4D Theology #1 - "Sin is Much Bigger Than Guilt"

     Do you know who's image is on the front of a $100 bill? Lots of folks do. How about the back? You probably didn't do as well on that one. It's odd, because the back of the $100 bill is more colorful and the numbers are bigger. So, why don't we know? Most likely because we're comfortable knowing just the front.
     For many of us in the faith community—perhaps most—we tend to take the same approach to our understanding of faith and its practice. We end up trying to make a 2-dimensional faith provide understanding and meaning in a 3-dimensional world.
     In this episode, building on the One Story idea of the previous episodes, Fran Sciacca contends that we need to reexamine our understanding of some of the key "Story words" that our faith is built upon. In this first of a series, Fran takes to the flip-side of our word, "sin," in an attempt to help us better understand the One Story of the One God, and our role in it.
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Link to resource: "What's Wrong With the World?" is here.
Photo by João Marinho on Unsplash
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Transcript

3-D movies were about a decade old when I turned 10 in 1960. Films like, “Creature From the Black Lagoon,” and Alfred Hitchcock’s, “Dial M For Murder” had come out when I was only 4, and were wildly successful. Unfortunately, when you live in Nekoosa, Wisconsin, a town of 2,500 like I did, and the movie theater is operated by a guy living nearly 10 miles away…well…you get the picture…or in my case, don’t get the picture. We never really had any of the “real” 3D movies in our little town. The closest I remember getting was a black and white film called, “13 Ghosts,” that featured scenes of ghosts that were sorta 3D, if you used the special “Illusion-O” glasses with the red filter option. On a scale of 1-10 in the world of technology at the time, these were about a 0.5. For those of you with a pair of Oculus or Vibe virtual headsets sitting on your shelf, you surely can’t relate to a ten year old boy, sitting in a theater watching a black and white movie, interspersed with moments of three-dimensional mayhem. Laugh if you want, but I had a hard time walking home in the dark after that film.

Hi, I’m Fran Sciacca, the host of the Road to Shalom, a podcast seeking to deepen our understanding of the world in which we live; both the parts that make us wonder, and those that make us weep.

The last three episodes, which I ended up calling, the One Story Series, generated the most responses I’ve had since launching The Road to Shalom. Thank you. But more important to me, was the realization how many people are looking for a larger narrative in which to locate their own story on one hand, and an innocent ignorance of the One Story of the One God on the other hand. I have some ideas about why this is the case, and I have become convinced that it’s time I laid theses ideas out on the table. But before I do, I also need to tell you the next few minutes might seem like your last eye exam. You know, when the guy puts that thing in front of your face, spins the little dials, and says, “What’s better…1…or…2?” After about 5 minutes of blurred madness, suddenly you can see clearly. Trust me, there’s going to be a little blurriness for the next few minutes, but I promise you, if you’re paying attention…really paying attention and not trying to text or grill chicken, it will be clear and make sense.

Okay, here’ the first bit of blurry. I think one of the main reasons many believers and even unbelievers see the Bible more as a beautiful patchwork quilt than a tapestry; or like an anthology of smaller books, rather than a single, coherent narrative, has to do with what we’ve built our faith on. And, I’m going to suggest that most of our spiritual understanding comes from systematic theology rather than biblical theology. Don’t you dare hit the stop button. I told you this would be a little blurry. Put on your big boy pants and hang on. We can do this.

So, what in the world is systematic theology, and what difference would it make if we built our spiritual house on it? Let me answer the first question, first. Here’s what one really smart guy said in his very large book about systematic theology. I think he really nails what it is quite clearly:

“Systematic theology is any study that answers the question, ‘What does the Bible teach us today?’ about any given topic.…systematic theology involves collecting and understanding all the relevant passages in the Bible on various topics and then summarizing their teaching clearly so that we know what to believe about each topic.”

