Sin is Not Good #3
Sin is Humanities Death Wish
I was always told growing up that it’s not good to do bad things. And for a time I was content with that. It didn’t need to be explained to me. However, as time has gone on and temptations have increased, or at least my perception of them, I find it helpful to understand and remind myself of why “it’s not good to do bad things.”
Obviously, “it’s not good to do bad things” because it doesn’t please God but why doesn’t it please God? Why are bad things bad? We see from reflection on Scripture that bad things are bad because they are not in accord with God’s character and thus apart from being bad they do not finally work with the way things are. In short, they are against the universe. Against existence. Against the way things are. Against the way things work. This is because God is good, supremely good. And creation is thus to operate in a certain way. Sin, evil, and bad are not innate within God’s good creation. They don’t “work” and will one day soon be expelled from the whole system. Then, and only then, will all things be put right and made new.
Thus, “The consequence of human sin is not to be seen as an arbitrarily imposed penalty, like a judge imposing a fine for drunk driving, but rather as an inevitable outworking of the implications of sin.”[i] “Death is not an arbitrary punishment for sin; it is its necessary consequence,” because “the turning away from the living God which constitutes idolatry is the spiritual equivalent of a diver cutting off his own breathing tube.”[ii]
To turn from God, to sin, is not only wrong but also foolish. Why? Because “God is our final good, or maker and savior, the one in whom alone our restless hearts come to rest. To rebel against God is to saw of the branch that supports us.”[iii]
Sin is humanities death wish in everyway.[iv] To be separated from God is to die, physically and spiritually. Human flourishing, true shalom, is bond up with God.[v] Apart from union with God we can seek but we won’t find.
The world is a dichotomy. It’s two paths. The wise and the fool. New creation and de-creation. Damnation and liberation. Life and death. Hell and heaven. Where, in a very real sense, are you going?
Sin is thus not good because it is innately against true human flourishing.[vi] Sin is not good because it is humanities death wish in every sense.
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[i] Anthony N. S. Lane, “Lust: the human person as affected by disordered desires” 35 in EQ 78.1 [2006], 21-35.
[ii] N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 109.
[iii] Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, 123. “Sin dissipates us in futile—and self-destructive—projects. Sin hurts other people and grieves God, but it also corrodes us. Sin is a form of self-abuse” (Ibid., 124). “Sin against God is therefore outrageous folly: it’s like pulling the plug on your own resuscitator” (Ibid., 125-26). Thus “because it is futile, because it is vain, because it is unrealistic, because it spoils good things, sin is a prime form of folly” (Ibid., 126). Proverbs 8:35-36 says, “For whoever finds me [i.e. “wisdom” which is the fear of the LORD] finds life and obtains favor from the Lord, but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.”
[iv] “The association of sin with physical and spiritual death runs like a spine through Scripture and Christian tradition” (Cornelius Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, 47).
[v] “The biblical vision of human flourishing implicit in worship means that we are only properly free when our desires are rightly ordered, when they are bounded and directed to the end that constitutes our good” (Desiring the Kingdom, 176). Likewise John Frame, God’s “law is not arbitrary, but is based on his own nature… His moral standard is simply himself, his person, his nature” (Frame, The Doctrine of God, 448 see also Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life, 133-35). G. K. Chesterton said, “God is not a symbol of goodness. Goodness is a symbol of God” (Chesterton, William Blake [London: House of Stratus, 2000], 40).
[vi] “Human flourishing” rather is “the same thing as glorifying God and enjoying him forever” (Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, 37-38).
Sin is Not Good #2
Sin is a Rebellion and a Rampage
Sin is moral. It is an act against God. It is a transgression against God’s law. But not only His law but also His good plan.[i] Sin is not merely moral or highhanded treason it is also a rampage because it is mad; that is foolish, a form of insanity. It goes against good sense. It is a rampage because sin destroys the good.
We have all seen the pain and sorrow that moral derogation has wrought in our lives. We see it for instance in sins of others against us and those close to us, we see it in sins which we have sinned against others, we see it in the world at large (e.g. my parents were divorced, a very close friend of mine was molested as a child, and a friend of mine that struggled with drug addiction committed suicide). There is, for sure, a law written on all our hearts, we go against it to the shame and suffering of humanity; and yet, we all do indeed go against it.
