Searching for God # 124 Part 2

 The last post in this space noted the cultural reliance, even addiction to judgement, including civil, criminal, and we might add moral and ethical. In fundamentalist churches, Paul’s phrase, ‘For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God’ (Roman’s 3:23), has been trumpeted as one of the guiding lights of Christian theology. For many, the next verse, Romans 3:24, did not follow with nearly the same frequency or volume: ‘and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.’ 

On first blush, too, ordinary human beings would be almost inherently able, and likely more than willing, to envision, imagine, picture the concept of ‘sin’ given the ubiquity of its use, while at the same time, would naturally and inevitably be caught in an intellectual an emotional and a psychic and theological quandary about the meaning of words like ‘grace’ and ‘redemption’. Furthermore, this image continues to hold fast to the blood sacrifice that was prevalent in Old Testament narratives and theologies. 

Not to get bogged down in linguistics, however, one of the reasons why ‘sin’ is so identifiable is that it is pictured as a specific physical, immoral, likely unethical piece of behaviour committed by a human being. The western cultural focus on the individual is deeply embedded in our collective consciousness. Judgements, therefore, are almost universally engendered by and inflicted on individuals. Grace and redemption, on the other hand, are both attributed to God, and ascribed to the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus, a set of attributions birthed long after the dates of those significant events. The conjunction of a literal human behaviour with a theological concept offers one of the many intersections that attempt to describe, explain and generate faith in the human option of even having a ‘relationship’ with God. Human behaviour, whether or not it is collective and/or individual seems to have been the driving energy underlying much of Christian theology. And the universal notion that all humans share in the experience of having sinned is a premise that, like an underground fire in the roots of the trees of the culture, simply will not submit to remediation, cooling, or certainly extinguishment, Not only does Paul’s depict the universality of sin, for many in the church for centuries, sin has been the starting block for all human lives, almost as if it were a foundational identity trait. Let’s pause to consider that last assertion. And while there may be deep truth embedded in the universality of sin, indeed many would argue that we are all capable of extremely mean-spirited, vengeful, and even lethal acts for which many of us have no clear explanation, and certainly no apparent justification. 

Writing in Ministry Matters (ministrymatters.com), January 3, 2011, Thomas Gildemeister writes: 

Evil seems to have developed a bad name. Sin could use a public relations overhaul.. I do not mean to suggest that sin and evil have any redeemable qualities. But outside the language found in the liturgies for Baptism and Holy Communion, when is the last time you heard the words ‘sin’ and ‘evil’ in a worship service?....Why have we grown so uncomfortable with the language of  evil and sin? The problem raised by theodicy is a main culprit. If God is all-loving and all-powerful, how can evil exist in the world? Or why do righteous or innocent people, especially children, suffer?...The words ‘evil’ and ‘sin’ can be used like clubs to pound he life out of already troubled folk, leaving them spiritually dead....’Evil’ and ‘sin’ have been replaced with ‘broken,’ ‘wounded,’ and ‘unhealthy choices.’....When we lose the authentic language of evil adn sin, we are threatened with the possibility of moral weightlessness. If there is no darkness, no evil, and no sin, then there can be no light, no goodness, and no love. Consequently, all that remains for people of faith is to wallow in cheap grace, as we go crashing about in an amoral universe. We have lost the language of evil and sin because we have fundamentally confused ontological categories with ethical categories. Sin and evil do not describe who we are, but how we act....We are uneasy branding someone an ‘evil person,’ as well we should be. And we have every right to squirm when such an epithet is levelled at us. At the same time, the Church has the responsibility to name any behavior that opposed God’s project of increasing love and justice in the world for what it is---evil and sin. (The Rev. Tom Gildmeister, Christ United Methodist Church) 

While some readers will expect an apology for inserting a mini-homily about evil and sin, none is forthcoming. Unpacking Reverend Gildmeister’s words and thoughts, however, seems necessary. 

In a North American culture, irrespective of the specific Christian denomination, or even irrespective of any specific community of faith, sin and evil are primarily, if not exclusively, targetting individual human beings. And while every piece of behaviour is enacted by one or more human beings, and we are so ‘quick to judge’ as if our hands, minds, hearts and each and every word we ever uttered are all unimpeachable, beyond repute, to a significant degree we are all engaged in a series of enactments of that old word, hamartia. 

Hamartia is the word depicting the fatal flaw or tragic error in judgement that leads to a protagonist’s downfall, in Greek tragedy. Derived from the Greek work, hamartanein, ‘to miss the mark,’ it is used in literary criticism to describe the catalyst for a tragic hero’s undoing. Examples include ‘hubris’ in Oedipus Rex, jealousy in Othello, and indecision in Othello. 

The serpent is mythically reputed to have tempted Eve to sin in the Garden, a story that alleges the first commission of a sin. Adam complied, in a word, rather quickly and readily. And we have been re-visiting that story for centuries both in bars as well as in churches. Milton, (in Paradise Lost), portrays sin and evil not as independent forces but as psychological choices rooted in pride, the internal creation of a personal hell, and a distortion of divine goodness. (From AI) 

The rise of disciplines such as social psychology, tends to view evil as a consequence of situations, systems and social forces rather than just individual pathology. (From AI) And one of the pressing questions, for each of us, as well as for the church and the society in general is how to weigh the personal pathology against the social forces that may lie hidden in the background of any individual’s evil act or sin. Herein lies the rub! 

