Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Saturday, October 18, 2008

In the Christian group for which I am the faculty sponsor there is a discussion that seems to arise every year regarding God and how He deals with sin. The specifics of this conversation change from year to year but one of the things that these students seem to want to do is to understand the theology of redemption beyond a mere "Jesus died for my sins" level. While such an understand is correct insofar as it goes, it doesn't offer much in the way of dealing with the often complex issues and situations that college students encounter.

This year, the conversation began in a conversation about whether we should remember our sins or not. My colleague in leading these studies, Gary, is Orthodox and much of the writing of the early church fathers on this topic indicates that perhaps it is better that we remember our sins as a way of reinforcing our humility before a holy God. Some of the students who came from an evangelical mindset found this particularly challenging as they've always been taught that since God has forgiven their sins and remembers them no more then they should endeavor to do the same. The great thing that happened is that we managed to avoid the occasional east/west impasse that develops in the conversation. I was able to do this by understanding that while east and west often times use the same words, they can have different meanings or implications. In this case, Gary meant that we should remember that we are prone to sin and use as evidence of that fact our past actions and present tendencies. What a couple of the students heard was that we should remember our guilt associated with that sin due to the Western emphasis of the association of guilt with sin. What ensued was a great discussion of how we can remember our sin even as we acknowledge that God has dealt with and removed the guilt. I think it was a real eye-opening insight for the students and for us as leaders to understand that while the traditions of the East and West often use the same language, we sometimes have very different understands of the words. This is especially true once you move to North American evangelical Christianity with it's roots coming out of so many different theological traditions.

The more interesting thing that this led to for me was a discussion Gary and I had about the metaphors we use as a faith to describe how sin gets described and how God deals with it. As an aside, I have to say that Gary and I end up having one or two of these sorts of extended dialogues a semester regarding Christianity and I have found it to be one of the most rewarding conversations I've ever had. What emerged in my mind from this specific part of the conversation is that Scripture holds within it several metaphors to describe both sin and how God deals with it. In the West, especially in the tradition of Protestantism, we have focused on one of these metaphors (almost exclusively within some faith traditions) while neglecting the others. There are good reasons for this but as Gary and I considered and compared views from the East the West it got me to thinking very deeply about how such metaphors inform not only how we deal with our own sin and it's affect on our relationship with God but also how we deal with and treat others who are struggling with these things.

The specific metaphors for sin that I've found to date are sin as rebellion, sin as illness, sin as a wandering away from God and sin as brokenness. Another metaphor that I've used is that of poison but I'm not sure I've found much Scriptural support for that metaphor beyond a few references to snakes. The corresponding metaphors for how God deals with sin are God as "Just Judge", God as "The Great Physician", God as "The Good Shepherd" and God as the repairer of the divisions. I'm sure that there are more metaphors than just these, I just haven't found them as of yet. The unfortunate thing I think is that here in North America there's a really strong tendency to focus on just one of these and then claim that anyone who doesn't see it the same way is somehow changing the meaning of Scripture or teaching untruths.

A better way to look at this, I think, is that each of these pictures are metaphors for God stated in terms that humans can understand. Each of them is true as far as the metaphor goes but they aren't exclusive to the other metaphors. In some ways the rebellion/Just Judge metaphor is true and in other ways the illness/Great Physician one is. Neither of them completely describes or explains God because no description, metaphorical or otherwise, in finite human language can describe an infinite God or our relationship with Him. What's important to understand is that whatever metaphor we use, it affects how we look at and treat others. Thus it's important for us to understand this topic through as many metaphors as we can.

I'll discuss each other metaphors as I see them in later blogs but this is a good start.

Thanks for reading and Grace and Peace to you.

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