Sin - Maybe not what we thought.

Here is the thing I wrote December 2013 - reposting here as mentioned in previous post.

(This will not be about specific sins.) I know this may stir up controversy, but I've been having my thoughts challenged lately and I wanted to just try to get them out.  It may be a bit jumbled, but I just want to share my  thoughts and see if anyone else wants to chime in.  I'm in process.  I am in no way saying the traditional thoughts on sin are wrong, so please no one jump all over me for not including that.  I just want to share some other thoughts that I think may be also true.  I think it's a both / and as my Pastor Norm always said.  :)

I think common thought is that sin is a verb.  Our actions are sinful.  We do bad things and that is sin.  OK, so that is true.... but I'm seeing something beyond that.  

We treat sin as this huge thing and imply that if you do something wrong that God will want nothing to do with you, but yet we see Jesus (the perfect representation of God) eating with sinners and hanging out with them all the time.  (Luke 15:2 for one)  

But look at John 8:34 - Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin -- So now sin has become a noun, it is sort of personified here as some sort of entity that can enslave us.  Also in Acts 8:23, Romans 3:9, Romans 7:8 But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead.

Sin came into the world thru the disobedience of one man.

1 Tim 2:14 - And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.

Eve didn't have the sin nature - she walked directly with God and yet when the serpent showed up, she was deceived.  She was not a slave to sin, but when it appeared, she followed it.  (again personified)  The teaching I have heard about this incident was that she was not so much guilty of disobedience, but of following a different master.  That was the big no-no.  

Acts 13:39-39 tells us that only Jesus can set us free from sin, not the law of Moses.  So knowing the law and keeping it doesn't keep us free from sin as some people seem to think.   Also Romans 3:20,

In the context of what Jesus did on the cross... Romans 6:6 offers us our freedom from this slavery.  The old body ruled by sin is done away with so we are no longer slaves to sin.  Romans 6:12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. --- So now we have a choice.  

Romans 7 offers up a discourse on being a slave to the sin living inside us and wanting to do good but failing.  This is the battle we are all familiar with.  We believe one thing and often find ourselves doing the opposite.  

Romans 8:3 - For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh,

1 John 3:9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. -- That's a tough one, but if you look at being born of God as a continual lifelong process, you could say that certain areas are not yet born of God.

OK - those are a bunch of passages I found to sort of get to my point.  I don't think I found the one that directly said what I was thinking though.  (I've been thinking on this for awhile, but for this blog I just searched sin on a Bible site)  

So if sin is more of an outside influence, and without Christ we are a slave to it, then when Jesus died to set us free from sin, He went to war against this "entity" called sin.  It is a deceiver who is constantly trying to trick us or convince us that God's way is not the best way.  He's been at it for a very long time and is pretty good at his lies.  

Bill Johnson has said that "it is impossible for a Christian to sin apart from believing a lie."  That is a controversial statement to church people I'm sure, but I think it is true.  If we have been born again, then the Bible says we have been set free from the power of sin, and it says we will not continue to sin if we're born of God.  So is the Bible wrong?  Or is our understanding wrong?  If I look really closely at my life and my sins, I have to agree with Bill.  

How about when Jesus was being tempted by Satan.  He was offered good things, things that were meant for Him to have, but Satan offered shortcuts to those good things.  He offered another path.  Basically implying that God's way isn't the best way.  Kind of the same thing he said to Eve.  

Why do we fear the future?  Because we are believing a lie that says God won't protect us and doesn't have the best plan for us.  Almost always, I can see that beneath it all, the excuses, the fears, is the idea that God isn't really good.    If we truly believed 100% that God is good in every situation, we would never sin.  We would walk according to the Spirit as we were initially intended.  God started off this whole world with 2 people in a Garden just hanging out with Him all day.  They broke that by listening to another voice.  Things got harder for humanity after that.  Jesus restored us to the possibility of constant connection to Father.  

Jesus died to claim victory over the power of sin, to give us the reconnect we needed to live the way He intended.  

