Does Anyone Believe in Sin Anymore?

           

A member of Cross~Wind UMC gave me an article with the title, “Does Anyone Believe in Sin Anymore?” It refers to the idea of updating the traditional “seven deadly sins,” namely, pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth. They derive from Pope Gregory in the 500s AD. The article refers to Bishop Gianfranco Girotti as thinking of modern behaviors that can adversely affect people, such as drug abuse, pollution, contributing to the widening divide between rich and poor, excessive wealth, and creating poverty. He refers to the Ten Commandments, but also, one offends God by wrecking the environment, carrying out morally debatable experiments, and so on. The article refers to Mahatma Ghandi drawing up a list of the seven blunders of the world, for the seven deadly social sins, of wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, science without humanity, knowledge without character, politics without principle, commerce without morality, and worship without sacrifice. Arun, his grandson, added number eight, rights without responsibilities.

            A survey (http://www.greymatterresearch.com/index_files/Sin.htm) of Americans listed several possibilities and asked whether they considered them sins. 

The behaviors a majority of all Americans describe as sinful are: 

· Adultery  8

· Racism  74%

· Using “hard” drugs such as cocaine, heroine, meth, LSD, etc.  65%

· Not saying anything if a cashier gives you too much change back  63%

· Having an abortion  56%

· Homosexual activity or sex  52%

· Not reporting some income on your tax returns  52% 

A number of other behaviors are considered sinful by a significant portion of all Americans, although not a majority.  These are: 

· Reading or watching pornography  50%

· Gossip  47%

· Swearing  46%

· Sex before marriage  45%

· Homosexual thoughts  44%

· Sexual thoughts about someone you are not married to  43%

· Doing things as a consumer that harm the environment  41%

· Smoking marijuana  41%

· Getting drunk  41%

· Not taking proper care of your body  35% 

Then there are behaviors that fewer than one-third of all Americans see as sinful: 

· Gambling  30%

· Telling a “little white lie” to avoid hurting someone’s feelings  29%

· Using tobacco  23%

· Not attending church or religious worship services on a regular basis  18%

· Playing the lottery  18%

· Watching an R-rated movie  18%

· Being significantly overweight  17%

· Not giving 10% of your income to a church or charity  16%

· Drinking any alcohol  14%

· Working on Sunday/the Sabbath  14%

· Spanking your child when he/she misbehaves  7%

· Making a lot of money  4%

· Dancing  4% 

            I wonder, however, if the problem is not failure to believe in sin, but failure to envision the possibility of redemption.

            It gratifies me that so many Americans think of racism as a sin. For the percentage to be that high, regardless of political affiliation, racism is sinful.

            Parker Rice and Levi Pettit were members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at the University of Oklahoma. The video of their racist sing-a-long gained much press in the early part of 2015. Eventually, the President of the school expelled them, he shut down the fraternity, and the fraternity itself would go through a nationwide examination. Given the circumstances, all of this may well be the best path of action. I do not know the individuals involved, so I am not passing on evaluation of their actions.

            However, I find it striking that Isaac Hill, the president of the Black Student Association at the University told Megyn Kelly that people should forgive the students. His counsel was to fight hate with the power love. Cal Thomas, columnist, was quite right to suggest that the goal of actions by fellow students and especially by the university should have been redemption. Redemption is a harder path to travel, but the destination is to change the thinking of the students.

In her article, "The Power of Forgiveness: Why Revenge Doesn't Work," Dr. Judith Orloff writes: "...revenge reduces you to your worst self, puts you on the same level with those spiteful people we claim to abhor."

Now, let us step back and consider a larger issue.

Yes, America has its faults and sins. They flow from its history of connection to Europe. Most of us can list them. Slavery and treatment of the Native American would rate high on the list. Critics will implicate Christianity and white people in these sins.

Such imperfections are there. No one can erase it from the history.

What would redemption look like?

Maybe you would have preachers throughout the country, known as abolitionists, encourage America to abolish slavery. Maybe you would fight a war at great cost in human lives to remove it, and maybe you would work tirelessly for another 100 years to remove racism from any form of respectability. An avowed racist could not receive a majority anywhere in this country.

Yet, the path of revenge will lead to your worst self. You might become like the people you hate. It might lead to riots and violence in the streets, destroying the businesses your community needs to make progress. It might lead to harming relationships with the police, the people you need to protect you from those in the community who wish harm.

Many Americans are quick to label almost anything a “sin,” even if they do not use the word. For some people, the only path to redemption is to agree with them.

