I think there is something slightly off base about it.

The problem is that when we put grace and judgment at odds with one another, we’ve confused grace and tolerance. Like grace, tolerance accepts everybody–regardless of what they’ve done or left undone. But unlike grace, tolerance refuses to deal with sin head on. Tolerance deals with sin by renaming it–by calling it something other than sin. Tolerance looks the other way, always minds it’s own business, lets every person do as s/he sees fit. Tolerance makes no judgements about right or wrong.

It’s an attractive approach. But it’s not grace.

In order to show grace (and not mere tolerance) you have to make a judgment that something is wrong. You have to acknowledge that a person (maybe even you!) needs to be forgiven, needs mercy, needs unmerited love and acceptance. That’s the trouble with grace. When you talk about grace, you also have to talk about sin.

 

 

 Here’s what Neil Plantinga says on the subject:

“For the Christian Church … to ignore, euphemize, or otherwise mute the lethal reality of the sin is to cut the nerve of the gospel. For the sober truth is that without full disclosure on sin, the gospel of grace becomes impertinent, unnecessary, and finally uninteresting.” (Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, p. 199)

So what does that have to do with my friend?

Well, after a lot of hand wringing, pacing around my office, and–yes–prayer, I decided I had to have that difficult conversation. I decided I needed to tell him that–from what I understood of God’s word and will for his life–what he was doing was sin. I had to make a judgment. But I also I had to do it in a way that was not judgmental. I had to do it in a way that was full of the fragrance of Christ. A way that showed him unconditional love, mercy, acceptance of Jesus Christ despite what he was doing wrong.

I wish it was easy–like tolerance. But it wasn’t. Sadly, there’s no handbook for these things. No neat and tidy procedure that ensures we’ll get it right. Like most people, I had to work things out within the messy context of relationship. And like most people, I stumbled and fumbled. Like most people, I didn’t get it all right. But I tried. By the grace of God, I tried.