Humanity has and needs a moral standard. This points us to the Creator who gave it to us when He created us in His image. However, it also points us to the Fall. We all fail to measure up to the standard. We can all think of a hypothetical world where everyone followed these standards and where the result was great happiness. Yet, this is not the case. We do not follow these good (innate) standards. How odd. We know the good we ought to do, or at least that there is “a good,” and yet fail to do it.
Sin leads to terrible depraviltiy, hopelessness, and disregard for humanity or anything good. This is vividly portrayed, for example, in Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic book The Road. We don’t want to suffer what is portrayed there. We don’t even want to think of the horrors of Dachau and Auschwitz. We all know the wickedness of Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, and Joseph Kony. Yet perhaps their nearly unbelievable atrocities allow us to belittle (in our conscience) our own wickedness. However, even if our sin is so-called “low-grade wickedness” it is the equivalent of their sin, just on a micro level. It has the same seed, though perhaps it hasn’t came to full bloom yet.
What must be realized is that all sin is a movement towards un-creation.[ii] In C.S. Lewis’ words, through sin man becomes the “unman.” Through sin everything that was very good (see Gen. 1:3, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31) becomes cursed instead. Sin covers beauty, boasts in badness, and hides from the supreme joy we all seek. Sin is a rampage.
Sin is a leech and parasite. It lives off of and feeds on life and vitality.[iii] And it kills it. Bleeding it away little by little until the carrier is completely eaten away and destroyed. Note that this death, though complete, can be imperceptible.
Sin leads to de-creation as well as desecration. Humans were made in God’s own image yet through sin that image has literally been put into dirt; man becomes dirt and ashes from whence he came (hence de-creation). From perfection to misdirection, from shalom[iv] to shattering. Everything has come undone. The creation groans with longing. Sin is not merely moral. It is the decay of all things. Sin wrought a wreak and we are still wheeling and writhing in pain.[v]
Thus, sin is not good not only because it is moral rebellion against a good and all-powerful God but also because it is a rampage against His good creation.
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[i] “Sin represents an attack upon the harmony of the created order, and not merely a moral lapse” ((Revd Victor James Johnson, “Illustrating Evil – The Effect of the Fall as seen in Genesis 4-11,” 60 in Melanesian Journal of Theology 11-1&2 [1995]). If Jesus is the exact image of God and we were created in God’s image then as we image Jesus—as we are recreated—then we get closer to our beginning, closer to where we were created to be; actually quite a bit beyond that. So in Christ and His truth we are being renewed but through Satan and his lies we are becoming undone. The cosmos is breaking up and will finally be dissolved because of sin and yet remade in and because of Christ.
[ii] “Evil is the force of anti-creation, anti-life, the force which opposes and seeks to deface and destroy God’s good world of space, time and matter, and above all God’s image-bearing human creatures” (N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 89)
[iii] “Sin is always the corruption of something good. Its existence is parasitic; it borrows, or rather usurps, its reality from whatever it corrupts” (H. A. G. Blocher, “Sin,” 784 in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology).
[iv] “In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight… a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be” (Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 10; italics original).
[v] Abnormal, sick, unhealthy, dysfunctional, maladjusted, or pathological—“wherever anything wrong exists in the world, anything we experience as antinormative, evil, distorted, or sick there we meet the perversion of God’s good creation” (Walter M. Wolters, Creation Regained, 55).
Sin is Not Good #1
Sin is the Unmaking of Man and a Manifold of Beauties
This world cries out like so much ripe fruit, “I’m good! Eat me! Indulge yourself…” However, much of the fruit here, as in the Garden, leads to cataclysmic clashes, with God, yourself, and humanity. It looks good and much of it is. But much of it has an infectious parasite on it. It’s hard, though not impossible, to consume it without getting “sick.”
In Genesis 3:1-24 we see the Fall of humanity. We see various forms of death given birth to. We see “’an ever-growing avalanche of sin, a continually widening chasm between man and God’. It progresses from disobedience, to murder, to indiscriminate killing, to titanic lust, to total corruption, and uncontrolled violence.”[ii] Sin truly brings a litany of death. “Disease, genetic disorders, famine, natural disasters, aging, and death itself are as much the result of sin as are oppression, war, crime, and violence. We have lost God’s shalom—physically, spiritually, socially, psychologically, culturally. Things now fall apart.”[i]
Through sin we have marred more than the mediocre; we have marred the Michelangelos of the world. We have marred superb beauty and made it unbelievably hideous. Yet, if we see something that is less hideous we look at it as a wonder. Why? Because this world is so tainted and steeped in sin and the effects of sin.
