Sin, Love, & Association (Valentine's Day 2014)

Most Christians of most denominations know the answer to the question of whether we should continue sinning. We quote the Apostle Paul:

"Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?" (Romans 6:2, NLT)

The rub, however, is how to actually pull this off. I have yet to meet a sin-free Christian, and I don't expect I ever will. In saying this, I reveal my own bias about our born-again nature, about how I view us. Others, preachers I've heard, for example, more optimistically say we can achieve mastery over time, getting to the point where we no longer sin. Cleverly playing Switzerland, Lutheran theology says we're 100% saint and sinner at the same time, but this probably doesn't clarify what Paul means in Romans 6.  

My purpose is not exegetical; my purpose is to consider what "not continuing in our sin" already means to most of us in our own normal experience. We who, on a good day, might say that we are getting there or have even arrived. The alternatives being to admit that we have no idea what Paul is talking about, to concede that we are inferior to real Christians, or to conclude that we aren't really saved. So what do we mean if we think of ourselves as generally successful Christians? That we are no longer sinners? Or that we are advancing to the next levels of sin, from the obvious "biggies" to more subtle, more debatable "sins"? Like spending too much of the family budget on tracts last month, or listening to NPR. Perhaps we think we should get credit for graduating to the private sins, ones easier to hide, ones easier for our churches to overlook? Do we get to a point where we stop thinking that sin is a problem, once we're no longer smoking, going to movies, reading the Living Bible, and wishing we were married? Even worse, when we practice denominational carbon trading, offsetting our sins with being more right in political or doctrinal debates. 

These are more disturbing possibilities than just blatantly sinning, knowing we're wrong, and confessing it. There is real danger for spiritual blindness when we become proficient at camouflaging our sin from others' notice and are smugly relieved to have a higher holiness score. This is sin, based on hypocrisy, compounded by deception and pride, and used as justification for avoiding other Christians -- even entire other churches deemed too "unbiblical," perhaps, for our tastes and standards. By contrast if we humble ourselves and admit that we never overcome much of our own sin, then what really is the difference between someone with many and someone with a few less than many sins, or someone else's 27% obedience to Christ and my 34%? What cause for boasting or comparison is there?

The root problem may well be that we use sin rather than love as the Christian lens when we look at ourselves, the church, and the world. What is wrong is the first thing we think about and look for, distorting our view of God's creation and scarring our hearts. Moreover sin scoring helps me perpetuate the myth that I'm better than you -- or at least that we're better than them. Your sin helps me sleep better, knowing that I won't be the first one Jesus kicks out of heaven. We need a theology that doesn't assume or require sinlessness as a condition -- not only before conversion but always. If I know I'm always a sinner, in the lifelong process of being fully saved by grace, then I should not embrace my sin or justify it. BUT I might spend more time thinking through what real Christianity looks like in the context of my ongoing sin instead of in the context of my amazingly whitewashed life. I might stop all the pretending that my smaller list of sins is better than someone else's longer list. Or that sinful I, with my sins of pride, sloth, gluttony, and secret lust, am surely more pleasing to God, secure in my salvation, and deserving of God's blessing and answers to all my prayers than those other, less righteous Christians who listen to rock music, think homosexuality might be natural, are divorced, struggle with addictions, or vote wrong. 

Mmmmm. Soup!

The truth is that I and probably most Christians who have been at this awhile still think a lot about sin and sin-tidying. It is still too much of the focus of our spiritual lives instead of loving the unlovely or even the simple task of setting tables at a soup kitchen. Instead of actually doing something that God wants us to, actually being God's hands and feet in a dying world. I doubt we're really living in the kingdom of God when most of the time we're praying for ourselves, singing songs we enjoy, calculating our 10% tithes, and solidifying our opposition to the rest of the church. We spend a lot of time and energy arguing about and critiquing the sins (personal, political, or doctrinal) of other Christians when it doesn't change anything, does the needy no good, and establishes a terrible model for how our children should live out their own faith.

