Well, here we are. Talkin’ about SIN.
I can almost guarantee this talk about sin will likely be different than what you’re expecting so please read on.
First, some things need to be defined.
- Sin: The short definition: breaking God’s law. Short words: wrong, wrongdoing, transgression, offense - all against God. And this would include the sins of commission and omission (either you did something wrong - commission - or you failed to do something right when you knew you should have done it and you didn’t. James 4:17
A more detailed answer, in Biblical context is here. I re-read the definition given in the link by gotquestions.org several times. I have a few quibbles, likely just semantics, with it and I disagree with Charles Ryrie (of the Ryrie Study Bible - given as a link at the end of the article) about 99.9% (give or take a few percentage points) because he is a premillennialist and all his theology is thus from his frame of reference - oh, yeah, and that makes it wrong. Still, the answer provided is pretty good so...caveat lector.
- Morality/Judeo-Christian ethics: A set of principles by which people differentiate between right and wrong; good and bad.
Neither morality nor Judeo-Christian ethics are absolute, despite what you may have heard and/or believe. They are largely man made and change with the times.
If one were to compare today’s laws and morality to colonial America’s they would be shocked. Really. If morality and JC ethics are absolute then we would still be functioning under the mores of the late 1600’s to mid 1700’s. Judeo-Christian ethics, while likely “functioning” without a name for quite some time, only got its name in the 1950’s.
Holy/Holiness: Strong’s Greek Dictionary defines Holy as an adjective that means sacred, different from a thing or unlike a thing. Secular sources define it variously as dedicated or consecrated to God, sacred.
Holiness is the state of being Holy.
- Repent (to)/Repentance: Biblically, Repent means to change one’s mind about Jesus and that true repentance or evidence that one has repented is that they change their actions as a result of their changed thoughts. No real quibbles with gotanwsers.org this time except for Ryrie (see Sin above).
In What if You Believe You Don’t Sin, Part 1 I wrote about how we generally perceive sins as big, bad things that usually sinners did and Christians did not. And the reason Christians get a pass is because they have “repented of their sins. Well, huh uh.
Here’s a little meditative exercise:
Take a piece a paper.
Write down things that describe you,
Your role in the family,
what you like to do to relax or in your spare time,
organizations you belong to, etc.
But write down EVERYTHING,
Provided you destroy the information after reading this post or save it and hide it somewhere secure (you know, like your diary) for your future reference you can and should be brutally honest.
Whether you consider gambling a sin or not - and believe me, some Christians do - if you and your spouse live in a town where casino gambling is legal and you like to hit the casino(s) on Friday night after the casino’s all you can eat crab legs buffet AND over the course of the evening, you have a few “adult beverages,” while losing big at the penny slots or craps or blackjack - write it down.
Married and you like to get your kink on? Write it down. Or maybe you’re unmarried but you have a serious jones for kink. Write it down.
Unmarried and have a “friend with benefits” who may or may not come to church with you? Write it down.
Have a twitter account or Facebook or both and/or many other social media accounts and in your profile you say you’re Christian (or proudly brag - you wouldn’t believe what I have seen), and yet you spent most of your online time in those accounts saying really mean, nasty, ugly, bullying things about people in Congress you hate or the President?
If strangers wrote about your children what you write about your senators, representatives and the President you’d be on the six o’clock news, tearful, begging how could anyone be so cruel. Write it down. It’s you, isn’t it?
And presumably if you’re online bashing congressmen or the President or for that matter, advocacy groups that just make your panties bunch so tight it hurts;
if you get your kicks from posting political sentiments from radio talk show guys, Fox News, MSNBC (you liberals, you are rather few and far between and tend to be rather quiet but when you get your nasty freak on - Katy, bar the door! You aren’t hot, you are smokin’) you are a proud member of a political party.
To avoid quibbling about membership, this also includes if you believe in what a particular group or party believes because they think like you, etc. - write it down.
Do you avoid a certain checker or bagger at the grocery store because you just generally dislike them, hate them even, because they’re incompetent or something else that offends you - they’re black, gay, have functional cerebral palsy, have BO/poor grooming habits/bad breath/horrific dentition, American Indian, Indian Indian or looks like someone from South Asia, Hispanic, you suspect they’re Jewish or Muslim or and/or they’re the hated “illegal immigrant,” and there are still virulent Catholic haters among us - write it down.
