Week 25: Rethinking What Happened (3)
We saw last week, that through our Christian history, there have been many ways we have understood the words “Jesus died for our sins.”
As is true of all reality when we encroach on the territory of God, the Divine, the Transcendent, we have trouble talking about things clearly. The doctrine of the ineffability of God tells us that God is a reality beyond our ability to formulate in thought or word, so when we do talk about God (essential to the human experience), we are always talking about that that can’t be talked about. Consequently, it makes sense that the people who experienced the Jesus-event, the life of Jesus, the death of Jesus, and the category-blowing experiences after his death had trouble talking about it, had trouble assigning meaning to it. They tried their best to suggest several ways to give meaning to their experience of life overcoming death, of sin being defeated by love and truth, but over the years, the many ways were reduced to one. Especially since 1895, the most common way conservative Christians have tried to make meaning out of this moment in history has been called the substitutionary theory of the atonement.
James Hall Brooks: Niagara Bible Conference
At a bible conference in Niagara, NY in the years approaching the new century, a group of Christians articulated 14 points of belief. As often happens when a fundamental shift is occurring in a society, the rise of science and biblical criticism was causing many Christians to feel they were losing their roots. Responding to what they saw as an attack on the basics of their faith, the Niagara Bible Conference posited 14 core points; “fundamentals,” they called them. The first 5 of these core doctrines have been called the Magna Carta of fundamentalism.
One of those five core fundamentals reduced the many historical ways Christians have talking about Jesus saving us from our sins to just one, Christ’s vicarious, blood-atoning death as fulfillment of the Old Testament offering system for the forgiveness of sin.
We saw last week, that this “substitutionary theory of the atonement” is problematic. It has some often unconsidered implications that merit some rethinking. Last week, I said we’d begin that rethinking by considering what sin is. Hopefully, if we can deepen our understanding of “sin,” we can deepen our understanding of the words “Jesus died for our sins.”
We began this section looking at the core motivation behind all religion: how to deal with the reality that we humans carry two natures, nobility, virtue, goodness, the very image of God nature on the one hand, and ignobility, wickedness, badness, the very image of a depraved nature. The latter, we said, is not the deepest reality about ourselves, but it is a very real part of us, a part we must deal with every day. Our religion demands we address this dilemma which we have come to call “sin.”
Over the years, we’ve come to make a distinction between lower case “s,” “sins,” and upper case “S,” Sin Nature. Sin Nature, we’ve said, is what truly separates us from God. That phrase “separation from God,” has become a mantra of sorts for us; one, I suggest, we should keep. Of course we have to think clearly about what “separation from God” means, but in the end, I believe we’ll want to keep it.
As we consider the two meanings of “sin,” it is obvious that lower case “sins” were not deal-breakers for Jesus. People who did sex and drugs and rock and roll; liars, cheaters, thieves; these were the people he associated with. Frailty, failure, adultery, betrayal, these were just not big things to Jesus or even to Paul. To be sure, the writings of Paul discourage us from doing bad acts. Almost every letter, he’s encouraging virtue, discouraging vice. However, he couldn’t have been clearer, that God is full of grace for all kinds of sins, all kinds of failures, all kinds, all the time.
No, the truly problematic Sin, we’ve been taught, is the “Sin Nature;” something inside us that separates us from God, something inside us that separates us from God-Love, from GoWd-Life, from God-Thoughts, and from God-Instincts.
Here’s how we’ve told the story. God made you with the capacity to sin, and the knowledge that you would sin, and then when you did sin, he turned his back on you, requiring a stiff punishment for you, or for an innocent man in your place. A severe penalty had to be exacted in order to make you acceptable; death. This severe penalty had to be meted out, because God requires death when sin happens. And this was not just death to our bodies, but spiritual death, eternal death, death we call separation from God. You’ve done bad, and the law of the universe is that bad must be punished. The wages of sin, after all, is death, and so you’re in for it. Because you have sinned, you must be punished by separation from God.
God is pure and perfect and cannot abide to be in the presence of sin, therefore God cannot abide you, for you are sinful. Your sin has earned for you, the rejection, the alienation, and the eternal separation from God. You made our bed, and now you have no choice but to lie in it. All have sinned, and all must pay the piper.
