themattscott

Ok, that one worked. Here's more of a response!

Personally, I think you hit the nail on the head with "a better relationship with God actually works its way out into other aspects of your life." This seems to be Jesus' whole point about being branches on the vine. If we live in the Spirit, we live out the Spirit.

I also understand that Christians sometimes think about sin in ridiculous ways. I remember the one time I visited your church (I believe it was March 10th, 2002--don't ask how I remember lol) there was a girl who shared a story at your Sunday morning youth group who was talking to the group about a conversation she had with a guy next to her on an airplane ride. She said that after several minutes, she asked if he was saved, and she kept trying to talk to him about Sin, Judgement, Hell, etc. "He just stopped paying attention to me and didn't listen," she said, "but at least now's he's accountable."

I remember thinking, "'Accountable'? What the heck is she talking about?" It struck me that even though he hadn't taken a word she had said to heart, she believed that she had done something worthwhile because (assuming that basic Way of the Master mentality) he somehow knew that what she was saying was true deep down inside. What this girl felt she had accomplished was making this man aware of his Sin--moving him from a state of ignorance about Sin to a place where he now openly had to confront it. This, if nothing else, was what justified her randomly talking to this man about "Salvation."

My experience in church leads me to believe that this mentality is pervasive: your job is to let people know about Sin. It doesn't matter how badly you present the Gospel because God will convict the person you're talking to through your efforts, despite how well or badly you may have made the delivery. What matters is that you do it: that you obey God and trust that once you've done your part, God takes care of the rest. Repeat this process over and over again and you will "win souls over to Christ."

I don't think I need to go into why I think this overemphasis on our personal Sin against God is way off (we're both agreed it's wrong, I' m sure). But I can see how, having been raised in that kind of environment and then matured out of that mindset, it gives you an advantage in seeing the ways that such views of Sin become a stumbling block. That kind of simplistic evangelistic model belief can be (I think it often is) destructive to the Gospel, and to various individuals' spiritual life. You start to interpret the offended interlocutor's less-than-enthusiastic response to your rude and abrupt lecture as "hardness of heart," which means you have to be even more empowered by the Spirit (i.e. say the same thing more emphatically and accusingly) so that you "plant a seed" in hopes that, through repeated encounters with people like you, that seed will be "watered." Then one day that seed will grow and the person in whom it has grown will suddenly fall on their knees in repentance to be "saved" from Hell. Then they go out and plant seeds in other people.

Then there’s the problem of “sin-centricity,” as you call it, that sometimes becomes the most detrimental to our spiritual well-being because we can attempt to avoid outward sinful actions, but we do it from internal sinful motives. A view seems to exist among many Christians that “Sin” is almost an actual thing. Such a view takes a metaphorical picture (e.g. “Sin” is not a “thing,” but an action that is talked about as a thing in the abstract; much like “a jog” is not a thing, though we talk of it like it were) for a literal reality. Some people seem to talk about alcohol as if the substance itself were tainted with “sin” that will infect us if we drink it. It completely reverses Jesus’ teaching that “it’s not what goes into a man that defiles him, but what comes out.”

What I find tremendously ironic about all of this is that it’s actually very Gnostic in its perceptions: physicality is bad, planting “seeds” in people’s hearts, focusing on getting out of the physical world and into Heaven: it’s far closer to neo-Platonism than most people realize. I think what you’ve put in your description of Sin is far closer to the literal reality of Sin. I have little doubt that the stereotypical Fundamentalist/Evangelical view of sin falls under the category of “every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God” (2nd Cor. 10:5) and is a danger that Paul would have adamantly rebutted, and so should we.
Yet, I can’t help but notice that there’s something in the NT that doesn’t seem to be taken into account in the statement, “Sin is…that which hurts us, or hurts those around us.” Let me just focus on the synoptic Gospels for a moment. If Sin is merely hurting those around us, what does it mean for Jesus to say that he “has authority on earth to forgive sins”? (Mark 2:10) What does a statement like this mean? Isn’t it presumptuous of Jesus to claim that he has authority to forgive sins? Unless he has some sort of ownership over the offenses done to others, what does it mean?
The whole Jewish understanding, with numerous Old Testament and New Testament references (it’s more an assumption than an explicit teaching) to back it up (just search “sin”), is that there is such a thing as sinning against God. While Jesus teaches about forgiving others, he doesn’t stop there. He speaks numerous times of how God will not forgive us if we do not forgive others. What does God have over us? The NT states, over and over again, that we do in fact sin against God. What Paul spells out in Romans Jesus simply assumes. we are in the wrong with God and need to be put in the right. For all of the errors I see in Evangelicalism, I think this much they have right: we are in the wrong, not just with our fellow man, not even primarily with our fellow man, but with God. And this state needs rectification.
I would say to be a “sinner” is to be in a state, a literal condition, out of which we produce sin. A sinner is one who reverts into sin, and to be a thing from which sin is made possible. Sinning, the action, is the result and consequence of being a sinner: not the other way around. I don’t see how you could make sense of the NT without recognizing this aspect of it. So I’m curious what your thoughts are on this aspect. Maybe you’ll address this in a later post?

I want to respond with something lengthy, but my last few comments have not shown up.