Do you complain about service from fast food restaurants (Who remembers Joe Pesci’s rant in Lethal Weapon 2)? Write it down.
Do you love to gossip? Write it down.
Getting the hang of it, getting the drift? Write down everything that describes you. Check it twice, just like Santa.
We’re NOT looking for sin on this list.
Really.
We’re looking at you as a whole person, warts and all.
And while you may not think you got warts, somebody likely does (the person on the Interstate in rush hour traffic you flipped off, the drive thru guy at Mickie D’s that you harangued for five minutes because of something). If they live with you, maybe they love you too much to tell you. You know?
Ok, pens down.
You may look at your list and decide that as sin goes, like I assessed of myself in Part I, you do pretty good. And as far as morality goes, you’re at least as solid as L.A. or San Francisco sitting atop the San Andreas fault.
Our perception filters, when it comes to us and others, are set rather high or wide. I say that our sin and moral filters are set to macro. We look at the actions, deeds, rather than thoughts and words.
Actions are big things we can see. Thoughts can be very, very small, very complicated and very secret.
This quote has been floating around the Internet/Facebook/Twitter et al with various attributions:
“We judge others by their behavior. We judge ourselves by our intentions.”
Yep, we see that bad, immoral, sinful behavior that someone else is doing (aka, judging others to which Mother Teresa said, “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”)
BUT if our intentions are high enough, good enough (as we judge ourselves) we may not even notice our own sin and what we may notice is generally handled by either, “Father, forgive me,” or “I didn’t mean to...,” or both.
Of course Jesus says it is our thoughts, what comes from our hearts, that drive our deeds. (Matthew 12:35, Matthew 15:17-20, Luke 6:44-46, Proverbs 4:23, Jeremiah 17:9-10)
Look at your list. Look hard.
Now consider repentance. Pretend for a moment that absolutely nothing you wrote down about yourself is a sin. Still, I’m not talking about repenting from sin. I’m talking about repenting of your life, of the way you think which causes/governs what you do.
IF to be a disciple, to be saved by the grace of GOD, you must repent and repentance means to “change your mind,” “turn toward GOD,” effectively do a 180 with your life because you are a NEW CREATURE (2 Corinthians 5:16-20) THEN what on your list has to go, has to change?
If you study 1 & 2 Corinthians, Romans and Galatians about the rights and responsibilities of a believer/disciple and the rights of the “weaker brother” you may find that an occasional night out, as long as you do not cause a brother to sin, isn’t something that needs changing.
That study may show you it’s ok to get your freak on, your kink on, engage your jones every now and again - considering the weaker brother and whether you may cause someone else to sin.
YOU MAY find in your study that there may quite a few recreational/relaxational things you can do - again considering the weaker brother.
Holiness and Love is at play here. Love does no harm to its neighbor. Everyone in the world is our neighbor.
Holiness we are called to. Holiness which is absolute and constant as the sunrise.
With your (newfound?) freedom in Christ, there is a greater care to exercise, with those who profess the Faith and with you toward members of your own congregation or who are professing Christians at work and know you’re one too. You have a greater care around your immediate and extended family whether they are Christians or not.
But.
There’s all the other things:
- Your hurtful words online.
- Your cynicism and hatred disguised as patriotism or religion.
- Your love and general carelessness at passing on false Bible teaching that among other things, belittles both man and GOD, and hurts others spiritually.
- Your service to two masters: The loved first one, being this world and this life. The hated, despised second one, the one you pledged your feudal hommage to, Jesus Christ. (Reading my twitter feed is simply disgusting beyond words from all the insults and hubris of the proud Republi-Christians!).
- Your general state of complaint,
- Your unabashed pride in being a member or fellow traveller of some political party or political or religious faction created by its founder’s love of sin disguised as love of GOD.
Tell you what. You meditate on your list. If you want to make the time, dust off the Bible and do some reading in Corinthians, Romans and Galatians about rights and responsibilities and we’ll (hopefully) finish this up in Part III.
Until then,
May the Peace of Christ Be With you,
† Scott, V.D.M., ev
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