Yesterday, I was walking through Dolores Park and heard a street preacher, saying "If you've ever stolen a stick of gum, then you are guilty of sin! If you've ever looked at Facebook at work, then you've stolen from your employer, and that's sin!" Of course we all know where he was headed: If we have sinned -- even with a trivial infraction like a stick of gum -- then God who is holy must punish us for all eternity in Hell unless we accept Jesus right now.
I mean, seriously, gum? Why can't God just get over it? Is God less moral than all of us are? This is not a picture of holiness, it is a picture of a petty tyrant. Aside from the horrible picture of God that this gives us (and honestly, who could ever love, trust and feel safe around a God like that?), what this ultimately does is trivialize sin. It makes sin into a petty infraction of little consequence.
We live in a world with real hurt. All you need to do to see this is read the headlines, and you will see story after story of terrible injustice, violence and suffering throughout the world. So much so it can overwhelming. If you spend the time to really listen to those around you, and will hear stories of deep hurt, broken families, broken people. We do not need to make up fake problems about chewing gum. There are plenty of real problems and hurt.
Jesus does not focus on gum, or even going too far with your girl friend in junior high school, or dropping an F-bomb when you stub your toe. His overwhelming focus was on things that have deep and devastating effects on people's lives -- the alienation and estrangement that can come from poverty, sickness and injustice. That's what Jesus spent the majority of his time focusing on. They matter more because they have more profound consequences. If you feel worthless, condemned, cut off, this is devastating in a way that affects the whole course of your life.
And here's the thing: Jesus did not tell people that this was a sin. He did not tell them to repent of this. Instead, he demonstrated the care and nearness of God to them. He healed the wounded and embraced the untouchable. The biggest problem, as Jesus saw it, was not that we had done things that were wrong and needed to seek forgiveness from an angry God. Our biggest problem was that people felt cut off from God, forsaken.
This, I would propose, is the No. 1 struggle that people have with God today. What drives so many people to atheism is not selfishness or hedonism, but the experience of abandonment in the face of suffering, grief and injustice. In fact, it is a problem that touches us whether we are people of faith or completely secular. In the face of debilitating illness or tragedy we can feel isolated and alone. Similarly, those who have experienced violence know as well that this can make you feel helpless and abandoned.
Now, of course where there is hurt and injustice, there are not only victims, but also those who have hurt others. Surely it is right to call people on their hurtfulness, but the focus needs to be on helping these people to develop empathy, and all the more, our main focus really needs to be on caring for those who have been hurt.
This was the clear focus of Jesus. Yes, he confronted those who hurt others (especially those who did so in the name of religion). Yes, he taught us all to walk in the way of compassion and empathy (which he referred to as "love of enemies"). But the majority of his time Jesus spent caring for those who had been shut out and wounded, his focus was on victims. In focusing on defining ourselves as "sinners" we have placed the focus on redeeming those who harm others (which includes us), often ignoring the needs of those who have been harmed (which includes us, too). It is good to seek to redeem those who harm, but this cannot mean that we neglect to care for those who have been harmed. To do so would be to completely miss the clear focus of Jesus. That's why he cared about issues of poverty, sickness and a host of other social issues tied to self-worth that we as the church have so often overlooked.
David wrote in Psalm 51, "Lord, against you, and you only have I sinned." This is often interpreted to mean that sin is ultimately directed toward God. God is the one who has been offended, and so we need to deal with God's anger. But that interpretation completely misses what David was saying here. David was a king, and kings had unchecked power. So David had secretly slept with another man's wife (which is really a euphemism for saying that he raped her, since women really had very little choice back then when a king told you to do something), and then when she became pregnant he had her husband killed by putting him at the front of a battle. It's the kind of thing kings did all the time, because they could treat people like subjects. Those people were just inconsequential pawns to them. But David has realized that when he had harmed these "inconsequential" people, what he had really done was harm God. In harming those who he had valued so little, he had really dishonored his own king (and one can't help but note here that in calling God a "king," God's values are nothing like those of earthly kings!).
Properly understood then, this is an early version of Jesus' statement, "As you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me." The point is not that God is saying that all the focus should be on him, that God is a petty legalist who is angry about every stick of chewing gum. It's just the opposite: God wants us to care for the other. God wants us to care for those whom we value the least. If God cares about sin, it's because God cares about you and me. God cares because God loves us, and wants us to stop hurting each other.
The focus therefore is not about how "good" you need to be in order to make it into heaven, or on whether God can overlook that bad thing you did. That ultimately leads to self-focus, and we need to instead be relationally focused. We need to care about hurting each other, we need to be active in making things right. Because, to paraphrase Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount: You are worth much more to God than chewing gum.
Follow Derek Flood on Twitter: www.twitter.com/therebelgod
Rev. James Ellis, III: Church Clothes
Catherine Meeks, Ph.D.: Forgiveness and Bearing Witness
Rev. Dr. Lewis Galloway: Mark 5:21-43: Taking Jesus Seriously
Also, the term "sin" is a serious mistranslation of the terms used in the original languages. In English, the term "sin" has a decidedly religious connotation, but the terms translated as "sin" in the Greek New Testament and Hebrew Bible have a broader common secular usage which is not reflected in our English translations.
