You keep using those words...

So, the other day I started to reread Saul of Tarsus’s (better known to the world as Paul) letter to the Romans. About five chapters in I realized that Paul uses several words over and over again to try and get across his ideas about Jesus, His Father, His Spirit, and what that all means for us.  These words are:

Sin,

Faith,

Repentance,

Salvation,

Law,

Grace,

Flesh.

I like to think of them as the seven words you’re never going to hear around the watercooler on a tuesday afternoon.  

Some of these words I’ve had some massive problems with over the years. I recall as a young tween challenging my evangelical sunday school teachers to give me a working definition of “Sin” that was more than just “The description of ‘bad stuff’ that I do which earns me unending retribution in eternal Hellfire.”  Because, how do you define ‘bad’ in this instance? I suppose you could point to the ‘Law,’ usually the 10 commandments for simplicity's sake, but then how would people be able to discern what was ‘bad’ prior to the giving of the ten commandments? Well, let’s suppose that the ‘Law’ in question then is written on people's hearts, like Paul seems to suggest. But even then, how subjective is that definition? Because how many times have I, in my own life, been able to convince myself that the bad I’m doing is actually good, and even the otherway around - that I’m bad even though I’ve actually done nothing wrong? (Anyone else who battles depression should recognize this sting all too well) Okay, so if “sin” is just breaking God’s Law, how do we apply a three thousand plus year old penal code to our modern society? Oh, there’s no shortage of people claiming that they can, but it doesn’t take a whole lot of critical thought to make plain that they’re just imposing their moral and cultural biases on a text which has little to nothing to do with our present day world.

We don’t live in a society which assumes that powerful elemental spirit beings occupy and hold sway over the events of the day. We don’t try to curry favour with said elemental power beings by buying them gifts, making them elaborate palaces, or feeding them daily with the best meat and veggies. Our political leaders are also not alleged descendants of these powerful beings. When we read our library of texts that are useful for unveiling the mystery of God for us, we read warnings on “idolatry” and immediately impose on such warnings an interpretation which speaks to us about the importance of not letting any material concern elevate itself above God in our life instead of what the authors of such warnings were really talking about, you know - forcing young girls to bend over and let the men of her village give it to her as a means to appease the elemental spirit being that held sway over the success of their crops. We scoff at such a thing, and well we should, but for them one crop failure was all it would take to wipe out a civilisation. And if you refused to be violated by the men of the village (like, as if, you would be given a choice in the matter) and the crops did fail, you knew exactly who would be sacrificed first - you and all your family who pissed off the fertility/crop god.  This is, in part, why the Torah was such an emancipating document for people in the ancient near east.  YHWH was very clear - there are no ‘elemental power beings’ in His way of living life, and you NEVER, EVER, try to relate to Him in the same way that the others try to relate to their elemental power beings.   We lose sight of that today, nearly three thousand years after the fact, because the people for whom these texts are still important so often use these texts as a pretext for denying others basic human rights and dignity.

Which brings me back to Sin.  Over twenty years ago now I asked the question “What is Sin?” Having found the “It’s bad stuff that breaks Gods Law” glib answer to be woefully anemic, I’ve never stopped trying to answer that question.

“So, James, how do you answer that question today?” I hear you asking. Glad you asked.

Sin is the description of either actions or mentalities that in turn produce actions which are born out of the fact that we cannot, or else do not, see/know/experience Jesus’s Father as He does. In other words, Sin is that which keeps me from knowing the Father. (and all resultant actions produced from that insecurity. The inference here being that knowing Jesus’s Father as He Knows Him produces a security in our core being which permeates all actions, interactions, reactions, as well as the ethos through which we view, perceive, and respond to all things in life, the inverse also being true.)