What if we gave ourselves one entire day per year to publicly proclaim the fact of our opposition to other Christians' cherished or unacknowledged sins and then agreed to live out lives of grace and love and forgiveness and service with those liberal / fundamentalist / other Christians for the rest of the year? The churches that care could get credit for saying they're not "being tolerant" of sin in the camp -- but without completely abandoning the great commandment. How different from what the world usually sees us doing! How will "They will know we are Christians by our love" ever happen when what we actually show the world most of the time is our hostility to each other's religious scorecards, styles of worship, and politics? If we can't stand the Body of Christ, why should anyone else listen to its "good news"?

We have to learn to show love in the midst of disagreement or we're no better than the pagans and tax collectors. And love means association, as Jesus' incarnation and social calendar demonstrated. We never get close to the point of showing love to the rest of the church as long as we stay separate, content to lob stones over our walls. We keep insisting on the condition of conformity with our view, our interpretation, our conviction, while refusing to worship or work together until they become like us. We need to start with love and hope for more-perfect agreement later, not the other way around. That's what "unconditional" requires. We can always wrestle with the details (what is immorality that precludes association, for example), but most of us still resist the very idea that agreement doesn't precede all else.

How about this: All parties agree that they are saved by Jesus, are still not free from all sin, are willing to be changed by God, and are willing to give up their own doctrinal idols if God should convince them. Shouldn't that be a good enough starting point for dishing up soup together? And you never know: Serve Jesus together today, maybe worship together someday.

Joining the Perfect Church

This picture at the Jesus Creed blog reminded me of a joke I heard from a college roommate:

A man is stranded on a desert island for some time. When he is finally rescued, his rescuers tour the island and discover three small huts.

"This one is where I lived," the man replies when asked about the huts. "And that one is where I went to church."

"What about the third hut?" the rescuers ask.

"Oh," the man replies, shaking his head, "that's where I used to go to church."

Gracious Disagreement

Here's a lovely little video clip of Dr. Greg Boyd on historic diversity within the church on the "negotiables." This is one of several intriguing video tidbits from the BioLogos Foundation, a site well worth exploring for a scientific Christian perspective on science, the Bible, and Christianity.

"Having to wrestle with diverse opinions and perspectives is hardly a new thing in the church. Unfortunately, we've lost some of that: the ability to be gracious with disagreements, especially among conservative Protestants throughout the twentieth century."

I'm not convinced this is unique to 20th century Protestants, but I like the use of "gracious" in this context and agree that its absence makes us look "ugly." Can we disagree but remain gracious in our disagreements?

Ecumenical Catechism: DOA?

John Armstrong's comments on and quotations of conservative Catholic opposition to Cardinal Kasper's call for an ecumenical catechism should come as no surprise to anyone, and suggest a few questions for our exploration. And I had to use the same photo of Cardinal K with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew -- both to show off the patriarch's cool head covering and to work in the phrase, "Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew." Now there's a title worthy of a nameplate on the desk!

In celebration of the time-honored catechism format, then, let's begin with the first question:

Q.1: Why should nobody be surprised by opposition to Christian unity?
A: Because ecumenism is technically defined by many as, "a Satanic compromise with those who lack our spiritual correctness and perfection" or perhaps, "proof that the Antichrist has already begun his diabolical work in the church." And, as Armstrong notes,

Sadly, this spirit is not limited to Protestants or Catholics. Only the grace of God and the fresh breeze of the Holy Spirit will alter people who fear so deeply loving and respecting those who are not in our communion. 

Q.2: Why would it be so difficult to accept an ecumenical catechism? Is there really so little scriptural support for basic doctrines that all of Christiandom could agree on?
A: I believe that there is sufficient support, though the very question reveals my Protestant bias in favor of the written scriptures and ignores the reality of church tradition's role in all our denominations. However, such a project could quickly become a political wrangle in which questions of "What scriptures?" and "What doctrines?" reveal the root issues of "Who has the power to force this decision upon the rest of us?" and "By what authority do you do these things?" Questions of power and authority, while critical to all of us, are threatening to many.

