Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rphroy!caen!uwm.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: henning@acsu.buffalo.edu (Karl polypropylene Henning) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Sin Message-ID: Date: 28 Feb 91 08:53:51 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: SUNY Buffalo Lines: 105 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu MAUREEN BURNS writes: >Sin is separation from God; it is more a state that we exist in rather than >an act. Our actions, motives, thoughts and responses are a reflection of >the fact that we are fallen, sinful creatures. To start, let me suggest that this paradigm of "sin" -- while it has an "internalized" role for many xians, who employ it to evaluate and regulate their own behavior -- seems basically an "internalized criticism" of one's fellow men. That is to say that -- while I am aware that many xians apply this state of fallen-from-ur-grace to themselves first (or nearly first) -- it serves as a basic, assertedly divinely-instituted, platform from which to criticize other people's behavior (or motives). And, it serves as a sort of "spiritual disclaimer" -- how can this or that person be expected to acknowledge the divine light, when their eyes are muddied by his sinful state? As an example, I cite the "rebuke" of a fellow netter directed towards a homosexual xian; and the bold, clear strokes with which another fellow netter drew the line between a xian, and the prospect of marrying a non- xian. >When God was finished creating, recall He said, "...it is good." Perfect, >pure, unblemished, untarnished. "good" does not mean "pure, unblemished, untarnished"; and if one asserts that this was what god /meant/, one is struck by the divine gift for understatement :-) >The world was ideal: no evil, no imperfection, no dust, no death. No dust? ... or just self-dusting bookshelves :-)? Seriously, this is a curious thing to exclude from a "perfect" creation ... they were in a garden; I assume (for lack of contrary evidence) that the fruits of the garden grew in dirt (maybe even in shit -- the record is silent on this point :-) The core of my response being, just what "imperfections" would have been de facto absent from Eden? "perfection" is one of the motleyest, particoloredest, sigh-inducingest bogeys of traditional religious thought, IMHO. >The relationship between Adam and Eve was perfectly fulfilling, totally >satisfying, unimaginably intimate. Here we enter fully into that vast annexed region to Terra Religia, the Romantic Gloss :-) >The relationship between God and his created humans was equally as perfect, >satisfying, fulfilling, intimate. He created us in His image in order to >have a relationship with us. If this was so, and if this relationship was so incredibly intimate, just where did the serpent get off? Or by perfect and intimate, are we to understand that Adam and Eve checked in with god every week or so, and the serpent caught them on Monday morning? It is in little details like these, that one views such biblical accounts as having an iconic, rather than historic, value. And if that is so, just what are we to make of this small matter of "perfection"? >However, when the serpent decieved Eve, and she enticed Adam, sin entered >the world with all it's evil, imperfection, >damage, hideousness, sorrow, toil and death, to mention a few of its >effects. The image of God in which man and woman was created was >grotesquely disfigured. Harsh words against the visual attributes of one's fellow people :-) ... or, for the matter of that, their socio-moral attributes .... >Jeremiah says that the heart is decietfully wicked; we are born with the >tendancy to turn away from God, to try to make life work on our terms, >without God's help. He loves us with an everlasting, passionate love, but >we stubbornly and willfully refuse to believe that He can or will truly >satisfy our deepest longings and desires. Surely this is an unduly negative caricature of the people around us; the idea being, I suppose, that the divine image is so utterly disfigured beyond all recognition, that any socio-morally redeeming qualities are the result of god's personal intervention. This does not square with (for example) the people /I/ know, who would not impute such good qualities as they have had occasion to cultivate to any supernatural source .... This attitude does, however, provide the cushioning expectation that people are going to resist xianization, by laying the fault upon the "nature" of the intransigent heathens, rather than on any possible weaknesses of xianity as a worldview. >That is sin. It's a condition that is common to every one of us. >But...Praise the Lord for Calvary. There is a HOPE!!! You'll forgive me if I choose not to partake of your generous offer of such a dismal "common condition" ... whose chief attribute seems to me to be, highlighting the miraculous cure. For those who see the human condition in different terms, there are different hopes. kph -- "The shrewder mobs of America, who dislike having two minds upon a subject, both determine and act upon it drunk; by which means a world of cold and tedious speculation is dispensed with." -- Washington Irving