Derek Flood's conclusion is spot on! "God wants us to care for the other. God wants us to care for those whom we value the least. If God cares about sin, it's because God cares about you and me. God cares because God loves us, and wants us to stop hurting each other. The focus therefore is not about how "good" you need to be in order to make it into heaven, or on whether God can overlook that bad thing you did. That ultimately leads to self-focus, and we need to instead be relationally focused. We need to care about hurting each other, we need to be active in making things right."
One might even suggest that ortho-praxis is more important than ortho-doxy.
Sin is simple. (IMOH). Nothing has ever come close to making more sense to me than the words in ACM (A Course in Miracles) a book on Christs teachings of forgiveness. It simply states that there is only one sin and this is "belief in separation from God."
When one comes to the realization that there is no separation between what God is and what they are there becomes no separation between who they are and who or what any other person, place or thing is. Oneness is a term that is often used used here. The more clear one becomes about this the less likely one is to engage in harm or remain in situations of harm to them self or live as an enabler to others acts of self harm and harm to others.
Ones life becomes centered around compassion. The desire for Love to prevail in all situations is less a thought and more automatic. Judgement ceases and healing prevails. A simple personal example for me is that I use to judge obese people where now my first reaction is "God bless you." The last thing I want for them is to add a box of judgement to the weight they already endure.
What you chose to hear was; "For a book that is about Christ's teachings on Miracles.."
As to what is from Christ, neither you or I know this.
Traditions and thoughts of of man are quite the opposite of what I am saying. Dogma teaches that we are lesser than and must earn our way to salvation through penance and the like.
What I am saying is that when you become aware of the pure nature and inseparable intimacy we have with our creator, you realize you were never separate in any way and that He only knew you as Himself.
On a similar note, Christ does not forgive. He does not condemn and therefore forgiveness is never necessary. It is we humans who condemn and therefore must learn to forgive. ...primarily, forgiving ourselves.
Are you saying we are God;God is us? Not following you.... How are we forgiven?
I submit to you that you know this to be true.
"How are we forgiven?" We are not. As shared above with 'gracealone', we were never condemned and therefore forgiveness from God or Christ is not a part of the equation. Perhaps religious dogma disseminated these ideas to give power more to the Church instead of to you where God resides not in stone but flesh.
Would you condemn a cell in your body for forgetting it was a part of you and behaving selfishly?
Such silly things we have been taught!
In my own realizations as well as working with many others, through a simple process of asking a number questions about ones own internal awareness, what one intrinsically knows of them self and eventually what is behind their existence they find that the intimacy between the consciousness they know them self to be and what they know as their source or "God" is so intimate that there is only the acknowledgement of individual awareness but not a hint of separation. I ask them, "Is this something you think, believe, or know?"
They know it. More deeply and clearly than anything they have ever known in their life.
Life is just this simple. Everyone is this connected. It is impossible to live outside that which is all pervasive but in our imagination. Just below the surface knowledge of home is free to everyone who wants it and concern for anything but Love, joy, clarity, honesty, knowledge, and beauty is but a memory of previous imaginings.
Sin was actually a god of the crescent Moon in ancient Sumeria. Also named Nanna Suen where Suen is the Akkadian word for Sin. He was the god that decided the fate of the dead.
This might help explain the concept as it developed in Judeo-Christian thought, as early Sumerian writings had a profound influence on stories in the Old Testament.
Now this may reflect a misunderstanding of who God really is (I certainly think it is), but the fact is no one does something simply to be "bad." We all do things because we think its what's good for us. So if people are walking away because they feel that way, then we need to take those feelings of abandonment, or of feeling devalued and inhibited, and address these seriously and compassionately.
If we really have a heart for the lost like Jesus did, then we will not just write people off.
I have begun discovering that sin is not so much what we do, but what victimizes us. Salvation from sin is not a rigid behavioral modification, but freeing us from victimization. Child prostitutes are not volitional sinners, but are sinned against, enslaved by their tormentors or driven to it by the desperation caused in escaping from parental abuse.
Sin, then, does not need to be something to accuse people of, nor to tell people they deserve death because of. The author is right -- fundamentalist theology does trivialize sin and make God into a petty tyrant who enjoys bringing suffering on hapless humans ("He that sitteth in the heavens will laugh; the Lord will have them in sore derision").
We need to focus on what people need, not on beating down people who are already beaten down. To the jobless, the sins that victimize them are those of an uncaring system.
But to Fundamentalists, the system doesn't need fixed. And "fixing" people is not meeting their needs, but manipulating them into unquestioning "faith" in God and acceptance that what happens to them is "God's will" -- continuing the cycle of victimization.
Galatians 1:" 6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed."
There are 25,000 different sects, denominations, and splinters of Christianity in the United States. Each of them believes they hold the truth, and that most others have somehow missed it.
It is a difficult position. That fact alone ought to eliminate the hubris fundamentalists exude, but it doesn't. And in the end, all end up cursing everyone else. That doesn't seem right, either.
I am working to eliminate from my own mind the chains and abuse of fundamentalism. And I will speak out against those things. I just hope others will find their way out of the darkness.
No one is saying we should do hurtful things. That would be absurd. The question is: why do we so often do things that hurt ourselves and others? Most of the time that behavior that we call "sin" is just a symptom of something much deeper.
We often lash out for example because we feel threatened. So we need to address the deeper problem that these hurtful actions point to. For many people, that deeper problem is feeling abandoned in a world of hurt and injustice. A gospel that does not take that into account is not the full gospel.