Moreover, changes to or sacrifices from our own self-defining lists of beliefs, necessary for the creation of a shared catechism of essentials, could call into question the validity of our own "second tier" beliefs, and the validity of our self-definition, as a result. Leave out dispensationalism? Baptism by immersion only? Transubstantiation? Without that, there would be no difference between us and ... that church down the road! Better to draw our own lines in the sand and cherish the golden calves that pop out of the fire of our disobedience than do the hard work of love, of keeping the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace -- with our own brothers and sisters for whom Christ died, mind you.

As for me and mine, our local church uses no formal creed or catechism, so we have been working our way though the Westminster Shorter Catechism at home. All of us have gained from discussing the questions, the answers, and our disagreements with some of the answers. Perhaps even more importantly, we have had the opportunity to start the broader conversation with our kids about how we know anything, why we believe what we do, and what to do with the inevitable disagreements we have with those we love.

Q.3: Could an ecumenical catechism include questions about why faithful Christians disagree with each other on matters of doctrine, exactly how disappointed Jesus is with us about that, and whether our diversity heralds the arrival of the beast? And could such a catechism help us learn to live with one another in humility and obedience as the body of Christ?
A: Hmmmm.... Perhaps I'll write that catechism myself.

Explaining Our Differences

[Salvation #5]

Now, we could conclude from the church's differences on salvation that we really don't know what it is, or really don't get it, or really don't have it, even. And that, therefore, we really don't have any basis for communion, for community, or for witness. We could conclude that perhaps we really aren't Christ's body. Or that most of us aren't part of it, anyway. We could conclude that salvation is unknowable, or even fictional.

Another, less-troubling explanation for why we have different definitions of salvation is that we have allowed our focus to drift from knowing or experiencing salvation to defining salvation, to reducing something amazing and miraculous into words of a particular language. Perhaps we do understand what salvation is, but just have trouble explaining it—in words, at least. Which isn't the only way to explain something, to be fair. Some words have very broad definitions; other defy easy pigeonholing. We might have similar difficulties when defining other words, such as hero, art, America, or beauty. We might have similar difficulty explaining in words how much we love someone.

Language is a very tricky thing. Some languages are much better at expressing certain kinds of ideas. Some languages make certain tasks much harder to accomplish, like explaining whether an event is past, present, or future, for example. Some languages cause more airplane crashes. Different languages perhaps can even create different types of thought and can shape different views of reality. If God's thoughts are higher than our thoughts, can we really expect that each of our human languages fully expresses God's thoughts, or that our words can fully define the wonders of salvation?

God's gift to us was not a dictionary. Therefore, we've written most theological definitions by ourselves. And some of these come from attempts to harmonize numerous verses of Scripture, written by numerous authors, over the course of more than a millennium, in three languages, in various genres from poetry to history to apocalyptic literature, and often with cultural, historical, and literary context that has been lost to most of us over the last 3,000 years. Is it any wonder that we might inadvertently add at least a little of our own interpretation to the original meaning in the Bible when we construct our clever definitions, when we create what the Bible itself has failed to give us?

And interpretation is a problem.

Next stop: Why didn't God give us a dictionary?

Those Who Oppose Our Message

[Salvation #4]

So, we're confronted with the possibility that we're blundering through life without a clear understanding of the gospel. And the apparent fact that we, "the saved," disagree on almost every aspect of what salvation is and what one has to do to be saved. We nod our heads and say the lost must be born again, but we have very different ideas about what that phrase means, how it works, or what it has to look like.

No surprise that this causes some heavy-duty cognitive dissonance—when many of us grew up with the gospel neatly packaged and delivered to us with a fistful of cliches about how simple the gospel is. But the bigger problem with our disagreement may be what it tempts us to believe about or do to those who disagree with us, though they are our brothers and sisters, our family, the church.

