A commenter posed an excellent question which I think deserves its own post. On this post, they asked:
As I view your above processing and how you are granting others permission to go through the grief process, anger and bitterness are allowed. However, I do not find bitterness the standard process of recovery. Could you post any biblical backing that allows for someone to be bitter and sin not? I do find support for the being angry yet not sinning.
I think the assumption behind this question, and the ethic taught at Teen Mania, is radically different than the ethic I’m promoting here. Allow me to explain.
The underlying ethic at Teen Mania, and even at many evangelical churches is an ethic that is focused on avoiding sin. Find the right things and do those. Find the wrong things and don’t do those. If have sin I must reject that sin and choose to be holy. When I do sin, I must try even harder to overcome that sin. Ron Luce would talk about this a lot during consecration month. He would say that if you have a sin problem, the way to beat it is to memorize and chew on Scriptures that pertain to that sin. For example, if you struggle with lust, you might memorize verses about purity and doggedly bring them to mind when you are tempted. It is a spirituality based on gritting your teeth and picking yourself up by your bootstraps.
I would argue that this view actually does not take sin seriously enough and it actually misses the entire point of Christianity.
It does not take sin seriously enough because it thinks sin is something we do. But that is not the case. Sin is something we are. Every motive, every thought, every act is tainted with sin. Even those deeds that may seem spiritual are at the very least mixed with impure motives.
When we are focused on our “successes ” and “failures” in the Christian life we are at a grave risk of missing the point. When we feel like a good Christian because we haven’t missed a quiet time all week, we are not living the Gospel. When we feel shame because of our sin, we are not living the Gospel.
Jesus has become both our success and our failure. He became sin for us – it wasn’t something He did, but something He became on our behalf. Now, we can become His righteousness. Not something we do, but something we are.
The reason I think acknowledging our bitterness, our anger, our depression, our failures, our pain and our sin is that only when we bring it to Jesus can we experience TOTAL ACCEPTANCE and GRACE. God actually accepts us as we are. Not as we should be. If we continually reject the sin in ourselves and try to cover it up by committing to doing good deeds and never failing again, we will never know God’s love for us and His grace to be righteousness for us. It shows that we are not actually trusting Him, but ourselves. The fact that we are so unaccepting of each other, sin and all, is a tragedy. God does not turn his face from us when we sin. He does not reject us. In fact, the moment we acknowledge our absolute spiritual poverty before Him is one of the best, most freeing moments of the Christian life. You are absolutely riddled with sin through and through, yet God is crazy about you! God does not expect us to be “spiritual.” Let me say that again. God does not expect us to have it all together! He knows us better than that. It is we who have been confused about His expectations for us. He is not suprised to find us mired in our sin! And He is so ready to help us as soon as we quit trying to do it all ourselves. This is truly Good News.
Brennan Manning exerpts a great passage from Mike Yaconelli’s writing in the book Abba’s Child:
Finally, I accepted my brokenness…I had never come to terms with that. Let me explain. I knew I was broken. I knew I was a sinner. I knew I continually disappointed God, but I could never accept that part of me. It was a part of me that embarassed me. I continually felt the need to apologize, to run from my weaknesses, to deny who I was and concentrate on what I should be. I was broken, yes, but I was continually trying never to be broken again – or at least to get to the place where I was seldom broken. At the retreat, it became very clear to me that I had totally misunderstood the Christian faith. I came to see that it was my brokenness, in my powerlessness, in my weakness that Jesus was made strong. It was in the acceptance of my lack of faith that God could give me faith.
So, in short, the reason that I promote open acknowledgment of feelings (even perhaps sinful ones) is to model God’s total acceptance of us, sin and all.
I’m going to flesh this out a little bit more by talking about the Gospel way of overcoming sin in my next post. If you are skeptical, please reserve judgment until tomorrow.
5 comments:
Hey RA – I mostly agree with you here. But there’s one fundamental thing I disagree with – the part about us BEING sinful.