If all this is true, why are we always shouting at "sinners" to change their ways?  They can't.  Apart from relationship with Jesus, they can't change.  A few will try and succeed, but for the most part, they don't have the power to break free of sin on their own.

 I still sin in my life, and I am constantly in search of the truth that will set me free.  I believe God enough to be convinced that His way is better than mine, but I still struggle to trust Him completely, therefore I still sin.   When I do I try to see the lie, or have the body of Christ help me to find the lie.  We are meant to live in community for this very reason I believe.  To help each other see where we are deceived.  That's the nature of deception.  We can't see it.  Victory comes in being connected to the body in which we are placed.  

Sin is our enemy, not our actions.  To win the battles we must seek Jesus and His truth instead of focusing on the sin.  We give it power when we focus on it (not to mention coming under condemnation - which is not of God).  I learned that the hard way, suffering for 15 yrs completely focused on one area of my life that was not ok with me.  When I finally got the memo to focus on Jesus, that thing has just fallen away and disappeared!!  What if we all were able to do that and help others to do it?  Hmmmm.... I think that is the message of the gospel.  Focus on Jesus, seek first the Kingdom, and sin will pass away and we will have the life we were meant to have.  :)

Again, this is my thoughts in process.  I am not claiming it to be ultimate truth, just pondering and trying to find truth.  I welcome input.  

Stop the War!

I try to avoid the news, it just makes me angry.  So much of it these days is some LGBT issue or another.  There are two sides to this issue and it's really messy.  Both sides feel persecuted, both sides are angry.  It's an all out brawl at this point.  When will it end?  I'm so tired of reading all the hateful comments coming from both sides.  What is this accomplishing?  Is war what we want?  Or is there another way?

I was thinking on this while I was waiting for my first call last night.  I wrote this on a scrap of paper:
If "Christians" hadn't been so gun-ho in the past in singling out one type of sin to pour out all their hatred upon, maybe we wouldn't be under such attack now.  When you bully someone long enough, eventually they come back fists flying, and sometimes they've taken up new advanced strategies of combat.

I do not agree with Christians who wave picket signs and chant hatred and point out sin.  That is not Christlike.  I never saw Jesus holding picket signs in the Bible, I never saw him standing on a street corner yelling that only certain sinners were going to hell.  This activity is not in line with the character of Jesus that I see in my Bible.  I wish I could apologize on behalf of God for all these people who are basically just acting like jerks.  I see no benefit to this type of behavior.

Now the tables have turned, the people that were once singled out for this hatred have come back swinging and are now attacking the "Christians" for their beliefs, beating them over the head with new laws and cultural standards, demanding that they comply or be ruined.  I don't think this is right either.  But I get it.  Some will claim they are being persecuted for their faith, but I think mostly they're being persecuted for being jerks.

We are all a part of some group or another, we identify ourselves with labels.  Do you ever fully agree with 100% of other people who carry the same label? I don't.  The issue I would like to address here is to encourage us all to get to know people as individuals instead of making assumptions based on a particular label they carry.  I know, I know, we don't like labels, but we all still do it.  That person is white, black, Christian, white collar, gangster, bum.....  We see, we label, we assume.  Let's not pretend it doesn't happen.  We just don't have to lump them all together and believe that they're all the same.  Every homeless person is not a lazy drug addict that doesn't want to work. Every white person is a rich entitled jerk who has the world handed to them on a silver platter.  Every Christian is not out there holding hateful picket signs.  Need I go on?

I know many Christians who are wonderful loving people who are afraid to even use the term Christian because of the negative reputation that is now attached to it.  It's sad.  The word is supposed to mean follower of Christ, and if you actually read His story, I don't think anyone could take issue with how He treated people and what He taught.  He showed us how to love and have peace in society.  We need that so desperately now.

