I am at an interesting place right now in regard to thinking about the subject of sin. After hearing sermon after sermon on the subject, reading book after book, having conversation after conversation, I’m convinced of pretty much one thing: For me, the biggest problem that human beings have with sin, is that we try understand it and define it.

I doubt anyone would argue that it is evident how focusing too much on defining what “sin” is, has lead people—specifically the church—down a very dangerous road.

What I mean is this: I personally can’t deny that I know sin exists, that is, I know that I do things that I hate. To quote Paul:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

For me (and most people of the book), all of this sin business can be traced back to Genesis 3. As I mentioned in a post a couple of weeks ago, I would agree that the biggest issue here is that we tend to look at the world in contractual terms as opposed to Agape Love covenantal terms—what is the name of the forbidden tree in the garden? I’m sure the argument could be made that knowing and being aware of good and evil existing in the world is perhaps the heaviest burden imaginable.

Think about it. What happens when we start thinking about sin (or right vs. wrong for you non-spiritual people)? Well, we start to talk about it. Then, since we’re talking about it, we need to define it in order to get a better handle on it. Before you know it, words like “sanctification,” “purification,” “holiness,” and my favorite one “ransom,” start getting thrown around. Maybe in non-religious circles, words like “virtue,” “ethics,” and “morality” might be mentioned. Since we have a nice neat definition to work with, we naturally become obsessed with evaluating, assessing, measuring and judging.

Instead of lovers, we’ve become law makers and punishers, therefore, so have our Gods.

It is no wonder that the term “Christian” has become synonymous with the word “hypocrite.” The church should never have been portrayed or conceived of as a place where perfect “sinless” and “saved” people congregate.  It should instead look more like an AA meeting. A place where people confess their shortcomings and addictions and recount their stories to each other in a hopeful attempt to find true healing.

Since I’m convinced that I recognize sin when I do it, see it or experience it, and that I do have the uncontrollable need to define it and point it out (to say I can’t or shouldn’t would be disingenuous), I have found some solace in more traditional Hebraic understandings of sin. Rabbi Eliezer Finkelman explains:

The Hebrew word “hatat,” however, has a clear concrete meaning to go with its abstract one. In the Book of Judges we read about a band of sharpshooters, so trained and talented that every one of them can sling a stone at a hair and not miss (Judges 20:16). The word in this verse that means “miss,” yehetu in Hebrew, clearly has the same root as “hatat.” “Sin,” in Hebrew, means something like “missing the target.”

This notion of sin along with sophisticated Christologies (like those found in process thought, which posit that the uniqueness of Christ is seen in the way he actualized the divine aim for his life), have helped me immensely in attempting to deal with and overcome this problem of sin. For me Sin is the “deviation of aim”; humans in their subjective aim distort or deviate from God’s initial, beautiful and harmonious aim for their lives. In his subjective aims Christ actualized the ideal aim of God (as the cosmic Lover) with such intensity that Christ became the supreme human embodiment of “love-in-action.”

On an interesting side note, this sense that we all have which constantly pulls at us, telling us that there is ‘something more’ that we are meant to do in this world, was examined on a recent NPR piece. I thought it was fantastic!

Moving forward, perhaps an interesting question to ponder would be to ask if in Garden of Eve story, did Adam and Eve sin before they ate from the tree? Or is it possible that they were just unaware of their sin? Did they just live in blissful ignorance, unconditionally loving the way God does? I would like to think so. Does it matter all that much what I think? Probably not.

Drawing by Matt Shlian

Tags:christologyethicslovematt shlianprocess theologysalvationsin