But I don’t necessarily think sin is something we DO either (although, if you look at Romans, it is often couched in terms like that. c.f. Rom. 3:23; 6:23).
Let me explain: In the beginning, God made us in His own image. Life. He made us alive, like Him.
Then came sin. Death. Death = separation from Life.
We were born into this. As soon as we’re born, we begin to die. And Paul, in Romans 7:24 asks “Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
God sees us, who we were meant to be, despite this ugly cargo we’re carrying. And it’s like, when we finally see Him and follow Him, we (who were dead in sin) are reunited with Life, and are thus truly made alive – but we still carry that body of death with us. It’s not us, but we carry it.
BUT at the same time, we also DON’T. Because when we are born again, we are born into eternity (which is outside of time) – where we have already been redeemed… (“You have not come to a mountain that can be touched….But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the Living God” Heb. 12:18a, 22a)
God sees us now, in time – who we REALLY are and are meant to be – despite that body of death. And when we realize that He loves us, even though we carry such a gruesome load – and that He’s completely willing to remove that load from us and WILL remove it… That is true freedom.
And it makes our burden light.
It’s true. We can do nothing without Christ – we cannot even live without Him. And that is the true relief of the Gospel. We can be open and honest about our dark passenger (anger, bitterness, lust, hatred, etc.) because we know it is only through acknowledging its presence that we can truly let it go and let Christ take it upon himself.
And we know that we are helpless to love, have faith, show joy, etc. without Him, too. He is the one to produce it all. The fruit of His Spirit.
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Gal. 2:20-21)
Sorry if my way of looking at things is confusing or overly-metaphysical. I guess I’m sort of a mystic at heart – but I think this is the heart of the Gospel, and truly beautiful!!!
December 22, 2009 10:31 AM
Diane said…
Maybe this might make what I said above more clear.
There’s a term that intellectuals really like to use – “dialectic.” It refers to the concept of there being a thesis, an antithesis (or, opposite of the thesis), and then the synthesis of the two (what should be a paradox, but is not).
In my mind, God is the great Dialectic. Both Mercy and Justice. Pre-destination as well as Free Will. An eternal being who entered finite time.
And, in Him, we are both sinful and are not. Working out our salvation “with fear and trembling,” and perfectly redeemed.
That may sound trite, but to me it’s the deepest and most awe-inspiring aspect of God.
December 22, 2009 10:39 AM
Recovering Alumni said…
Diane, I would probably agree with you re: sin. To be honest, I’m not sure what the proper theological terms to define our situation with sin is, but my point was that it goes beyond just a list of things we can or can’t do. It is really entwined deeply within us. Would you agree with that?
December 22, 2009 11:31 AM
Diane said…
OK. So I’ve actually been thinking about this. And reading a bit more of my Bible.
It really does seem, though, as if sin is something you do. Especially when reading 1 John: “All wrongdoing is sin” (1 John 5:17).
And whenever Jesus talks about “recognizing a tree by its fruit,” he’s talking about looking at actions to determine the state of the heart.
But the good news, to me, is that I don’t think Existentialism is true. Because, if it were, that would mean we literally ARE our actions.
I don’t believe we are what we do.
But we can be trapped by it. And that’s what Jesus rescues us from.
Do you think this sounds better? I’m still working this out.
December 24, 2009 10:38 AM
Recovering Alumni said…
Diane, I’ve been mulling this over the holiday break. I still think that sin is something we “are” but what I mean by that is that sin is in our nature, since we are children of Adam. Romans 5 talks about how sin entered the world through Adam. V 14 says “death reigned even over those who did not sin by breaking a command…” I would agree that sin is something we do, but it is not only something we do. Does that make sense? Of course, in Christ, we are given a new nature that is free from sin. I think we might be saying the same thing…Thoughts?
January 3, 2010 1:58 PM
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