To illustrate, if I ruin a “masterpiece” that my son made with paper, glue, and crayons the ramifications will be far less than if I destroy the Mona Lisa. Well, creation was intended to be a Mona Lisa; that is, it was intended to be supremely glorious. God’s creation was intended to be good, beautiful, and esthetically pleasing to our senses, emotions, and intellect beyond what we can imagine. And so the ramifications of the destruction of such beauty is greater. We often think of this world as the way it is not as the way it was intended to be. If we could see a glimpse of what the Great Creator had in mind for His masterpiece then we’d see that we “paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” We essentially killed a thousand Beethovens and blared white noise. We backfilled the Grand Canyon with gravel. We burned a hundred museums of art. We scorched our taste buds off our tongue. We took a wrecking ball to all the wonders of the world and razed a thousand gorgeous cities. In short, through our “war crimes,” we, as humanity, deserve death. We have brought cataclysmic chaos to the world.
Sin is not a light thing. We, as humans, were created in the image of God. We were to be like Christ, God in flesh (cf. Gen. 1:26-27). The world was meant to be supremely glorious, peaceful, and loving but instead it is disgusting and understandably repugnant to God. So, as we try to grasp the wonder of what has been marred we can begin to understand how serious the situation is and how terrible sin is.
Thus, sin is not good because it is the unmaking of man and a manifold of beauties.
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[i] Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, 177. “Disunion with God is reflected in disunion with others and with oneself” (Johnson, Foundations of Soul Care, 466 cf. Bonhoeffer, Ethics).
[ii] Revd Victor James Johnson, “Illustrating Evil – The Effect of the Fall as seen in Genesis 4-11,” 57 in Melanesian Journal of Theology 11-1&2 (1995).
“…yet to be filled…”
Today’s culture believes that you can’t be fulfilled unless you can have the “partner” you want, whether male, female, multiple, or in some other combination that is preferred, and yet so many signs tell us that humanity has yet to be fulfilled. Take, for example, all the recent rich and famous people, people that many of us would think would be fulfilled, that have committed suicide or died of drug overdose.
What does all this tell us? Or as Blaise Pascal says,
“What is it then that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.”
We have eternity in our hearts. We seek for good gifts, that have become tainted fruit, to fulfill. But they can’t, they were never designed to. Legalizing same sex marriage isn’t the solution. Drugs are not, sex is not, success is not… Not kids, money, things, marriage… They all fail. There’s nothing to be finally gained under the sun.
We need that for which our souls were made. We need the LORD. Jesus the promised Messiah alone gives eternal shalom for our souls.
Dispossessed
Deconstruction,
interruption of joy
This the plane on which we play
We search for joy
yet buy into a ploy
(that retards our chase)
Oh this race,
we’re broken
Rocked and writhing from the Fall
We crawl into the grave,
disarranged
We buy into the lie
and then we sell it
We run, and run, and run
and fall into the pit we dug
We raze shalom
and raise Sheol
We damn the good
and embrace Gehenna
We are surely dispossessed,
East of Eden
Learning from Literature: Uncle Tom’s Cabin
This is a gripping book in many ways. I think every American should read it. It has brought me to tears on more than one occasion. History is an important teacher. It can smack you in the face with past realities so that you don’t get smacked in the face by present ones. We, as Christians, must be discerning, and realize that the same foil may come in a different guise.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin reminds us that Scripture is often interpreted in the darkness of cultural situations without the light of a clear and unbiased perspective. As soon as society changes so will the interpretation of the text. Where are the Harriet Beecher Stowes who will stand up for what the text is saying however unpopular it may be? As Stowe said, if the cotton trade was no longer needed people’s understanding on slavery would be changed, there previous “understanding” would no longer be needed.
Of course, the issue then was slavery but Stowe makes a valid point for any day. Hermeneutics (i.e. the science of interpretation) seeks to understand what the text means.[1] However, we often view the text in light of our own context instead of the original context. We interpret texts many times to mean what we want them to mean and not what they really mean. We put a spin on things to suite ourselves. It is much like what the media can do with a sound bit. If you look at words out of their context, you can make them mean almost whatever what you want. We should take hints from history and seek to not make the same blunders.