Another really smart guy had this to say about what biblical theology is:

“Biblical theology, in an attempt to balance historical and theological concerns, discerns the overarching ‘story shape’ or narrative connection between the OT and NT…this approach discerns the narrative continuity running throughout the whole Bible.…”

So, systematic theology, in a nutshell, has to do with formulating doctrines by collecting scriptures that deal with a specific topic, and biblical theology has to do with formulating doctrines that emerge from the storyline of the Bible, from cover to cover. Or put another way, a theology that emerges from the One Story, rather than systematic’s theology that’s extracted from the Story. Now I know some listening are going to have issues with these definitions. And just for the record, I’m not throwing systematic theology under the bus. That’s what my seminary degree is in. But, I’m becoming more convinced that by making systematic our foundation, we are limited to the doctrines within that system. Most of you have been exposed to teaching on sin, justification, sanctification, the end times, the Holy Spirit, etc. All good.

But, there’s a problem, I think, with this. The first is that since our spirituality is based on systematic theology, our understandings of Christian faith and practice are shaped and limited to the doctrines within that system. And if you flip through the 1,500 pages of Wayne Grudem’s systematic theology book, you’ll not find any doctrines of wealth, of race, of justice, of creation care, of works, or of the poor, even those these topics are prominent themes in the biblical Story. The unfortunate consequence of these omissions is that our theology becomes personal and parochial, focused on “me” and “us,” rather than global and missional, focused on “them” and “Him” (God).

So, what I’d like to do is push further into this One Story of the One God motif I introduced in the past few episodes. I want us to explore some of the words of this Story that we’ve found ourselves in. To add some depth to our understanding. To—in a way—add some dimensionality to our understanding of faith, with the goal of an expanded meaning and joy to the way we live it out. Or put another way, I’d like to expand our understanding from two-dimensional to three- dimensional, hence my intro about my childhood.

But first, let’s admit our tendency to become comfortable in our thinking. A few weeks ago, I preached at my home church, and asked the congregation whose picture is on the front of the $100 bill. Do you know? If you’re driving, or out running, you probably blurted out, “Benjamin Franklin,” feeling a little like you’re ready to move on to the next category in Jeopardy. Well done. Well done. Okay, next question, and you really should know this better because the numbers are larger and more colorful. “What’s on the back of the $100 bill?” Let me guess…you have no idea. Don’t feel bad. Ask anyone you know, if they know, and you’ll quickly know that they don’t know, and didn’t know that they didn’t know. Hope that’s clear. Seriously, I think it’s really true that we tend to settle-in on our understanding of a lot of things. Then we build boxes around the ones that are important to us, and over time…well, we don’t ever think outside that box. In fact, I suspect, if you’re like me, you even get a little uncomfortable when someone starts messing with the box you’ve built around these ideas. This is unfortunate when it comes to important issues like justice, equity, and a host of other things. But beloved, it’s tragic when we do this with our spiritual lives. And when it comes to the One Story of the One God, well, sadly I think most of us do the same thing to the Story itself, that we did with the $100 bill. We become comfortable with the “front side” of the Story, without ever turning it over, so to speak, and end up with a two-dimensional gospel that leads to a two-dimensional faith. It just lays there, like a $100 bill, front side up. We sorta put all our theology—our “Story words”—into their appropriate little boxes, and then try to go through the motions we associate with being a Christian, all the while thinking to ourselves…is this all there is? And because familiarity destroys awe, we slowly become bored being two-dimensional Christians living in a three-dimensional world. 

Well, I think it’s time we awakened from our two-dimensional coma, and upgraded our spirituality from version 2.0 to 3.0   Over the next few episodes, we’re going to free some of our “Story words” from the two dimensional boxes we’re storing them in, and take a look at the “flip side”, with the goal of allowing the One Story of the One God to take on the enormity in our minds that it has in God’s. Or put another way, we’re going to retire the Cliff’s Notes version of the Story we’ve become comfortable with, and step more fully into the raging torrent of redemptive grace of the Story as it really is. 

Are you up for this? Okay, let’s take our first word out of its box. It’s the word, sin. Sin’s a big word in the faith community. Actually, it’s a big word in the human community. I got over 3 billion hits on Google, for the word. Just for perspective, that’s nearly 3 ½ times as many as I got for the name, “Jesus.” So, sin’s a big word. A populous word. I suspect you’ve got meanings and definitions for this word scattered all over your brain. Especially if you grew up in church, or a Christian family. And, if you grew up in America, you’ve likely got some ideas about sin from the ghost of the Christian conscience still floating around our post-Christian nation.

