Sin is Not Good #7 (but Jesus is)
Sin’s Solution
In the book of Genesis we read of societal progress. There are advances in technology and the arts. Yet, the problem remains: We have sinful hearts. Thus relationships and truly the world remain fractured. Like humpty dumpty; we can’t put it back together again. The answer to my problem, humanities problem, and the world’s problem is external to us.
One would think that
“Auschwitz destroyed… the idea that European civilization at least was a place where nobility, virtue and humanizing reason could flourish and abound… It seems remarkable that the belief in progress still survives and triumphs… People still continue to this day to suppose that the world is basically a good place and that its problems are more or less soluble by technology, education, ‘development’ in the sense of ‘Westernization.’”[i]
However, today’s problems, like that of all history past, is not solved by advances in technology or even any sort of knowledge or morality. It is solved by a Savior. It is Messiah Jesus that will once and for all eradicate sin and suffering (see e.g. Rom. 11:26-27; Heb. 12:23; 1 Jn. 3:2; Rev. 3:12; 21:1-8, 27; 22:3).
When we control the measures to make a utopian society the way we think it should be, it fails. Whether we control “the stirrings” (e.g. The Giver), emotions (e.g. Equilibrium), everything (e.g. The Lego Movie), or the socioeconomic structure (e.g. The Hunger Games) the result is not paradise; it’s a sort of hell, at least for many. We messed up utopia, we can’t with our fallible minds design a new one. Only our Lord can. He has the only infallible and incorruptible mind. He perfectly balances justice and grace. And He alone can make us and all things new.
So the recent movie and classic The Giver does more than entertain. It teaches us a profound truth, one we would do well to remember: There is no utopian society outside of Christ. We can’t fix it. There have been many botched attempts throughout history. They lay died with their victims.
“Everything is awesome. Everything is cool when you’re part of a team…” As catchy as The Lego Movie song is, it is not exactly right. Everything is not awesome, not yet. However, it will be. But not from our own doing (Notice I am not saying we shouldn’t work for social justice. We should! Yet, it will not bring the ultimate and forever peace that we long for.).
Heaven comes down (Rev. 21:2). We don’t, nor can we, build it here. I am with you and Miss America in saying I desire world peace, yet it won’t ultimately come until our Lord does. When our Lord comes He will wipe away all evil, pain, and tears, not some charismatic leader or government (Rev. 21:1ff). Jesus will make all things new. Jesus will bring utopia.
Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus, come!
Sin is not good. But Jesus is. He will bring the shalom we all desire. Live for Him.
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[i] N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 22-23.
Sin is Not Good #6
Sin Leads to Enslavement
Sin is like Gollum’s ring. It enslaves and destroys. It looks so good but ends in lava.
Truly, “What we revere, we resemble, either for ruin or restoration,”[i] and we all revere something. So “when we speak of ‘worship’ …we are not speaking about an activity of one’s life, but speaking of the activity of one’s life.”[ii]
Thus, “What distinguishes us (as individuals, but also as ‘people’) is not whether we love, but what we love. At the heart of our being is a kind of ‘love pump’ that can never be turned off—not even by sin or the Fall; rather, the effect of sin on our love pump is to knock it off kilter, misdirecting it and getting it aimed at the wrong things.”[iii]
Yet when we aim at the wrong thing, worship the wrong thing, and thus deprive God of His glory, He deprives us of ours[iv] and we end up empty and doing all manner of wickedness. This is woven into the fabric of the universe, our very existence.
We will worship. That’s not the question. The question is who or what will we worship and to what end. What will be the result?
One catechism asks, “With what design did God create man?” The answer: that we should know God, love and glorify Him, and so be happy forever.[v] Truly “God is to be worshipped, not simply because he demands to be, but because this is the proper destiny of his creation.”[vi] Worship is inevitable.[vii] It will and is happening. The question is not will you worship but what? And what will it lead to?
Will it damn you and lead to enslavement; or will it bring eternal shalom and human flourishing (i.e. true cross-cultural human flourishing not the mere individualistic perception of flourishing) (recall Rom. 1 and 6)? Is it true or is it false?
When we worship the LORD we are going with the grid that is innately ingrained within us since the beginning. This is innate within us but it is strangely not natural. We have been dispossessed of where we were, where we should be. Yet, it is where we should be. The worship of the LORD God is true and right but it also works, it is the way it was designed to be (and thus it not surprisingly works that way).
We were made for ineffable joy and thus we not surprisingly seek for it. The thing about the joy we seek (sehnsucht) is that it’s not quite like our hunger, thirst, or other desires; it cannot be filled within the earth. So, apparently, we with our longing seek to fill it with that which cannot fill it. We think that, similar to our other “thirsts,” it too can be quenched here on earth through tangible means. Yet experience, many wise people, and Scripture have exhorted us that that is just not the case. There is a greater thirst within us, yet also a greater quenching. There is joy unimaginable, though now not wholly obtainable.