And that’s the sequence of events that comes to our mind when we think about our story of sin. The human race did a bad thing and must suffer separation from God for doing it.
This way of thinking about sin demands we somehow become different from our fundamental nature before we can be acceptable to God. As long as we hold this view of sin, however we tell the story of Jesus saving us, it must include doing something to change our essential state of being. We must be morphed from our unacceptable state, to an acceptable state; a change in our fundamental essence.
It is this demand that necessitates the magic embodied in the substitutionary atonement. God, by punishing Jesus, changes our fundamental nature. And with this way of giving Jesus’ death meaning, comes the unspoken implications of God’s heartlessness, and the depiction of a God who treats people like we wouldn’t treat a dog.
So maybe there’s an assumption about sin that triggers this line of thinking in our story, that if changed, would allow us to come at the story differently. What if Sin (capital “S”) is not an extension of sins (lower case “s”)? Even though we say they’re different, we have an unspoken assumption that they’re intimately related. They’re bad acts, bad thoughts, bad motives. The lower case version is when we act them out, the upper case version is an infection of that badness inside us that can’t help but leak out.
But what if lower case sin and upper case Sin Nature are not simply extensions of one another? What if they are fundamentally different in nature, not even apples and oranges, but apples and rocket-ships? What if upper case Sin, is any illusory belief that separates us from God, like the belief that I am not loved by God, or the belief that because I’ve sinned, God cannot accept me, or the belief that I am not love-worthy? What if Sin Nature is the shame that lies at the core of these mis-beliefs? What if Sin Nature is a collection of compensatory strategies we employ to make ourselves OK in the face of this debilitating, existential shame? Like the strategy to maintain control of people, things, and circumstances to fool myself into thinking I’m OK? Or the strategy of making everyone pleased with me, to prove to myself that I’m OK? Or the strategy of creating security for myself by gathering enough money, enough insulation, enough of anything, so I feel safe?
What if Sin nature, is in fact, illusion and not the innate proclivity to do bad? Even more specifically, what if Sin Nature is the compilation of illusions that separate me from the energizing power of Divine Life, separates me from the wisdom of the Indwelling Spirit of God, separates me from the indwelling presence of Divine peace and joy and goodness and virtue? What if this is the Sin from which I need to be saved?
Instead of seeing badness causing God to separate himself from me, we could see illusion and false belief about The Way Things Are as the thing that separates us from God.
This is not the most common way Christian people see things, but consider this. Our tendency not to see things this way, can be directly traced to our visceral sense that ours is an anthropomorphic God, a God created in the image of humanity.
As we’ve discussed in earlier sections, this is not our religion’s story, but it creeps into our instincts, even our scriptures, at every turn. God is like us, God is made in man’s image, so of course, we imagine God rejecting us for sinfulness. It is, after all, how we treat one another. It is how we feel when somebody sins against us. So, if God is a projection of ourselves, of course that’s what God will do.
But again and again, our saints and prophets and sages and saints have all said it is not so. Our God cannot be contained in the metaphor of being a human. Sure, we use the metaphor of king, ruler, father, mother, and lover, but these cannot contain the vastness and different-ness of God.
So when the scriptures teach us, not that God loves us, but that God is, by God’s very nature, made up of Love, and when our scriptures teach us, not that God parses out mercy, but that God is by God’s very nature made of mercy… and forgiveness, and grace, and goodness, and kindness, if we drop our human images of God, a very different story begins to unfold.
In this telling of the Story, we are not separated from God because God has just had it up to here with our sin. We are not separated from God as punishment for being bad. Instead, separation from God is a function of us being sold a bill of goods, deceptions that tell us up is down, black is white, in is out. We’ve been deceived into thinking we are not made in God’s image, we’ve been deceived into believing that we must earn our love, that we are not intrinsically love-worthy. We believe it is not true that we, simply because we exist, are the apple of the eye of God, the apple of the eye of All That Is, the eye of The Ground of All Being. We believe that the very universe does not sing forth our love-worthiness, that the very atoms do not pulsate with our worth and preciousness before God. And behind this mask of deception, this mask of illusion, this mask of erroneous belief that separates us from God, this Sin Nature, we learn to cope with reality Not As It Truly Is. And of course, that just doesn’t work.
