How to talk about !@#$%?

[Brian Postlewait]

Made you look

How to talk about sin?

I recently came across these descriptors of sin. Don't know the origin, but find them very helpful.

1. Something is wrong with the world, and maybe I'm part of it.
2. I'm in pain, and I inflict pain too.
3. I did it my way, and now I feel empty.
4. I have power, and now it has me.

Many lament to inability of our culture to blush. The traditional lists of convicting behaviors no longer convict. Some believe our task is to convince people of their sin in an effort to prepare them for good news. But I wonder if we simply are starting with the wrong lists. Perhaps we are beginning the conversation in the wrong place.

Thoughts?

[Steven Martinez]

Brian nice to see you back on NazNet!
I agree with your assessment. I personally try to engage the conversation with the idea that most people truly do not like the end result of sin. In other words, it is my experience that most "sinners" do not need to be reminded of hell simply because they currently live there. It seems our society has a serious flaw in that it is far easier to point to problems then to lead to solutions. It is easier to call someone a sinner then to lead one toward being a saint.
So what happens if we start the conversation with the solution: the radical, transforming love of God rather than the problem: sin?

[Hans Deventer]

So what happens if we start the conversation with the solution: the radical, transforming love of God rather than the problem: sin?

Yes, but we don't really trust the Holy Spirit to be able to convince the people of sin, so we have to do it. Not that we are any good at it, but that's another story. And our paradigm says that we need to sell a problem before we can sell a solution.

As to sin, I think Augustine's description still fits: there's a hole in our life that no one else can fill. We were made for more than we can find on this earth.

[Dale Cozby]

Yes, but we don't really trust the Holy Spirit to be able to convince the people of sin, so we have to do it. Not that we are any good at it, but that's another story. And our paradigm says that we need to sell a problem before we can sell a solution.

As to sin, I think Augustine's description still fits: there's a hole in our life that no one else can fill. We were made for more than we can find on this earth.

Aren't you passing judgment by saying I have a hole in my life? who are you to tell me I have a void? who are you to tell me what to put in that void (assuming one exists)? Or that something more than what's on this earth is why I need to fill it?
What right do you have to to tell me how to live? to give me advice? if God exists why does he need you to tell me anything?

[Hans Deventer]

Aren't you passing judgment by saying I have a hole in my life? who are you to tell me I have a void? who are you to tell me what to put in that void (assuming one exists)? Or that something more than what's on this earth is why I need to fill it?
What right do you have to to tell me how to live? to give me advice? if God exists why does he need you to tell me anything?

Dale, if you're back to your regular self and have dealt with your anger, I'll gladly answer.

[Rich Schmidt]

Aren't you passing judgment by saying I have a hole in my life? who are you to tell me I have a void? who are you to tell me what to put in that void (assuming one exists)? Or that something more than what's on this earth is why I need to fill it?
What right do you have to to tell me how to live? to give me advice? if God exists why does he need you to tell me anything?

Dale, if you're back to your regular self and have dealt with your anger, I'll gladly answer.

Brian asked for thoughts on how to talk about sin with those outside the church, so I read Dale's post as showing the kinds of questions that people might raise if we talked about sin in the terms you described.

[Jon Bemis]

I think of sin as anytime we don't love God or love others as we should. Pretty much includes everyone I think. All the other lists of "sins" are simply evidences in a breakdown of love IMO.

[Dale Cozby]

Brian asked for thoughts on how to talk about sin with those outside the church, so I read Dale's post as showing the kinds of questions that people might raise if we talked about sin in the terms you described.

You are correct. What happens when we suggest a "better" way to live is we indirectly infer the way they are living is inferior, sinful as it were, not God's best for them.
I have used the void concept before and had these sorts of questions thrown back at me.

How do we get around addressing sin as sin, especially if the person has a chip on their shoulder? An Episcopal priest friend of mine that works in prison ministry with me addressed these sorts of questions with this answer.

"Your best thinking got you here. If you don't like where you are, maybe it is time to listen to someone else besides yourself, or the people you listen to that helped you get where you are today."

I believe we can't help anyone that isn't searching for answers, questioning life, or desiring something more than what they already have. If the Holy Spirit has not laid the foundation in them, we can't build. If they are not hungry we can't feed them. etc.

If/When a person wants peace in their life, a peaceful purpose for life, and a peaceful hope at the end of life then we ought to be able to help. If they enjoy strife and the roller coaster of emotions that comes from living selfishly, then we can't help them. The ends one wants will determine the means to get there. If I want to go to the moon, I can't do it by driving my car off an uphill cliff really fast. Going to the moon used to be thought of as an impossible fantasy, but now we know better. The life we testify to in Christ seems like an impossible fantasy to some, yet we are witnesses to the work of the Holy Spirit.

[Todd Erickson]

My friend Kevin phrases sin as "misplaced love".

In reformed circles, they tend to talk in terms of "Not trusting God to provide for us, and so doing for God what it should be God's job to do". essentially.

I have grown to see it in terms of a metaphor: The great physician made all of creation, including man. Man's job was to act as RNA's to the world, enacting God's healing and creativity in creation. But man thought that disease might be more entertaining, and set loose a great plague on all creation that, in the process, made man forget about the existence of the great physician, and man's place in that office, and so man has come to see himself as the physician.

God, desperately loving his nurses and wanting to return them to true sight and memory so that they can aid Him in healing the rest of creation (as they were created to do) acts in a myriad of ways to turn them back to the ways of healing, rather than harm. Sin is simply a way of living within creation that is destructive and plague born, giving birth to more sickness and destruction instead of life and healing. As such, Sin isn't a specific list of things, so much as an attitude.

The people that I see approaching sin in terms of "learn not to do these things" seem to mostly be really miserable and stressed out, and they have to spend a lot of time rationalizing things to make all of the pieces fit. OTOH, the people who live in the midst of God's love, and growing more and more fully into it, leave much of sin behind them because it simply has no place or attraction in their lives anymore...they have taken on the vision of the physician, and they are literally changed in what is attractive to them.