We're studying the Colonial times, so Leslie and I are reading Jonathan Edwards. One of the advantages of homeschooling is I can actually talk about the Puritan religion and its influence on the period in an accurate and meaningful way. Specifically, we're reading "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". Wow. It's seriously intense. No wonder the Puritans have such a bad reputation.
"The God that holds you over the pit of Hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked . . . you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours."
Yikes. I hate to say it, because I know there's a lot to respect and admire in Jonathan Edwards, but just reading this brings to mind a certain abominable preacher in Kansas who carries signs saying "God hates fags." (God doesn't hate fags. If he did, he would hate Fred Phelps no less. He would even hate Mother Theresa.)
The Puritans definitely swung to an extreme in their faith practice -- a lopsided emphasis on the sinfulness of man and the wrath of God. A mistaken focus on proving our righteousness through our sinless behavior. As if we could.
However, the "postmodern" church has swung to the other extreme. We seem to have forgotten that human beings are inherently sinful. We started believing the mis-informed notions of "experts" like Carl Rogers who told us that we're all goodness and perfection at birth and only get messed up by our life experiences, particularly the mistreatment of our parents. We believe in the myth of the innocence of childhood, that our natural state of being is one of rightness. We're afraid to tell people that sin is natural to them -- that they are sinners. I mean, it's such a turn-off. They won't come back to church anymore if we tell them that.
But it seems to me that the church does a grave disservice to the unbelieving world by neglecting to tell them that they are sinners. We seek to be so seeker-friendly that we forget to give them what they're really seeking -- the truth. My philosopher friend Eileen said once, "The church has to be careful that we don't try to attract the unbeliever by simply offering him his own idol of choice dressed in Christian garb." Amen.
We can't have any kind of meaningful relationship with God if we don't have a correct view of our sinfulness. How can we understand the greatness of God if we don't recognize the smallness of us? How can we appreciate the sacrifice of Christ if we don't comprehend the horrific depths of our sin? How can we fathom the unconditional love of God (and love him for it in return) if we aren't painfully aware of how hopelessly undeserving we are of that love -- which is why he gives it unconditionally?
No, we needn't scare the masses with visions of the Almighty dangling us over the flames of hell bellowing "Muaa ha ha ha!!" Nor do we need to parade around with hateful slogans on home-made signs. But we need to be honest. We need to speak truth. With love and humility.
And maybe that starts when we are honest with ourselves. "My name is Gwen, and I am a sinner."
"Hi, Gwen!"
2 comments:
Gwen, I told you on another forum that I would be responding to this post and I'm finally catching up to doing that. The problem has been that I haven't been able to articulate what I'm thinking and feeling, so give me enough rope to hang myself heree, I'm still not necessarily too articulate about it...grin
"We can't have any kind of meaningful relationship with God if we don't have a correct view of our sinfulness."
I totally disagree with this statement and the ones that follow and will try to explain why. First off, having the "correct" view of our sinfulness smacks of dogmatic rightness...there is one view that is right and all others are wrong. My experience of my sinfulness is probably very different than yours...if my view is not the same as yours, is it not the "correct" view?
How can we understand the greatness of God if we don't recognize the smallness of us?
I agree in essence with this statement, we are small and God is big, but in context with the others in this paragraph, it makes me nervous, let me keep going.
How can we appreciate the sacrifice of Christ if we don't comprehend the horrific depths of our sin?
Substitutionary atonement (the idea that Christ died instead of us) wasn't a concept untill the 11th century when an English Archbishop came up with it by reading into the text. Until that time, Christ's death had been understood as because of our sins, not for our sins. There is a significant difference. Christ died because the powers and principalities couldn't tolerate his movement.
How can we fathom the unconditional love of God (and love him for it in return) if we aren't painfully aware of how hopelessly undeserving we are of that love -- which is why he gives it unconditionally?"
Did you love your daughters at birth unconditionally without needing them to be hopelessly undeserving of it? Of course you did. God is the essence of love no matter what the human condition is. GAk, I just anthropomorpized God which is one of my disagreements with your post. You anthropomorphize God in ways that diminish God. God does not have human emotions, like anger. God is the sacred, the essence of all creation, as Luke said, the God in whom we live and move and have our being is too big for our human definitions and when we believe we have a "correct" one, we are limiting that God.
Now, I'm probably a mushy liberal that your post worries about, but I can live with that. I Hope we can have a dialogue about these concepts. I value your intellect and heart and believe you are one of the most invested and intentional Christians I know. We just disagree on some things.
And by the way, once the girls are grown or in school, you need to go to Seminary and get into the church leadership. We need people like you there.
in sisterhood,
sherrill
Yep, you're one of the "mushy liberals" that I figured would have something to say about this! LOL! And again, I was thinking out loud as I wrote this, so I'll have to take more time to seriously respond to your response later (but I'd LOVE to hear what any other of my friends would have to say ... ?). But off the top of my head . .
- I think you're reading too much into my comment about a "correct view of sinfulness" (probably because of the Fred Phelps references). I'm not talking about having a correct view of what is sinful necessarily. I'm talking about having a correct view of ourselves as sinners, in a general sense. An awful lot of Christians these days don't really believe that.
- The idea that substitutionary atonement is a concept made up by some presumptious English bishop is COMPLETELY new to me. It seems to me that I read that concept myself in my own little Bible. But I'll look more into that -- in my copious free time. :)
- If there's a problem with anthropomorphizing God, then somebody'd better take that up with the vast majority of the Biblical writers. Neither Jonathan Edwards, nor I, came up with the idea of God feeling anger -- that's sprinkled throughout the Old Testament. I agree that his anger is not like ours (which is why I take issue with Edwards' sermon) . . and I agree that who and what he is is beyond what we can comprehend or articulate . . and that no one should be overly dogmatic about such things. But the whole idea of God giving us God's word is so that we can understand him -- HE gave us these anthropomorphic descriptions of himself (as our Father, for example) so that we can understand him as best we are able. Difficult as the task may be, we need to find the meaning in there and make use of it -- dismissing him as too big for us to comprehend is not an option. Christianity is about a RELATIONSHIP.
In general, my big concern in this post is churches that have bought into the modern psychological notion that there really is no such thing as sin. That notion hinders the believers' relationship with God. I am an adult parent and Eastin is my child--and that is an inescapable factor in our relationship. Were she to not understand the vast differences between an adult and a child (or were I not to), our relationship could not be what it should be. The vast difference between a sinner and a holy God needs to be understood before a genuine, right relationship can happen there. And the GOAL is the RELATIONSHIP.
Thanks for responding, Spesh!
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