So, hear Romans 6:20-23: “When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at the time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Thus, sin is not good because it enslaves and leads to death although it promises life and fulfillment.
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[i] G. K. Beale, We Become what we Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2008.).
[ii] Noel Doe, Created for Worship, 20.
[iii] James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, 52.
[iv] cf. Noel Doe, Created for Worship, 29.
[v] Longer Catechism of the Eastern Church [1839], question 120.
[vi] Noel Doe, Created for Worship, 39.
[vii] cf. e.g. Noel Doe, Created for Worship, 230, 231.
Sin is Not Good #4
Sin, Resulting in the Fall, Explains Humanities Wretchedness and yet Greatness
I think it’s accurate to say that “any viable worldview must successfully explain the seemingly paradoxical nature of the human condition.”[i] The philosopher Blaise Pascal lamented, “What sort of freak is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, the glory and refuse of the universe!”[ii]
Look at
“the inexplicable phenomenon of mankind: unquestionably corrupt, subject to inconstancy, boredom, anxiety and selfishness, doing anything in the waking hours to divert the mind from human wretchedness, yet showing the vestiges of inherent greatness in the mind’s realization of this condition. Mankind is also finite, suspended between twin infinities revealed by telescope and microscope, and aware of an inner emptiness which the finite world fails to satisfy. No philosophy makes sense of this. No moral system makes us better or happier. One hypothesis alone, creation in the divine image followed by the fall, explains our predicament and, through a redeemer and mediator with God, offers to restore our rightful state.”[iii]
Human greatness split the atom, human wretchedness uses the same to kill millions of people. A great, though wretched, leader, Adolf Hitler, will lead a nation to slaughter millions. A great leader, Winston Churchhill, will lead a nation in their defense. As much as we are great, we bare God’s image. As much as we are wretched, we bare Satan’s. Ben Carson, with his intelligence, will fight for cures; others will inject poison. Humanity is simultaneously great and wretched. What explains this paradox? We all innately sense it but why is it here?
Humanity is fallen. So “the line between good and evil is never simply between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ The line between good and evil runs through each one of us.”[iv] We are made in God’s image and thus can do fantastic things and fantastic good but we have been marred by the Fall and often reflect Satan so we can also do acts of unbelievable wickedness.
Thus, sin is not good because it wreaks havoc on our greatness, on the fact that we were created in the image of God, and distorts it to evil ends.[v] How sad that we who are capable of exploring the limitless expanse of the sea, the mind, space, and biology so often content ourselves with razing and rioting. How sad that though we as humanity are capable of such good, there is such grave injustice. I’ve read for example that a woman born in parts of South Africa is more likely to be raped then to learn to read.[vi] This surely should not be!
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[i] Robert Velarde, “Greatness and Wretchedness” “How can one species produce both unspeakable wickedness and nearly inexplicable goodness? How can we be responsible both for the most disgusting squalor and for the most breathtaking beauty? How can grand aspirations and self-destructive impulses, kindness and cruelty, be interwoven in one life? The human enigma cries out for explanation” (Thomas Morris, “Making Sense of It All: Pascal and the Meaning of Life” as quoted in Robert Velarde, “Greatness and Wretchedness: The Usefulness of Pascal’s Anthropological Argument in Apologetics”).
[ii] Pascal, Pensees, 131/434.
[iii] D.G. Preston, New Dictionary of Theology, ed. Sinclair B. Ferguson, David F. Wells, and J.I. Packer (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), s.v. “Blaise Pascal” as quoted in Robert Velarde, “Greatness and Wretchedness: The Usefulness of Pascal’s Anthropological Argument in Apologetics.”
[iv] N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 38.
[v] Sadly, “human nature itself, with its vast and mysterious amalgam of capacities to think, feel, supervise, love, create, respond, and act virtuously—that is, with its vast capacities for imaging God—has become the main carrier and exhibit of corruption” (Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, 30-31).
[vi] Yet how strange and how sad that we hate the thought of this and yet many still struggle with the wickedness of pornography. Most of humanity hates the thought of human trafficking but yet enjoys the very things that feed that market.
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.
Eternity in our Hearts
We have eternity in our hearts.
We cry out like two daughters: Give and Give.
The fire of our soul won’t be quenched or squelched.
It burns on,
consumes all,
and is left
empty.
Empty abyss,
blank, black hole.
We suck in stars, oceans, all;
and yet repine.
Yes, my soul’s an arid land.
An empty dry sponge.
It sucks up all it can,
yet remains coarse and craving.
My soul’s a vacuum
that won’t be filled.
All is engulfed,
yet I’m left empty.
We have eternity in our hearts
and can only be filled with the Eternal
We have an infinite longing
that is only meant by the Infinite.
Our cavernous soul is only filled
by the LORD.
We can only be sated
by our Savior.
Our repining will finally wane
when we stand on heaven’s plane.
Our soul’s fallowed ground
will burst with new life.
Our bottomless shaft
will abound in streams of joy.
in X 