Sicut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum, ita desiderat anima mea ad te, Deus.
Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks: so longeth my soul after thee, O God.
At this point I'd like to provide some preliminary comments regarding my views on the subject and my impressions about the various ideas I've been exposed to. While I fully intend to perform some extended exegesis (i.e. attempts at biblical interpretation), I'm sure that would fill up enough space to warrant it's own post, and before I "show all my cards" I would simply like to see how some of you think and how you respond to me ideas here.
-Let me start with the idea of sin as I've been exposed to it amongst other Christians. Almost invariably their perceptions of it have come off looking like sin is behavioral, that it is practically as if God thinks of sin aesthetically and He doesn't countenance it because it's "yucky" to Him. I've been told not to think overly much of it by the droves and droves of anti-intellectual Christians out there because my curiosity in this area must be somehow detrimental to my faith, and we need to have a child-like relationship with God.
Well I'm just not satisfied at all with these attitudes. God doesn't consider sin hubris because it's merely an ice cream flavor He doesn't like. That God wants us to relate to Him like a child doesn't mean that He expects us not to use our rational capacity, after all He designed us to have a rational capacity and it is a beautiful thing because it reflects the Creator.
We are to humble ourselves before Him and trust Him like a child. If when Jesus taught His disciples to be like a child there were actually anti-intellectual overtones involved, then one would expect the Bible not to be a repository of the grandest philosophical sentiments, and the very height of artistic mastery with it's poems, psalms, and hymns.
-Okay, so what do I believe I've learned about the nature of sin?
In my studies I've been lead to think that hamartiology, theodicy, and biblical anthropology are deeply interrelated so in any discussion of one of three I'm bound to bring up aspects of the others. Given this kind of study I have arrived over time at the provisional conclusion (after all there is no perfectly apt or descriptive piece of theology, as God is infinite and hence inscrutable, and we are mere creatures) that sin is actually, for lack of a better way to put it, an insidious kind of mental illness.
How is this so? Well, to start with God created us in His Image. God's self love being the most profound and beautiful thing of all, it is only natural that He would create something like Him and love it inasmuch as it is like Him. I understand the Image to be our capacity for profound thought.
What happened then during the Fall? We distorted the Image itself, lessening our likeness to God and hence alienating us from Him. Sin, being any distortion of the Image, is an influence that confuses, and the reason it separates us from God is it alienates us from Him and feeds us false perceptions about His nature and our own nature.
Jesus, with His repeated references to the inside of the cup and how sinful thoughts proceed from our innermost being resulting in sinful behavior, has every appearance of suggesting with such teaching that sin itself is something within, and not something behavioral. When we act sinfully we are expressing problematic developments within the heart, we are displaying symptoms of a grave illness.
Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks: so longeth my soul after thee, O God.
At this point I'd like to provide some preliminary comments regarding my views on the subject and my impressions about the various ideas I've been exposed to. While I fully intend to perform some extended exegesis (i.e. attempts at biblical interpretation), I'm sure that would fill up enough space to warrant it's own post, and before I "show all my cards" I would simply like to see how some of you think and how you respond to me ideas here.
-Let me start with the idea of sin as I've been exposed to it amongst other Christians. Almost invariably their perceptions of it have come off looking like sin is behavioral, that it is practically as if God thinks of sin aesthetically and He doesn't countenance it because it's "yucky" to Him. I've been told not to think overly much of it by the droves and droves of anti-intellectual Christians out there because my curiosity in this area must be somehow detrimental to my faith, and we need to have a child-like relationship with God.
Well I'm just not satisfied at all with these attitudes. God doesn't consider sin hubris because it's merely an ice cream flavor He doesn't like. That God wants us to relate to Him like a child doesn't mean that He expects us not to use our rational capacity, after all He designed us to have a rational capacity and it is a beautiful thing because it reflects the Creator.
We are to humble ourselves before Him and trust Him like a child. If when Jesus taught His disciples to be like a child there were actually anti-intellectual overtones involved, then one would expect the Bible not to be a repository of the grandest philosophical sentiments, and the very height of artistic mastery with it's poems, psalms, and hymns.
-Okay, so what do I believe I've learned about the nature of sin?
In my studies I've been lead to think that hamartiology, theodicy, and biblical anthropology are deeply interrelated so in any discussion of one of three I'm bound to bring up aspects of the others. Given this kind of study I have arrived over time at the provisional conclusion (after all there is no perfectly apt or descriptive piece of theology, as God is infinite and hence inscrutable, and we are mere creatures) that sin is actually, for lack of a better way to put it, an insidious kind of mental illness.
How is this so? Well, to start with God created us in His Image. God's self love being the most profound and beautiful thing of all, it is only natural that He would create something like Him and love it inasmuch as it is like Him. I understand the Image to be our capacity for profound thought.
What happened then during the Fall? We distorted the Image itself, lessening our likeness to God and hence alienating us from Him. Sin, being any distortion of the Image, is an influence that confuses, and the reason it separates us from God is it alienates us from Him and feeds us false perceptions about His nature and our own nature.
Jesus, with His repeated references to the inside of the cup and how sinful thoughts proceed from our innermost being resulting in sinful behavior, has every appearance of suggesting with such teaching that sin itself is something within, and not something behavioral. When we act sinfully we are expressing problematic developments within the heart, we are displaying symptoms of a grave illness.