Sin, Grace, and Forgiveness

             Faith founded on the knowledge of forgiveness does a couple of things.  First, it provides us with a new insight into the nature of sin.  It reveals to us what we could not see before — namely, the insult to God.  When I think of the insult to God, I think in terms of an analogy drawn from my own professional experience.  I worked for a few years as a reference librarian at the Columbus (Ohio) Public library.  The librarian in charge of the reference section and my immediate supervisor was Gretchen DeWitt.  I admired and liked her, and she liked me in return.  We enjoyed a fine working relationship.  One Friday afternoon, I was working on a particularly complicated reference problem.  Knowing that the library would be closing in an hour or so, I was concentrating diligently to finish up.  Miss DeWitt came to my desk and asked me to come with her to the workroom for a conference.  I told her I was busy and asked if it could wait.  No, it couldn’t wait.  I began to feel anxiety over time.  I was frustrated at being interrupted.  I began to remember previous occasions on which Miss DeWitt had interrupted me.  Rage arose within me.  Taking liberties that might strain our otherwise healthy, working relationship I insisted that I keep to my project.  She insisted with equal vehemence that I drop the work and go to the workroom.  Then she turned and walked, expecting me to follow.  I did.  All the way I nagged her by complaining.  She said nothing and walked on.  Seeing that my complaining was ineffective, I scolded her.  Then I raised the pitch of my scolding.  Soon we arrived at the workroom door.  We entered and found the entire library staff standing around a table holding a cake and lit candles and singing `Happy Birthday’ — to me.  Miss DeWitt had planned the party in my honor.  How humiliated I felt.  Once the truth of Miss DeWitt’s graciousness became clear to me, I became aware of how I had insulted her.  However, Miss DeWitt showed not even the slightest sign of retaliation for my rudeness.  She was elegantly gracious.  Because of her grace, my insult didn’t harm our relationship.  Our relationship to God through faith is similar.  Once we understand that God forgives out of divine love, a sense of personal affront to God is added to any previous legalistic understanding of sin we might have had.  Once we understand that God forgives freely, we become aware of our own ingratitude.  This is not intended to be manipulative.  Rather, it is intended to be revelatory of the seriousness with which God takes the task of redeeming sinners.  The point is that once we realize how God justifies us, a new dimension of nature of sin opens up to our perception, `Only those who are justified by God are awakened from the sleep of the opinion that their acts can be justified of themselves,’ says Karl Barth.[1]

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[1] Ted Peters, Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society, 1989.

Spiritual Pests

One of the emphases of Lent is helping us reflect upon the human condition. We wrestle with certain inner tendencies that can divert us from what is important in our lives. In the agricultural world, a pest is "a plant or animal detrimental to humans or human concerns (as agriculture or livestock production)."

 

 

 

I would like to reflect a bit today on pests that will harm your life spiritually. The basis is Numbers 21:4-9, which I invite you to read before you continue with this article.

Consider the pest of impatience. “The people became impatient on the way.” We can all identify with these people and their impatience. We do grow weary at times, struggling with problems of one kind or another. Author Jerry Bridges considers impatience to be a "respectable sin" -- that is, a sin that we tend to tolerate in ourselves. However, impatience is a sign of a bigger problem, namely "our own attitude of insisting that others around us conform to our expectations." That is what gets the Israelites in trouble, right? They demand that Moses and God conform to their expectations of a quick and comfortable trip to the promised land, along with good food and abundant water.

But wait. Are people of faith not supposed to conform to God's expectations, not the other way around? Impatience can shift our focus away from God and toward ourselves, so that we begin to believe that the world owes us a life of safety, comfort and convenience. It's a pest that can eat us up, like stink bugs on a peach.

Next, complaints. If someone asked you to name the number one sin in the world, what would you say? Pride, lust, envy? John Roberts, a pastor in Sterling, Colorado, considers a top sin to be complaining. "One of the problems with the sin of complaining is that it's so universal that many among us aren't even aware that it's a sin," he writes. "Everybody complains about stuff all the time. We are so surrounded by complaining that we hardly notice it, unless, of course, the complaints are directed against us."

Nevertheless, God is not oblivious to complaints. God is so serious about it that he tells the church to "Do everything without complaining or arguing" (Philippians 2:14, NIV). Pastor Roberts is convinced that complaining is an expression of our pride -- a sign that we think we know better than God.

Once again, the Israelites. They complain, "We detest this miserable food" (Numbers 21:5). They are not actually starving since God is sending them manna in the wilderness, but they are sick of it. Thinking back to Egypt, they remember feasting on fish, cucumbers, melons, leaks, onions and garlic. Because of their complaining, they get a bite they aren't expecting -- the bite of the poisonous serpents.

Finally, the most damaging of invasive species: Anger. We see this deadly pest in American politics today, with insults and venom hurled across the partisan divide. The people of Israel should honor God and respect Moses, but instead they rail against their divine and human leaders and accuse them of leading them to their doom, saying, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?" (v. 5).

The people shoot angry venom at Moses and God, and as a result, they receive the venom of the serpents.

 

             Impatience, complaints, anger -- these sins are as real for us today as they were for the people of Israel. "Sin is a very real and present danger," says Old Testament professor Carol Bechtel Reynolds. "Though this idea is somewhat out of vogue in today's world, the book of Numbers never lets us forget it. With relentless honesty, Numbers confronts us with our own blights and blemishes." In this book, we find a self-portrait ... of ourselves.