Prayer
God, literally the word SIN has so much baggage attached to it, and we tend to have strongly negative or strongly positive views on this word. I have really been thinking a lot about it because it seems powerful and important in Christianity. I think I have been thinking wrongly about this word, and I would like you to help me understand it better.
Preface
My deconstruction/reconstruction has been a journey of asking questions, so many questions I would never allow myself to ask. Separately I asked a lot of questions about evolution, Adam and Eve, and sin. I imagined these as disparate topics until one day they all coalesced in my mind. To be honest, I found it absolutely beautiful, which made me want to write it all down so I could share it.
Introduction
Engineers and physicists talk about about finding the fundamental principles and doing basic research. We think that if we understand the most basic rules of life and the environment that we can easily build on them, and find a myriad of beneficial applications for our world. Theologians are the same but with the spiritual world. Growing up evangelical I learned all about sin. It separated us from God, and you had to obey or else. Without negating all I was taught, I think I understand sin better by understanding the fundamentals which I was not taught. The idea of sin now makes the most sense to me within the context of evolution.
Theistic Evolution
Some of my questioning led me to the idea of Theistic Evolution, which allows God the freedom to use whatever means He chooses to make His world. In particular I devoured the content from BioLogos, learning that the geologic timetable, fossil records, and DNA mapping all point toward an ancient earth with humans evolving from lower life forms over millions of years. Though I always thought that belief in God as creator and evolution were mutually exclusive, I met many Christians that were perfectly fine with serving a God that used evolution to create the various life forms.
Theistic Evolution started to be beautiful to me. The idea that God was willing to wait around for millions of years to lovingly craft all humans and specifically me was amazing. I was astounded by God's foreknowledge about the big bang. How could He know that worlds and stars would result? God's apparent ability to interpolate millions of years into the future and start creation in the right direction had me in awe.
Creation Narratives
I learned as a young man that Evangelicals take a generally literal view of creation as described in Genesis in the Bible. For many, this is a hill to die on, because "if Genesis is not literally true the entirety of scripture has to be called in question." But reading more progressive theologians I found perspectives that made more sense. Allowing, the creation stories in Genesis be less literal, minimized the science-religion anxiety I always tried to ignore.
Evolution Timeline
I began to get the feeling that for whatever reason God really likes evolution. I saw the physical evolution of humanity. I saw the moral evolution of man from Adam to Jesus to us today. I saw the evolution of Christianity over 2000 years. I saw my evolution in the areas of intellect, morality, beliefs, and passions looking back over 53 years. God seems more like bumper rails on the sides of a bowling alley than a pilot carefully navigating a Coast Guard cutter through a narrow channel. Those rails get you to the goal but there are some bumps along the way.
As I considered that God likes evolution and that the Bible may be less literal that I previously thought, I saw in my mind the evolution timeline.
Physical Evolution is the millions of years creating Homo Sapiens. During this period the conditions were ideal as Darwin's survival of the fittest was preeminent. One could imagine that the male sexual drive free from societal norms actually increased the speed of evolution. Perhaps shorter life spans allowed for increased evolution as well. In general one could argue that our biology was exactly what was needed in that time to make our species what it is physically today.
Then came the hockey stick. At risk of overimagining God, I could see him waiting around, for a human that he could really work with. Was he playing solitaire over and over? Was that even fair if He know what cards were under each pile. And then, boom, one day homo sapiens was ready for God. God had a big hairy audacious vision for humanity. He could see great, just societies of people working together selflessly and lovingly for the good of all people. This would be a reflection of God Himself, in His image. But, the problem was that humanity had the features God needed to work with, but we also had bugs. The bugs were the parts of humanity that were important for physical evolution, but would be potentially bad for creating societies. God would have to build on our strengths, but he would also need to manage our "bugs."
The good news was our two brains. We had developed the "lizard brain" the oldest part which housed our fight-flight, lust, and pain avoidance mechanisms. Then we had developed the neo-cortex, our thinking brain. The thinking brain had the ability to override the basic biology in our lizard brain. God would need to train us to the use the neo-cortex to over ride our biology as needed to form loving societies.
Training our neo-cortex would become teaching against sinning. Sin would be anything unloving and self centered that followed our biology instead of our higher level thinking which was beneficial to society. Coming from a world where sin felt more like limitations and punishment, I love thinking about sin avoidance as guiding us toward a more beautiful society.
Therefore, at the point of Creation, I think we are better off to think of humanity being remade in God's image. We had spent millions of years just following our biology, and now God was calling us to a higher level. Our first lesson was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Perhaps, literally or figuratively, this was the first time humanity was being called to choose against our biology. I suspect God knew the failure was coming, and I think it was intended. God wanted to show through story how hard it would be to choose to follow His way rather than our biology. So, I question the idea of sin being "born at the fall." I suspect that God was revealing the sin tendency, our self centeredness, that was a normal part, albeit a bug, within us already. Before we could move to lesson Two we had to understand that we would always struggle with doing right.
