Developing Language Around Sin

I hated country music growing up. I've always been a rock fan at my core....indie, folk and alternative. When I moved to Pennsylvania in 2010 I had no idea I'd slowly move from hatred to tolerance to enjoyment. Some country is still atrocious, but there's plenty of good stuff too. I can't help myself queuing up a country playlist while grilling on a Friday night.

I was surprised how much faith and church were brought up in secular Country music. It's cringe worthy theology, that's for sure! A song by Morgan Wallen entitled I Wrote The Book, is a perfect example. After talking about how he's written the book (a.k.a. he's the expert) on how to hunt, fish and pull trailers behind a truck he turns his attention to another book, the Bible:

But there's one that lays by the lamp on the nightstand

One that says don't cuss and don't fight

Or let the bottle turn you into a different man

But, damn, if I don't do it every Friday night

Those get you into Heaven letters in red

Ain't gettin' read enough to keep me on a straight line

These lyrics are par-for-the-course when it comes to country music theology. Christianity is about avoiding certain bad behaviors so that our soul goes to heaven when we die. Sadly, sometimes theology in the local church isn't much better. Many raised in the church are unlearning a Christian story primarily about refraining from certain destructive behavior (particularly sex, drugs, alcohol, language) so that God would let us go to heaven when we die.

Not only does this story get boring, it lacks the power to transform lives. And it hardly resembles the story the Bible is telling.

The Biblical story is about a God who creates (a good world of shalom), loves (particularly humans created in God's image), calls (gives humans a vocation of maintaining shalom and representing what God is like) and restores (sin wreaks havoc on God's good world and God is at work repairing shalom and restoring what's been broken).

The two trees in the center of the Garden of eden - the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - are a monument to God's non-coercive love. Humans are given the dignity of choice.

The trees offered the choice between trusting God’s vision of flourishing or our own. The first humans made a tragic decision to grab for wisdom and flourishing on their own terms. Sin and evil entered God's good world and begin to wreak havoc.

After Adam and Eve rebelled against God's instructions we read this in Gensis 3:8-13:

When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among the trees. Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.” “Who told you that you were naked?” the Lord God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?” The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.” Then the Lord God asked the woman, “What have you done?” “The serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it.”

In studying this passage recently I was struck with the tragedy of the moment. For the first time I felt an aching sadness when reading this part of the story. It’s my default mode to approach these verses intellectually and theologically without entering into the rest of my body. Reading several commentaries helped me experience the scene in a new way.

The Hebrew word for "cool" is also translated "wind" and "spirit". It's a word that illustrates God's intimate presence. Further, most biblical scholars consider God walking about in the garden as the first theophany in scripture; a moment when God takes a particular form in order to be more fully experienced by human senses. With these details in view, a vision of total freedom and intimacy between God and humans is presented. How wonderful that must have been. It reminds me of the intimate trust, innocence and love a marriage once had that's been ripped away by disloyalty. It's a gut-wrenching, emotional scene.

As God engages Adam and Eve with questions there is much to learn.

God's graciousness

God responds to human rebellion in a tender and relational way. I've tended to jump a few verses ahead where the punishment and implications of sin are spelled out by God. But God first responds with questions....

Where are you?

Who told you that you were naked?

What have you done?

God’s questions call the first humans out of hiding, shame and fear and into relationship and connection. God’s not asking out of ignorance. God’s inviting them into repentance and repair.

When picturing God in this scene, some of us envision a hot-headed parent in need of anger management. But let's remember that Jesus clearly and perfectly reveals the God of Genesis 1-2. In Luke 19 we see Jesus weeping as he looks over the brokeness of Jerusalem. It's a judgement that cries, not a judgement that finger-wags. Even when Jesus confronts the pharisees in Matthew 23 through a series of "woe's" we often misunderstand Jesus' posture. As Jason Porterfield points out in his book Fight Like Jesus:

Woe (Ouai) means to warn sorrowfully. It’s an explanation of grief. The word means sadness, not rage

In the context of human rebellion God is grief-stricken, navigating the pain of sadness. God moves towards humanity offering connection in the midst of sin and shame. After all, this is God's relentless goal throughout the biblical story: intimacy and proximity among God's people.

I'll never forget the day I found myself on disciplinary probation. I was a freshmen and the upperclassmen on my floor thought it was a good idea for us to go streaking when we got word there would be a power outage on campus. We weren't the only ones with this idea. There were others streaking, lighting unauthorized fires, heckling campus safety officers, etc. The next day word spread around the local community about the "riots" that occurred on our Christian campus. Administration was understandably embarrassed and stressed. I found myself amidst an anxious and impatient disciplinary structure. There were very few gracious questions being asked to those of us involved. Accusatory statements and punitive responses were the strategies of choice. I still remember the shame I felt coming out of a conduct meeting that seemed determined to convince me that my behavior was not only wrong, but disgusting. Shame seemed to be the desired learning outcome. Having been a college administrator myself I have loads of understanding and grace for how difficult their job was. Yet, this is not the way God responds to sin in this text. Consequences and implications are forthcoming, but that’s not where things start. Instead, we see a grieving God longing for connection and inviting humans into repentance and repair.