We live our lives trying to make up down, in out, and white black, so of course we are frustrated, of course we become afraid, of course we feel shame, of course we have to compensate, of course we create strategies to make life work, and of course those strategies don’t work. In our frustration, our fear, our shame, we hurt others, we have hurtful thoughts toward others, we do hurtful acts toward others, and we do sins.
Out of the illusion of Sin Nature, emanates the bad words, thoughts, and acts that we call “sins.” But, it is the illusion itself that is the culprit, it is the illusion itself that separates us from God, and it is the illusion itself that is the Sin. It is the illusion itself that Jesus dies to save us from.
Now, next week we’ll talk about some other historical ways Christians have told the story of Jesus saving us; ways that do not require God to have been repulsed by the sin he created us with the capacity to commit; ways that never required an innocent man to suffer so that God’s honor could be salvaged, or the penalty of death be paid.
October 16th, 2010 at 7:58 pm
So the Gospel, as has been previously presented, has changed individuals, has changed societies, has been followed by signs and wonders, and is an accumulation of thousands of years of people grappling with themselves and the Transcendent,etc. I’m hearing you say that all that is nice, but dated and besides, it has its down side – it causes developed societies to become neurotic. I hear you saying that this new way of looking at the Transcendent eliminates the down side and keeps the up side. What I hear you suggesting to replace the old way is “the Good News is that you are deluded if you think that you are alienated from God. You’re not – be happy.”
(I’m envisioning you saying this to an audience and them standing up and throwing eggs at you.)
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October 16th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
Okay – I got it – we’ve got God playing the Bad Cop/Good Cop routine – the Bad Cop is the fundamental way of doing God and this new way of looking at God is the Good Cop way of doing God. The Bad Cop has gotten a whole group of people talking to God but there is another whole group that it turns off – so this Good Cop Way will get another whole group of people talking to God.
Yeah for Bad Cop/Good Cop – or is that just me being flippant!
(Now I really am worried about what you will be saying in CA. If I know you and understand you and I’m saying “hmmmm”, what will they say!)
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Doug Hammack Reply:
October 27th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
You say I’m saying, “The Good News is that you are deluded if you think you’re alienated from God.”
Yes, sort of…
We haven’t gotten yet to the powerfully trapping and destructive nature of Sin itself. While I would suggest that alienation from God is more illusion within us, than a rejection by God of us, that is not to suggest that we are not hopelessly trapped in Sin. We are! Sin Nature is a dead end, and is destroying us. We need to be saved or we will die. We need to be saved or the wages of sin will swallow us.
Sin Nature is horribly toxic and destructive, and the human condition is to be trapped in it.
I am saying that the idea that Sin’s horribleness is not the kind of horribleness we’ve said it is. We’ve said that God made us with the capacity for it, and the foreknowledge that it would consume us, but then rejects us for having it. I’m not buying that.
No, just as I’ll say that there is something else going on when we say “Jesus saves us from our sins” than the substitutionary atonement, I’ll suggest there is something other than God rejecting us going on when we say the wages of sin is death.
There might still be a stoning in the works, but at least it won’t be for saying Sin won’t kill us.
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October 21st, 2010 at 12:38 pm
[...] RethinkingOurStory A One-Year Project: Retelling the Christian Story « Week 25: Rethinking What Happened (3) [...]
October 21st, 2010 at 4:02 pm
I’m hearing tones of gnosticism in what you’ve written to my own understanding of the term. We do not need to be forgiven for the worldly acts we commit (primarily), but saved from the separation from God and Love that incites these acts. I am open to that way of thinking. If the old thinking is that God is perfect and therefore we are shunned by him because of our imperfectness and can only come him through Jesus, does this new way imply that God is imperfect? Or is to say either one an inappropriate personification of God? And where does that leave Jesus? I’m interested to hear your thoughts.
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Doug Hammack Reply:
October 27th, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Sorry for the delay, Katherine. A couple of travel weeks have disrupted my normal schedule.