We need to get out there and love people.  We need to act as Christ acted.  There is no room for us to be attacking anyone for their sin.  There is not one sin that is worse than any other in God's eyes.  We are all sinners in need of God's love.  Only God's love will set us free, heal out hearts, and change our lives for the better.   That is the good news.  We are not capable of earning His love or salvation, but He doesn't ask us to earn it.  He offers it as a free gift.  All we must do is accept His love.  After that, the change just starts to happen as His love permeates our being and heals our wounds.  We are not responsible for changing ourselves, so why do we think we can hold signs demanding others to do so?

Jesus doesn't hate any person, He hates sin.  I wrote another blog awhile back, I think it's on my Facebook account though, I should transfer it over here.  Briefly, I have a different opinion than most about what sin is.  I don't think it is our actions (it can be, but I'm exploring a different side here), I think it is the evil thing that is out to destroy us.  The Bible personifies sin in some places.  It is our enemy, it is that thing that is feeding us lies and convincing us to do harmful things.  That is why Jesus hates it, that is why He died a horrific death to defeat it.  If sin is the thing attacking us, why would we feel the need to act hateful to those under attack? If they are deceived, or wounded to the point of believing that is their lot in life, how can we be mad at them? I know that I have been deceived.  I know that I was wounded and I acted badly out of that place.  I needed God's love to heal me before I ever had a chance at beating sin in my life.  I tried for years, no success.  People need Love.  Period.  They need to be brought into an encounter with the One who can give them that love.  The rest is up to Him.  If He feels the need to change them, that's His prerogative as Creator. It's none of our business.

I am pleading with my fellow Christians - stop attacking, stop defending, stop fighting.  Love is the only answer.  We need peace and unity, not to be "right."  I think of that verse about a clanging gong.  You can be right about everything, but if you don't have love, you have nothing.  We need relationship and love more than anything.  Sin is still sin, but it will never be defeated with hate and judgement and accusation.  It's our job to love, not point out that people sin.  I think we all know that already, quit beating that drum. Please.

Hearsay

Let me write about a strange phenomenon I've been observing.  People are much more inclined to believe some outlandish negative story they hear instead of trusting in their own experience and observation of the facts.  I've been watching it happen around me as I happen to attend a large, somewhat famous church that has a lot of attackers spreading rumors about it.  I know the stories are false because I've attended there for 2 years.  Because of my own experience, I don't believe the gossip.  It just has me thinking about where in life we have this tendency.  How is it affecting us?

A woman is told by someone that her husband is cheating on her.  What is her first response?  Is it 'I know my husband, that is outside his character so I don't believe you are telling me the truth.' or... 'Oh no!  I'm devastated!  My life is over!  How could this happen?!?!?'   I would hope that a married couple has a good relationship based on honesty and trust, but it seems that mistrust and suspicion are often lurking, ready to pounce.  How can a marriage be strong if there's no trust?  How can there be love without trust?

In the case of my church, not that it's unique, it has happened to many others...  People like to tell crazy stories about what happens there, and other people like to hang on every word and form opinions about the crazy people up on the hill.  I've overheard co-workers talking about how creepy "those people" are, yet at the same time, there are many of them employed here and these very people love them!  They think they're great and put them in leadership positions often.  Do you see the problem here?

It seems our first response is to believe a negative report about things we hear.  How about the news?  How many of us repost instantly when we see a scary "article" shared on Facebook?  How many of us actually look into it first instead of spreading fear?  How many "news" magazines post horrible things about celebrities that turn out to be not true?  How many of us can ever get those lies out of our heads when we look at our fellow man?  How many of us are willing to trust someone after we've heard something bad about them? What if it isn't really true?  How are our relationships affected by all this negative gossip we are constantly bombarded with?

In my observation, I can conclude that gossip and hearsay hold more weight than personal experience.  Does that make any sense at all?  I'm all for being open minded, being cautious, but I would hope people would actually look for evidence before passing judgement and believing all the things they hear.

I wonder how our relationships would change if we would stop speaking negative things about other people, if we stopped allowing others to speak negative things to us, if we trusted our own observations instead of instantly believing the stories we are told by people who have a grudge?  Would it make our relationships stronger?  Would it make people better?  Would it reduce our stress?  Would it add to world peace?  I think it would.