Lesson Two was teaching us the most basic building blocks of society:
- Humility toward others
- Self Sacrifice for others
- Love for others
These lessons from the pages of the old testament were confusing and conflicting at times. And there may have been more bad examples that good. But, nonetheless the ideas of humility, self-sacrifice, and love were being taught. There were years of painful moral evolution through all the ancient peoples up to Jesus.
Jesus Continues our Training
Jesus, the embodiment of humility, self sacrifice, and love for others, would teach these same lessons orally and demonstrably.
One of the most beautiful stories about Jesus was his conversation about the most important commandments. He stated that the two most important were to Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself. Furthermore He said that all the other commandments hang on these two. That's it, Love God and Love your neighbor. If we only did these two things for the rest of our lives, we would be kicking it for Jesus. In Philippians 2, the author recounts how Jesus showed love through his humility when he was among us even though He was so much above us. Loving God and loving your neighbor are the scarlet threads running through our evolution from our beginning until today. Based on Jesus example and the ongoing guidance of the Holy Spirit, humanity continued growing and evolving along a rocky road.
Romans 5:8-9 But God demonstrates his own love in this. While we were sinners, Christ died for us.
Let us review sin from three dimensions. The three dimensions are
- Object of our sin. Sin against God vs sin against a neighbor
- Focus of our sin. Sin as appearance based vs sin as truth based
- Functional source of salvation. Sinlessness as salvation vs grace as salvation
The Primary Object of Sin
The primary object of sin can be God or neighbor. When our paradigm is primarily God as the object of sin, we can easily accept arbitrary rules regarding sin, because the rule are handed down by God. We easily live in fear because we expect punishment from God for our sins. When our paradigm is primarily neighbors as the objects of sin, we naturally focus on the primary goal of loving our neighbors. We easily live in inspiration because we expect guidance from God to avoid sins.
The Focus of Sin
The focus of sin can be appearance based or truth based. When our paradigm is primarily appearance based, the way our sin appears to the outside world and others in our community is our focus. We use the appearance of our level of sin to others as a trope for the appearance of our sin to God. While mentally asserting that hidden sin is the same as obvious sin, we unconsciously regard obvious sin as more significant in God's eyes and our eyes. The way we look to others in social media and in the eyes of our community can become more important than our authentic selves. When our paradigm is primarily truth based, hidden and obvious sins are equally significant to us. Our complete authentic selves with all their sins are laid bare before God and ourselves. We don't assume the person with hidden sins to be better than the person whose sin is out in the open.
The Functional Source of Salvation
The functional source of salvation can be sinlessness or grace. Any evangelical will profess that salvation is by grace. However, in actuality, many evangelical Christians live as if sinlessness is the ticket to salvation. With this perspective, the corollary becomes assumed true that sinfulness is condemnation. We then focus on being sinless and we rank and judge each other inside and outside the church based on the apparent sinfulness of each other. This ongoing judging leads us to hide as much sin as possible. Additionally, we avoid the easily observed, cultural hot button sins the most of all. We believe that being close to the obvious sin of others has the potential to infect us, so we avoid doing business with "sinful" people. When we have a grace paradigm, we recognize the sin, hidden and obvious, that is continually part of our lives as insurmountable. We don't harshly judge people with different sins or more open sins than we have.
If we were to assume that:
- Or neighbor is the primary object of our sin
- The the focus of our sin is truth based
- Grace is the source of salvation
We would find that:
We focus on loving our sinful selves, community, and neighbors, humbly baring all our sins and imperfections, appreciating the grace that covers our sins.
Conclusion
In this paradigm, we see God leaning heavily on evolution to move us from ancient common ancestor to image bearer toward humble, self-sacrificing lover. We see the idea of sin rooted in God's great vision of training homo sapiens to achieve much more than our biology alone could do. And we no longer think of sin as violations against an arbitrary code dropped on us by God; rather it is violating God's very best practices for love and sacrifice and whole hearted living in our world. I imagine God watching and cheering for us to make great decisions that lead to whole hearted living. I imagine Him sad for us when we make a wrong choice rather than angry at us for failing again. In this paradigm we prioritize the scarlet thread of love for our neighbor above debatable sins realizing that those who put aside loving their neighbor in order to reject and denigrate others for their sins are disconnected from Jesus vision for humanity. Understand sin in this way is life giving rather than life robbing.
I'm always interested in you thoughts; please comment below.
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