I’m not sure I know what the word “perfect” means in this context. Does Divine perfection imply the necessity of remaining separate, untainted by contact with imperfection? Maybe. But one could also make a case that “perfect Love” is able to love perfectly, even love imperfection, and in the loving, invite imperfection close to itself, and in the Loving, bring healing, deliverance, and freedom to the imperfection.
Also, I think you’re on to something when you ask about the personification of God. If God is a guy, then perfect guys don’t hang around with imperfect guys, or they quickly become imperfect. Yep, I think you’re right on that one. If we allow our “God is like us” instincts to go away, we can wonder if perfect Love is able to love imperfection perfectly.
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October 21st, 2010 at 6:58 pm
The implications of a re-interpretation of the organized religion of Christianity through this lens are staggering.
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Doug Hammack Reply:
October 27th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Expand! Staggering how?
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Nichole Cella Reply:
November 1st, 2010 at 4:04 pm
It seems that the Christian church has been running around for a long time convincing people that they are bad at their core, that they must recognize this before they can be saved, then they have to stop being bad. Since they can’t really stop being bad, the church promotes the need to always be connected to a church because otherwise they will slide back into their “true”, “bad” nature.
If we’re all good at our core, our truest nature is good, what does the church then have to offer?
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Doug Hammack Reply:
November 16th, 2010 at 5:58 pm
The church has community to offer.
Though the deepest part of us is made in the image of God, and the Sin-Nature is a lesser part of us, the lesser part is pretty powerful. Illusion goes deep!
So, we offer one another… on another.
We find God better together than we do alone.
Nichole Cella Reply:
November 21st, 2010 at 2:15 pm
The way you use “community” and the way I’ve experience “community” growing up in the church are clearly 2 very different things. Recovery from the illusions propped up by my “community” has been extensive and deep. How do you fix something broken with something broken?
Doug Hammack Reply:
November 23rd, 2010 at 6:00 pm
We fix broken community the same way we fix our broken souls. We listen carefully for the Indwelling Voice, and we obey tenaciously. We trust the Divine Spirit to lead us on a path of redemption and recovery. (and it’s been my experience, that the process sure takes time!)
October 25th, 2010 at 4:53 am
I’m hearing… man believing God is holding us to a standard man cannot achieve (man without sin, like Jesus, or “perfection”) is making man judgmental toward God as well as every person we meet. And I see if we are looking for the sin to be able to satisfactorily evaluate each other negatively.. we are loosing sight of finding the Divine in each other. Once we stop believing God is about to strike us down for every little thing we do… accept Him as love, grace, forgiveness… and stop worrying about that separation thing.. we might be able to relax & find not only our own Divine self but the Divine in each other… Sin & fear may be blocking a whole section of ourselves that could help us build constructively & find the love & grace in our own nature more effectively… and find it in others.
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Doug Hammack Reply:
October 27th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
You always see the relational implications of theological constructs, Tricia!
I like you!
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October 29th, 2010 at 3:04 am
Doug, my comments cover lesson 25 and 26, but I haven’t figured out how to post on the 26, so I will do it here…
It seems like we have accomplished much in deconstructing fundamental thinking to better understand the original meaning of scripture. And in a few cases it appears that we have developed modern maxims that are both true and relevant today…perhaps the best example has been, ‘It’s more important to focus on God than on sin, because God can help us overcome sin.
However, I’m not sure that I follow the thinking that ‘Big S’ sin is different from ‘Little s’ sin concept and wonder if we may be reconstructing a little more than is really there?
In lesson 25 you wrote “As we consider the two meanings of “sin,” it is obvious that lower case “sins” were not deal-breakers for Jesus.”
However, I can’t find examples of this concept supported by scripture. In fact Jesus seemed to indicate the opposite saying essentially all sin is equally bad… perhaps the best example is “But I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Matthew 5:28
Of course you are absolutely correct that Jesus did hang out with sinners…but he didn’t indicate that it was because their sin hadn’t reached ‘deal-breaking’ proportions. He made it clear that he saw himself as a Doctor, visiting the sick, with access to the cure they needed. “Healthy people don’t need a doctor–sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”Mark 2:17
And after dealing with the consequences of sin, and helping others understand that we are all vulnerable, he clearly expected sin to be stopped (i.e. his instructions after saving that adulterous woman that she she should ‘go and sin no more’.)