What texts or issues do we dismiss outright or misinterpret to our benefit? Who or what are you avoiding listening to or reading? I am inclined to think that our (my!) use (or ill use) of money is one area where we tend to reinterpret Scripture.[2] Or what about God’s command for us to be holy? It’s pretty easy to knock that command down to moral, isn’t it? We think: other people watch this movie, even other “good” people. Yet, did you see where the thinking went wrong? We are not merely commanded to be good, moral, or culturally acceptable; we are called to be set apart as God’s own people. God’s holiness is our standard. Not our neighbors.
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[1] Which implies application. You don’t truly understand something until you understand how it applies… further, you might say you don’t truly understand something until it is applied. At least, I think this is the case with Scripture.
[2] I realize that there has been a lot of harm done in this area by people laying legalistic blanket commands that are neither helpful nor biblical. Yet, the Bible and Jesus do speak much of, and strongly about, wealth and the stewardship that we have of it. So what I am saying is we must make sure that we are not just dismissing texts on wealth and the right use of wealth but honestly evaluating what God is calling us to. It is too easy, as history demonstrates, to be blinded by the now. This applies to wealth, it applies to many things.
Shalom is Slain
O’ for the worlds that lay asunder,
for the shalom that is slain.
We ingrain habits of unrest,
we fester and pass on spoil.
O’ for the earth to break,
for all to be made anew.
For the habits in my heart to pour out,
and for living waters to ensue.
God this world is broken,
we are altogether damaged and damned.
“Destroy the destroyers of the earth,”
destroy what in me destroys.
Shalom was slain
but through the slain Messiah (is/will be) renewed.
O’ God, Maranatha!
Danny MacAskill – “Way Back Home”
Thankful to God for beauty, creativity, and the ability that humans have to do some really cool things.
I have watched this video a bunch of times with my kids and we have received a lot of enjoyment from it. God has blessed humanity with so many good gifts. Smiles, a happy dog, music, children.
The Mission of the Church (in less than 500 Words)
The church is given a threefold mission; upward, inward, and outward. These three things work in unison. They create a helpful cyclical motion. When we worship God as we should we want to build others up in the church, we want to evangelize, and when we build others up they grow, they evangelize, people get saved, and we praise God; and so the cycle repeats in various ways as it is supposed to. For the church to function as it should all three of these aspects of the church’s mission must be being carried out.
Upward: Worship
We are called to sing songs of praise (e.g. Ps., Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16) but we are not to stop there. We are called to love the LORD our God with all that we are; mind, body, soul, and, strength. Everything! We are to lay our very lives upon the altar in service to the LORD (Rom. 12:1). This is the foundational thing. Upon this the other two aspects of the church’s mission is built. If this is lacking, the church will fall.
Thus, we see the huge importance of godly, sound, and worshipful preaching and singing. If the church is to worship the LORD they must know, see, and taste the wonder of the LORD. It is to this same end that songs of worship are to be sung.
It is when the church, both individually and corporately, are crying out to the LORD in worship, and having the eyes of their hearts enlightened to God’s love, that inward nurture and outward evangelism will flow as a perpetual fountain.
Inward: Nurture
We see from Scripture that one of the non-negotiables is discipleship (Matt. 28:19-20). The Church must equip the saints for the work of the ministry that they may grow up every way into Christ (cf. Eph. 4:11-16). We strive for those we disciple to show the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23), follow the Great Commandment (Mark 12:28-31), and practice the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) themselves by teaching “faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2). We do this for the building up of the body and the glory of God among all the nations (Rom. 1:5).
Outward: Evangelism
The church is a gathering of the people of God and the people of God are told to proclaim His excellencies (see 1 Peter 2:9). The main way it proclaims God’s excellencies is through the proclamation and teaching of His Word (That is how the church expands cf. Acts 6:7; 9:31; 12:24; 13:49; 16:5; 17:11-12; 19:20). The purpose being to make disciples that are wholly committed to Christ.
We see here the importance of the two other aspects of the mission of the church. It is when we taste of the LORD in worship that we want to tell people of the wonders of the LORD. We tell the good news most naturally when we are impressed with the fact that it is good news.
For a slightly more expanded discussion see: “What is the Church?”
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