For me, this fits the Genesis three scenario perfectly: the first Sin wasn’t eating of the fruit that produced moral comparison, the good/bad tree. Sin wasn’t adding to God's instruction regarding the trees. (don’t touch vs do not eat). Sin wasn’t even the desire to be Elohim’s ourselves. These were all the results of the very first Sin, that is, these were all actions born of the fact that we lost sight of Who God was/is/has always been/will always be. We doubted, we got scared, we thought only of ourselves in that moment, we thought equality with God was something that we could reach out and grasp thus negating the need to ever be dependant on Him ever again. That reaching out and grasping wasn’t the Sin: it was the result of Sin, the result of losing the Face (the true face) of the Father. As a result, we didn’t stop breathing, keel over, and die in the biological sense. But we’ve been driven, non-stop, ever since by our fears, hurts, selfishness, and our need to force everyone else around us to bend to our will, our judgements. And if they will not bend willingly, we will enforce our will and dominance over them to ever increasing measures until someone dies, and the cycle continues.  Sin produces Death. Moral comparison, ie: I’m good, they’re bad, is the prime vehicle for justification for the death our Sin produces. Hell, it’s the primary foundation for most civil religions, that is the good/bad filter, and even North American Evangelical Christianity is defined so often by the like.  

Why do I say that losing the Face of the Father is Sin? Because of what Jesus says in John seventeen, simply that this is Eternal life: that they know you, the one true God/Father, and Jesus whom you sent. If knowing the Father is eternal life what therefore must eternal death be but not knowing Him? What did we lose in Genesis three? We didn’t just lose a garden of delight, we lost that which made the garden delightful, we lost the gardener. He came and stood right in-front of us, didn’t get angry, didn’t condemn, didn’t rain down fire and brimstone: He never changed! But something did, someone did, and it wasn’t Him. It was us who changed, it was us who lost sight of Him, us who thought the appropriate thing to do was to hide in the bushes from what must be a big and scary fire ball of holy anger at what we did. (Even though, quite plainly it was written, He came strolling in the Spirit and asked, simply, where we were.)   And in sheer defiance to everything Jesus ever taught us about His Father, we Christians still, TO THIS DAY, paint the Face of Jesus Father with a scowl and furrowed brow that hates our “sin,” our breaking his law (knowingly or otherwise) and will meed out punishment accordingly, which is the same for everything: murder, adultery, skipping sabbath/church, stealing a cookie from grandma's cookie jar, everything - eternal hellfire!!! UNLESS - someone assumes our debt in our place, by our saying the magic words “Jesus I’m a sinner, please come into my heart and be Lord of my life.” …’course, nobody asks who’s going to pay Jesus back now that He’s taken on our debt… moving on.

But things become very different if we take Jesus at His word, that no one - not Issiah, not David, not Moses, not Abraham, not anyone who came before who might have tried to give us an understanding for what Sin is - no one knows His Father ...but He does. And, if He reveals who His Father is, perhaps we ought to believe that He might be correct over and against the way we instinctively believe god must be like. Namely, that His Father is Good, giving good gifts, over and above anything that we could even hope to ask for.  This is the mind of Christ over and against the mind of Adam.

So, next time you read the word “Sin,” do not read that word as “the bad things I’ve done that require my death in Hell.” but rather read it as “the things I’ve done because I can’t see the face of the Father.”

I’ll give you some examples.

Romans 3:23

Typical Translation:

“for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

Typical Evangelical Interpretation:

“For everyone has done bad things that they deserve to languish in hell for all eternity for and (thus have) fallen short (as though we ever even could hope to be equal with) the glory (holiness, sinlessness, immutable light that will destroy all darkness of which we are) of God(Holy, austere, righteously angry toward any and all sin - those bad things that we can’t help but do, Judge).

The way I’m starting to read it:

“For all have sinned (read: Because everyone is incapable of seeing Jesus Father as He is) and fallen short (so we are not in a place to be able to see, perceive, or relate to Him where He’s at.) of the glory (the full and truest revelation of who He is) God(Father, Dad, Love.)

Romans 5: 12 ~ 21

NET translation:

So then, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all people because all sinned – for before the law was given, sin was in the world, but there is no accounting for sin when there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam until Moses even over those who did not sin in the same way that Adam (who is a type of the coming one) transgressed. But the gracious gift is not like the transgression. For if the many died through the transgression of the one man, how much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ multiply to the many! And the gift is not like the one who sinned. For judgment, resulting from the one transgression, led to condemnation, but the gracious gift from the many failures led to justification. For if, by the transgression of the one man, death reigned through the one, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ!

Consequently, just as condemnation for all people came through one transgression, so too through the one righteous act came righteousness leading to life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one man many will be made righteous. Now the law came in so that the transgression may increase, but where sin increased, grace multiplied all the more, so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

As interpreted through the evangelical ethos:

Basically, just read the above as it more or less is, and when you read sin read it as “everything bad we’ve done that proves we deserve to go to Hell.”