I’m wondering if it’s possible that the complex guilt and forgiveness issues that humans face causes us to over think this issue. It may seem silly, but perhaps we could learn from an analogy with animals because there are less variables. For example:
We’ve adopted 5 homeless cats over the years, and as luck would have it, the youngest and smallest cat thinks of himself as Alpha and takes out his aggression on the others on a regular basis. The little cat is extremely friendly to humans, and get’s along ok with the others most of the time because three of the group have figured out how to work within his system.
But unfortunately, the little aggressive cat often attacks our oldest and sweetest cat with vengeance.
Of course any time we are around, we intervene and scold the aggressive cat and he skulks away, clearly aware that we are unhappy with him. We understand that he is following his evolutionary programmed natural instincts so we don’t come down too hard on him, however it happens every day. (BTW we’ve tried lots of behavior modifications with little success).
After a scolding, the little cat slinks around, he is clearly unhappy with us, he remains ready to attack the old cat at the drop of the hat, and he is incapable of being consoled or redirected when he is in this mode.
Of course we love the little aggressive cat very much, but he has no way of understanding that we are punishing him for the good of the family and ultimately for his own good. He only seems to know that he can’t get away with what he wants and this makes him unhappy.
Of course he is actually creating the barrier by doing something that comes natural to him and he often misses out on the good things that we want to do with him because he isn’t willing to submit to a higher power.
In my mind, the ‘natural cat’ is much like the ‘natural human’ with one major exception…we have scripture and the opportunity to ask the Holy Spirit to help us identify and overcome our natural inclinations.
Jesus described this best in John 16 8-11 “When he (the Spirit) comes, he’ll expose the error of the godless world’s view of sin, righteousness, and judgment: He’ll show them that their refusal to believe in me is their basic sin; that righteousness comes from above, where I am with the Father, out of their sight and control; that judgment takes place as the ruler of this godless world is brought to trial and convicted.”
So unless we discount these and other similar statements that Jesus made, it appears that:
1.Sin does create a chasm between us and God
2.Jesus came to us to help us overcome the barrier and he is willing to tolerate our behavior while he is healing
3.And ignoring other faiths for this discussion, God provided at least 2 paths to cross this chasm for those who want to be with him (keeping Hebrew law, or the cleansing process via Jesus and the Holy Spirit).
But I’m not seeing anything that differentiates “big S” from “little S”. Is it possible we’re making this a bit more complex than necessary, or am I missing something?
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Michael S Reply:
December 6th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Doug-
I guess it’s more than ironic that I bumped into this translation today of 1John 5:16-17
“For instance, if we see a Christian believer sinning (clearly I’m not talking about those who make a practice of sin in a way that is “fatal,” leading to eternal death), we ask for God’s help and he gladly gives it, gives life to the sinner whose sin is not fatal. There is such a thing as a fatal sin, and I’m not urging you to pray about that. Everything we do wrong is sin, but not all sin is fatal.
18-21We know that none of the God-begotten makes a practice of sin—fatal sin.”
I guess I’ve read this 100 times before and didn’t understand it…frankly, it’s still confusing considering the other scripture referenced above.
But does appear there is a difference is fatal and non-fatal sin so thanks for getting my eyes opened to look for it.
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Doug Hammack Reply:
December 7th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
this is interesting. and what do you think are the fatal forms of sin?
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December 7th, 2010 at 4:05 pm
Absolutely no idea (other than blaspheming the Holy Spirit)- I imagined you would explain this from the “big S, little s” POV.
In my mind, sin is sin is sin…we all fall short. We either “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” or we don’t. We’ve talked about the teaching model that I gravitate towards… we’re either walking towards the gate or away from it… but we always have the last second opportunity to walk on through (as the thief on the cross).
Of course Jesus said that blaspheming the Holy Spirit was the only unpardonable sin, but that doesn’t seem to be the fatal sin addressed in 1John, right?
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