Dynamics of Sin

In this interchange between Adam, Eve and God we see certain dynamics of sin that are timeless.

First, sin injects fear into the world.

“I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.”

Now human posture towards God moves away from intimacy and trust to fear and hiding. But fear is never a sign of faith. There is a reason why a call to not fear is the most common command given throughout scripture. Love and fear are like oil and water. They are completely incompatible. Within our context where fear is a go-to tactic for many Christian leaders and institutions seeking to gather a crowd and motivate towards a cause, we must remember this truth. In every case, these leaders and institutions are leading us away from Kingdom of God space where the power, hope and grace of Jesus ought to drive out fear. An important caveat is in order here. Fear is not the well-founded emotional concern we feel in the face of a diagnosis or egregious act of evil in the world. This is both normal and appropriate. The fear I'm pointing out here is a worldview in which the goodness and presence of God is pushed to the periphery, or eliminated altogether.

Second, the blame-game becomes a key strategy in a sin-soaked world.

The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.”

“The serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it.”

Sin causes us to lug around a shield and a magnifying glass. Our metaphorical shields help us quickly minimize, deflect, downplay and rationalize away our own participation in sin. Our magnifying glass allows us to focus in on the faults of others. We instinctively grab for these tools at the subconscious level because of sin. With these tools in hand we find ourselves thinking or saying - just like Adam and Eve - phrases like:

“I’m angry because you didn’t do what I asked”

“I lied because you were being too nosey”

“My porn habbit is because my spouse isn’t meting my needs”

“I cursed at them because they don't know how to drive”

"I berated them on social media because their idea was ridiculous"

Thirdly, we offer half-truths to construct a self-preserving narrative. What Adam and Eve said in response to God was technically true at a FACTUAL level. Eve did give Adam the fruit. The serpent was trying to lead Eve astray. But it wasn’t true at the level of REAL. Their words avoided any sense of responsibility and didn't tell the full story. This is what sin does. We carefully construct self-preserving narratives (with "truth" as just one of many ingredients) in which we are the victims. But if flourshing is found in a loving connection with God and intimate relationships with other humans then these stories aren't as self-preserving as we think they are. Ironically, these stories intended to preserve our reputation or avoid consequences lead us away from what's actually good for us.

We must ask ourselves, how are we engaging in dynamics of fear, blame and half-truths?

Has the pendulum swung too far?

Some of us have rightly reacted against a biblical story that begins in Genesis 3 with sin and ends with a vast majority of humans being punished in hell forever because of their sin. Within this story, the goodness of creation is curiously absent, discipleship becomes sin management, and the goal is avoiding hell. This distorted gospel is tremendously incomplete, and in some cases, downright wrong.

But let's not avoid one ditch to fall into another. In our justified reaction let's no overreact into downplaying or completely ignoring robust conversations on sin. We can engage a myriad of theological gymnastics to construct a story absent of any serious consideration of sin, God's judgement of sin and our need to be liberated by God from sin. This is a fatal mistake too because it's not biblical or honest about the reality of our world.

I've thought a lot in recent years about how best to describe sin. Below are some of my favorite definitions of sin I've read or listened to:

• “Not honoring creation as a gift from the creator” - Miroslav Volf

• “Forces within us and around us that are distorting the image of God in us and in others that need to be dealt with. He (Jesus) named that as a force he came to save people from” - Meghan Good

• “A theological term that describes how humans and other creatures miss the goals that God intends for us. Sin has social, ecological, and spiritual dimensions, so that any specific instance of sin can be assessed in terms of how it damages our communities, our bodies, the environment and our relationship with God. Since Christians see Jesus as our best picture of healthy social, ecological, and spiriutla relationships, sin can also be defined negatively in terms of falling short of Jesus’ example of love and faithfulness” - Juan Francisco Martinez & Jamie Pitts

Influenced by theologians like the ones listed above, I'll define sin this way:

Decision we make - and don't make - that fall short of being the humans we were created to be. In the process, we partner with forces that de-create the good world God has made

Sin is a process of de-creation. And sin is done by us, done to us and done around us. We are both perpetrators and victims. Sin is individual and systemic. And sin wreaks havoc in God's good world.

Followers of Jesus believe we can't save ourselves. We desperately need God. Every time we think we're fine without God and on an inevitable march towards utopia the Ukraine war breaks out, atrocities in the Middle East resurface, political violence gains momentum, twitter threads reveal our hatred, and top 40 music charts remind us that objectificaton of women is not only tolerated, but celebrated.

Additionally, our own credit card statements, calendars, text threads, YouTube histories and thought patterns confront each of us with our own complicity and hypocrisy. We've all contributed to a world that is less than God intends. This is not who God created us to be. We all need God to intervene and rescue us (individually, communally, cosmically) from sin and evil. We need the death and resurrection of Jesus to remind us that God is graciously and powerfully at work bringing resurrection life amidst the brokenness. We need the whole bible, including Genesis 3, to understand what it means to follow Jesus.