The churches, as we have pointed out in several previous posts, has traditionally placed a premium on privatized sin, leaving itself, all other social institutions, and society at large, ‘off the hook’ when it comes time to make judgements about the nature and sources of evil and sin. He courts too focus almost exclusively on individual personal behaviour, except in the cases of class action suits brought by a large group of individuals against a specific organization or corporation. 

One has to presume that any attempt to ferret out the social, cultural, political, economic faces and forms of evil will come primarily, and perhaps even exclusively from a vigorous, energetic, dedicated, and courageous media. There too, however, the concentration on the ‘personal’ behaviour comprises the bulk of all reporting on evil and sin. Whistle-blowers, too, offer infrequent examples of voices, often from ‘inside’ some institution or government department who have cut ties with their former employer and have ‘gone public’ as we say, in order to expose what are considered ‘systemic’ evils. Needless to say, the church’s history, tradition and preference to regard evil and sin as a private, and thereby prosecutable matter, effectively operates with its own courts and, like the judicial system, its own form of expulsion and incarceration: dismissal, excommunication, and tragically over many centuries, murder. 

I have heard it said by much wiser mortals than this scribe, that the world would be a very different place if we were pay as much attention to each and even human being from the time between the first six months of life until the last year or six months of that same life. We are deeply engaged, differently of course, with the babies in our lives, as we sometimes are with those nearing their last days. A parallel observation might read like this: the world would be very different, and certainly more humane, just, honest and both accountable and transparent, if we were to value, to investigate, to analyze and to construct processes to hold the organizational levers of power to account for engendering the kind of imbalance of power, authority and the tragic imbalance of justice, dignity, respect that favours the rich, the powerful and those holding public office at the direct cost, expense and poverty of opportunity and hope of the rest of us. Millions, perhaps even billions by now, of human beings live in the slipstream of the obvious, publicly acknowledged and also politically condoned abuse of power by those whose opulent wealth makes them effectively invulnerable to public accountability and responsibility. Those lethal, metaphoric gases that issue from the political, economic, social semi-trailers of greed, hubris, insouciance, and oligarchic coziness are already killing people by the hundreds if not the thousands. And they are doing so with impunity, immunity, while the oligarchs actually pay to rent the whole city of Venice in Italy in which to conduct their private wedding. 

Amid the various approaches to the subject of sin and evil is the matter of what is dubbed theodicy. Britannica.com details two types of theodicy, the first, based on the Augustinian tradition, the second based on the Irenaeus. 

The Augustinian tradition emphasizes the importance of the Fall (Adam and Eve’s sin and expulsion from the Garden whether understood as a historical even or as a mythical representation of the human condition) and sees all evil as a consequence of this, whether the evil in question is moral (i.e. human wrongful actions and their results) or natural (e.g. diseases and natural disasters). In this model, natural evil is either a punishment for sin or the result of the disturbance of the order of things through acts of moral evil....The Iranean view, by contrast, looks to the future and assumes an evolutionary perspective. Adam’s sin is seen mainly as a lapse due to weakness and immaturity. The Fall is understood not as a catastrophe for the human race but as something from which humans can learn. In this account the world is seen as a mixture of good and evil, an environment of growth and development in which humans can mature toward the perfection for which they were created by God. 

Leo Tolstoy, in his The Kingdom of God is Within You, continues to teach, inspire and clarify thinking for those who are open to read, digest, reflect and embody his perspective. Congruent with the Iranean view of evil, Tolstoy writes: 

The position of Christian humanity with its prisons, galleys, gibbets, its factories and accumulation of capital, its taxes, churches, gid-palaces, licensed brothels, its ever-increasing armament and its millions of brutalized men, ready, like chained dogs, to attack anyone against whom their master incites them would be terrible indeed if it were the product of violence, but it is pre-eminently the product of public opinion. And what has been established by public opinion can be destroyed by public opinion—and, indeed, is being destroyed by public opinion....But the rising Christian ideal, which must at a certain stage of development replace the heathen ideal of life, already makes its influence felt. A dead tree stands apparently as firmly as ever—it may even seem firmer because it is harder—but it is rotten at the core, and soon must fall. It is just so with the present order of society, based on force. The external aspect is unchanged. There is the same division of oppressors and oppressed, but their view of the significance and dignity of their respective positions is no longer what it once was. The oppressors, that is, those who take part in government and those who profit by oppression, that is, the rich, no longer imagine, as they once did, that they are the elect of the world, and that they constitute the ideal of human happiness, and greatness, to attain which was once the highest aim of the oppressed....Not to speak of the duties and occupations now openly despised, such as that of spy, agent of secret police, money-lender, and publican, there are a number of professions formerly regarded as honorable, such as those of police officials, courtiers, judges, and administrative functionaries, clergymen, military officers, speculators, and bankers, which are no longer considered desirable position by everyone, and are even despised by a special circle of the most respected people. There are already men who voluntarily abandon these professions which were once reckoned irreproachable, and prefer less lucrative callings which are in no way connected with the use of force. (Tolstoy, op. cit.  pps. 264-5-6-7)  

(N.B. This work was originally published in 1894, and reprinted in 1984 by Nebraska Press)