So, where does your mind go when you hear the word, “sin”? You probably go first, to yourself. If you’re like me, it probably go quickly inward to those places in your memory that are hidden beneath the floorboards of your heart. Thoughts and feelings of “guilt” or shame, or both, before God for what you’ve done or left undone are likely the first stop on your mental journey. If you’ve had some Sunday school, the weightier idea of your unrighteousness in the face of His blinding righteousness is also in your mind. Your uncleanness in the face of His holiness. And guess what, you’d be right. About all of it. Make no mistake, the Bible is unambiguous in portraying sin this way. I mean, “sin” shows up nearly once a chapter, on average. And verses like, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” are tattooed on most of our cerebral cortex. Or, “Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death spread to all of humanity because we all sinned.” For many of us, these sin-guilt-punishment pictures are part of our mental furniture. Sin produces guilt, guilt results in judgment, and judgment results in death. If you want to deal with sin, you’ve got to deal with guilt. And, one of the dominant themes of the One Story is that Jesus is the only solution to this mess. That’s why our hearts sing when we hear:

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

This is what most of us think of, when we take this first “God word”—sin—out of its box, and look at it. At least the front side. I think we’d agree that the the front side of “sin” is “guilt.” My guilt. Your guilt. We’re all pretty settled on what that means and why it’s important. And, why God’s solution to it is precious on every level. But beloved, this is only a two-dimensional view of “sin.” Sin also has a “flip-side.” And I think we need turn it over. So, what’s on the flip-side of “sin”? If “guilt’s” on the front, what word is on the back? I think the best word for the flip-side of sin is, “corruption.” Where in the world do I get that idea? Well, I get it from a closer look at ACT II of the One Story. Remember that ACT I was the “Commencement.” The beginning of everything. And at the end of ACT I, God looked at everything and made an amazing statement about it. He said it was, “good.” Very good, in fact.” 

So, let me ask you a question. What do you think happened that day in the garden?  I mean, do you picture two naked people from ACT I getting kicked out of the garden because of their sin in ACT II? Do you picture Adam and Eve feeling guilty because they were guilty? That’s the side we all know. It’s the side that we tell people when we’re trying to get them to consider Jesus. That’s the front side. What’s the flip-side?

Well, for starters, everything God had said was “very good,” in ACT I, suddenly wasn’t. In ACT II beloved, sin’s long tentacles began their spread out over everything, and eventually everyone, in every way. The whole entire universe sorta tilted that day. How in the world can I say this? Where do we find any record of what else happened that day that can be traced to sin? Well, I want to introduce you to a really important truth about the One Story of the One God. In order to really understand it, we’ve got to learn how to do something we’d never do with a great novel. We need to learn to read the One Story backwards. That’s right, backwards. And when we do, we discover a ton about the beginning of the One Story from how it ends. To be more specific, the best way to understand ACT II—the fall of humanity into sin—is to read ACT V - Scene 3, which is the very end of the Story, the Book of Revelation. Listen to this passage from the second to the last chapter of the Bible. It’s a description of the end of the One Story:

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them.” He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

What the Apostle John calls the “former things,” is a partial list of the collateral damage of sin. A glimpse of sin’s corruption. And unfortunately, they persist until the end of time, because that’s when they “pass away.”

ACT I of the One Story ended with everything being “very good.” The “former things” in this passage are definitely not. Very good, that is. Beloved, death is not “very good.” Death is always a thief, even for those of us who know Jesus. A half million COVID deaths is one expression of sin’s corruption. And there’s more. “Mourning,” “crying” and “pain” are on the flip side of sin. They’re expressions of sin’s corruption too. And, these are violent words. They’re disturbing words. “Mourning” is a word associated with profound grief. It’s used in two other places in the Book of Revelation, and it’s in connection with “torment,” and “famine.” This passages says when God’s Story is complete, “mourning” will be gone forever. God says that “crying” will also be gone. And beloved, get the mental picture of someone sniffling or weeping out of your mind. This word points to the loud scream of heart-rending anguish. It’s the cry of a mother standing over her child who’s been hit by a car. Or hit by a bullet. It’s the voice of human heartache caused by sin’s corruption. It’s the cry of the soul that the things that mean the most to me, are suddenly not “very good.” And the word for “pain” here is an ongoing anguish. The kind that eats away at us because there doesn’t seem to be any way out. It’s the transparent trauma of homelessness, or the soul-fatigue of caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's. God says that when the end of the One Story shows up, these four things can’t stay. No more death. No more profound grief. No more crying out to God for help and deliverance. And no more waking up to hopelessness and despair. In the meantime, they’re all too familiar. But, that’s not all.