Another worthy note: the last paragraph, (verse 18, for those diehard fans) there’s a word “leading” that I’ve put in italics. I did that because it’s not in the original text. It’s been added in by translators. The only reason I can see as to why you’d put the word “leading to” in there is because if Christ “leads us to” life for all people, it gives the option that out of all people, not all will follow to life. The alternative, ie: the way it was originally written, has that through Christ’s one righteous act came the righteousness of life for all people, and that just can’t be because the whole evangelical premise is that our default mode of being is Hell and it’s up to us to make the choice to accept Jesus and thus escape eternal punishment in Hell. We can’t have the bible saying that Jesus’s actions are too all people! That’d undermine the whole system! >__<

And now, the way I’m starting to read things:

So then, just as our inability to see the Face of Jesus’s Father entered the world through one man and death through our inability to see the Father as He truly is, and so death spread to all people because no one is able to see the Father – for before the doctrines that define the Father’s way of living life were given, our inability to see the Father was everywhere in the Cosmos, but there is no accounting for the actions born from the terror our heart experiences when we can’t see Jesus Father when there is no defining the Father’s way of living life. Yet death reigned from Adam until Moses even over those who did not act out of this terror in the same way that Adam (who is a type of the coming one) purposely acted against the Father’s heart. But the abundantly affectionate gift is not like the willful act of defiance, the giving the Father the middle finger. For if everybody participates in the death brought about through the willful belief in the lies about the Father of the one man(Adam), how much more did the scandalous affection of God and the gift by the abundant expressive love of the one man, Jesus Christ, multiply to the many! And the gift is not like the one who couldn’t see the Face of the Father anymore. For although there is a judgment call regarding the actions of the one placing us firmly on the side that can not see the Father, but the scandalously affectionate gift supplied because of our many failures led to our being made right before His Face. For if, by the willful act of giving god the finger that the one man did, death reigned through the one(thanks Adam), how much more will those who receive the abundance of His scandalously affectionate love and of the gift of being able to see the Face of Jesus’s Father as Jesus sees Him and is seen by Him rule in our lives through the one, Jesus Christ!

Consequently, just as all people were proven to be incapable of seeing the Face of the Father through one willful act of giving god the finger, so too through the one act born out of knowing the Face of the Father as He truly is came the knowing the Face of the Father to life for all people. For just as through Adam’s inability to even hear the voice of the Father we all were made deaf, so also through the obedient action of one man who could hear the voice of the Father we all will see His Father as He sees Him and is seen by Him. Now the doctrines defining the Fathers way of living life came in so that our understanding of our inability to live up to that way of living may increase, but where our incapacity to see the Face of the Father increased, His scandalous affection multiplied all the more, so that just as our inability to see the Face of the Father ruled over us in death, so also His scandalously affectionate love will rule over us through our knowing the Face of the Father as He knows Him and is known by Him, bringing us into life without end through Jesus Christ the Lord of us all.

I started off this little blurb by listing the seven words you’re not going to hear in the office breakroom. I think it’s incredibly important for us who place a significant worth in the words of the Christian Bible to recognize that so many of these words we just don’t have a good working understanding for. We just don’t use them in everyday life. We don’t use them to describe the sports game we watched, the party we attended on the weekend, or the news article we read over breakfast. And if we don’t, those who don’t believe as we do certainly don’t.  

Growing up in the western church, first as evangelical and then as charismatic, there comes with the culture of the church a lot of presuppositions about the words that we defined our religion by. One of the things I’m grateful to the evangelical fundamentalist culture I grew up in for is a high love for understanding the truth of scripture. The irony that it is this very intense love for the truth of the words in our library of texts that are useful for revealing the mystery that have caused me to reject the very culture I was raised in is not lost on me. Knowing our history as I do I see that I’m not the first to experience this and will likely not be the last. I take some comfort in that.

I started off by citing seven words that I now have different filters for as I read them. They’re different from the definitions that I was raised in and acquired from various sources in my journey through the modern Charismatic expression of Christianity.

I hope to explore these things over the next couple of weeks.

Today, I started with “sin.” I hope to go through the rest of the list soon, and will likely add more words as I go along.  I look forward to this journey. I’m excited to see who I will discover walking according to The Way as well.