Let us be clear: disagreement coming from those in our own faith community, from those we thought we didn't have to persuade or defend against, can be very threatening. Especially when our criterion for being in community turns out to be the very point of controversy. If I can't convince you, might that mean my claims are weak? If you don't agree with me, might I be wrong? And if those in the church don't agree, why would we expect anyone else to believe our message?

Confused or threatened by our differences, our first instinct is often to question. Weren't we on the same side? Aren't we children of the same heavenly Father? Our hurt and puzzlement are understandable, perhaps. Disagreement, difference even, is the opposite of what causes community in the first place. Especially, as in the case of the church, when our solidarity is defined in stark absolutes: heaven and hell, the lost and the found, the redeemed and the damned. Especially when the stakes are life and death, and the consequences eternal.

The speed with which we move from confusion to suspicion, however, is much more problematic. If we disagree, his faith must be weak, we reason. If we differ, she must not take the Bible as seriously as the rest of us. We bolster our own rightness at the expense of the other. Our fear of being wrong and our need to justify at all costs are sad but all too predictable. I in the middle, again. The sin thing. Rather than preferring the other, always trusting and always believing the best, we entertain doubts about motives, allegiance, or even spiritual maturity. They probably aren't even saved. That would explain everything. Such ultimate accusations reveal how far we will go to justify our own position; how readily we will sell our own kin down the river to discredit their views and vouchsafe our own beliefs; how willing we are even to sacrifice relationships, rather than give up what we hold dearer than love and loyalty.

Difference leads to disappointment, suspicion, and, perhaps, eventual betrayal on our part. Which—far from apologizing for—we defend as our right. As though we founded the club and wrote its membership rules. How great our disappointment in those who should have seen the reasonableness of our wisdom. How great the offense of those who, if they were really saved, should have known better. As though, even worse than letting us down, they have actually sinned against us by not agreeing with all of our cherished convictions, our self-defining opinions, and our precious, precious preferences.

What If We Are Wrong?

[Salvation #3]

What does it mean that our agreement on salvation appears to fall apart once we move from terms to definitions? Some of the implications are unsettling, at best:

1. That we—collectively, as the church—don't understand what the gospel is, apparently. Or particularly well, at least. Or well enough to explain it. Without contradicting or vexing other brothers and sisters who have spent just as much effort, study, and prayer to understand salvation as we have—if not more. Including those who have lived under persecution, who have sought truth with more desperation and at greater cost.

2. That there is a real possibility that many of us, individually, don't understand the gospel correctly. That we really don't know what we're talking about. Though we may think we do. Or at least act as if we do whenever we judge the salvation of those around us.

3. That those who sense these possibilities, who see the speck of error or uncertainty in our brother's eye and know what the mirror will reveal, live out their salvation with a gnawing insecurity about our apparent inability to get the story straight.

Insecurity would explain the gymnastics we require of people when we present the gospel—lest anyone fall short of the threshold due to our flawed understanding. What if I miss a step in the recipe? What if I don't explain all necessary hoops? What if I forget the password? We act as if we fear we might be doing it all wrong—thwarting the great commission, even. As if someone's salvation was really up to us, dependent on how perfectly we make the pitch and close the deal.

Insecurity would explain our many lines in the sand, our lists of preferences, convictions, and doctrinal enemies. Our insistence on defining ourselves by our personal and denominational differences hints at a need to be recognized, approved, and proved right—or at least more right than others. Where does the self-justification end? Splitting the church into micro-denominations, into pieces tiny enough finally that all members of our group agree with us? Would we then be content? Or is empire building necessary to buttress the worth and rightness of our opinions?

Insecurity would explain our longing for doctrinal absolutes and our passionate self-defense against ambiguity. We fear that our theological house of cards will come crashing down if we acknowledge any uncertainty. To acknowledge, even to myself, that I might have misunderstood the gospel opens the door of possibility that I might be wrong about anything and everything. What else? How much? For how long? And what about my own salvation?

These are paralyzing questions.