Sin’s corruption reaches wider and deeper than just us. It has reached into all of the natural world. Everything that breathes and moves. Listen to the prophet Hosea says, writing eight centuries before Jesus talk about the impact our sin has had on everything else God has made. Or, put another way, how we contribute to things no longer being “very good”:

“Hear the word of the LORD, O children of Israel, for the LORD has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away.”

The Apostle Paul echos this idea, that the entire creation—all of it—is groaning right now because the corruption of our sin has infected it too.

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”

In the One Story, the entire Creation wants to be free of the effects of sin’s corruption. It wants to be “very good” again. The prophet Isaiah, looking ahead to this day, to the end of the One Story tells us that the wolf will lie down with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with a young goat, and a child will take a bear for a walk while her friends play with snakes. That’s what “very good” looks like. That’s what life is like when corruption is gone. Beloved, Adam and Eve didn’t just get us kicked out of the pool, and Jesus got our membership back. God’s plan of redemption is targeted to rescue all His creation from the effects of guilt and corruption. Reading the Story backwards again, in ACT V - Scene 3, the second to the last chapter of the Story, reminds us this is the case: 

“And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I lam making all things new.” 

Are you beginning to see just how enormous The One Story is. I want you to forever know and celebrate that the One Story includes you. But even more so that it’s much more than merely the personal solution to your personal problem. Sin’s demise involves much more than you and I getting back into the Garden. Sin is infinitely larger than just our guilt. And that means, as I’ve said so many times before, the gospel is not, “God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life.” And, being a Christian doesn’t mean I have a “personal savior” much like having a personal trainer.

Seeing the flip-side of sin, should make it a much bigger deal than it is. It’s bigger than me. It’s bigger than you. And as it turns out, God wants to heal more than the problem of our personal guilt. Beloved, the center of the gospel is not us. It’s God. We lose sight of that sometimes. And the “good news” that we glibly call, “the gospel,” is so much bigger than the human race. Remember from the first episode, I said God had a “plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in heaven and in earth, in Christ.” All things. And that demands the removal of all the “former things,” the fruit of sin’s flip-side. The corruption sin causes. And the best part? Are you ready for this? We are part of the solution. No, not the “guilt” side. Only God can solve that, and has, in the death and resurrection of Jesus. But the flip-side of sin? The corruption part? Yup, that’s us. We’re the Body of Christ on earth. We’re the hands of Christ, the voice of Christ, the heart of Christ, the wallet of Christ, the extra car of Christ, you get the picture. We’re to be what God is, when it comes to dealing now with the “former things” that will be put away forever at the Story’s end. And what is God? Well, among other things, according to lines from the Story itself, He’s a father to the fatherless and protector of widows. He loves the refugee and gives him food and clothing. And the parable of the Good Samaritan is an illustration of what it looks like in our own skin.

So, beloved, let’s rejoice that our guilt is done away with, and there is no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus. But, also, let’s ask God to help us today, and tomorrow, to see where we might be the solution to sin’s corruption in the life of another. It’s a big deal to God, because sin’s a big deal to God. Both sides of it.

Before I go, I wanted to highlight a video resource I’ve developed that is designed to help believers or unbelievers understand the gospel in light of the One Story and the flip-side of sin. It’s entitled, “What’s Wrong With the World?” I created it for groups or one-on-one encounters, to answer two questions: “What is the gospel, and does it really matter?” And, “What is a disciple, and what does one look like?” And, I can promise you, everything we’ve been looking at over the past episodes of this podcast are in it. If you’re looking for a way to engage a friend in a conversation about why the world is the way it is right now, and do so in a generous and robust fashion, this will fit the bill. It’s perfect for virtual or face-to-face settings. You can “test” drive the series for free, and check it out for yourself. Go to fransciacca.com, and click under “Videos”

Next episode we’re going to look at the flip-sides of grace and peace. And we’ll get an even better understanding of how we’re part of the solution to the flip-side of sin. Hope to see ya then…shalom.