The Emperor Over The Sea

I'm normally not preoccupied with sin. I'd rather, as Graham Cooke would put it, be preoccupied with His righteousness. Maybe being in the bible belt now has reminded me of a few things, so I'm following Him in establishing the right foundation. :)

In terms of judgement and mercy, sin and punishment, I think we often think of God as Janus; the Roman god of transitions. Janus is usually depicted with an angry face on one side and a happy face on the other. It's a flip of the coin to see which one you get.

God isn't a god of chance, of war and peace. There are things He emphasizes, things He whispers and things He thunders about. Each expression is of Him, yet some things are more important than others. God isn't messy or confused, but often our perception of Him is.

Most of us seem to think that judgement and sin are things that He screams. I feel that with judgement, it's a thing that He is both rational and sorrowful about. Rational in that there must be a consequence for certain things, and sorrowful that our choices can bring us pain.

What we don't seem to get is that there is something that screams louder than anything. Mercy.

Mercy triumphs over judgement. Mercy is always bigger, louder, greater. Jesus as the atonement for sin. Jesus, punished with the sin of the world. That screams mercy.

There is a section in the book The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe that illustrates this well. Lucy and Susan had witnessed Aslan being killed in the traitor Edmund's place. They fell asleep crying and woke to discover He had come back to life. How was this possible? How could one overturn judgement?

"It means that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards."

What screams and whispers in our hearts when we look at ourselves or others? We can look like God in that we can identify sin and holiness, good and evil, but our response needs to be tempered like His is. With a Cross. 

Sin Is Not What We Think It Is

This is not a full sermon on sin, because I don't have that kind of time. Just some thoughts I've had recently.

Sin is not what we think it is. We think of sin as the BIG BAD NO NO. Those of us that have had some theological education know that it is an act or idea that is deserving of death and only through Jesus do we have any hope. This is true, in part. Most of us think of sin as the result of breaking a rule. It is, and it isn't. The problem with thinking that it's the consequence of a broken rule, or that it's just a bad thing, get trapped when they look at the 'sin' and see that it looks 'good'. "They saw the fruit of the tree and that it was good to eat."

The fruit of the tree wasn't sinful. But the thought process that led them to eat it, was. Their conclusion was one that was self sustained.

God created us for relationship with Him. He gave the commandments to Israel because they preferred behavior modification over intimacy. He wanted them to be set apart. But behavior modification is short lived; you never give over that last bit of yourself, and it keeps respawning.

I've heard christians tell me that they struggle with this or that sin. I always wonder why. Why would anyone choose to struggle over sin...unless in their heart of hearts they were really convinced that the sin would be better. More fulfilling. You can drag a horse to water but you can't make him drink. That horse has to WANT the water. You can logically know something is bad for you, but until you BELIEVE it is bad for you, your desire for it will not be quenched.

Let's take something like lust. If I lust after someone, behavior modification would say, don't look, don't think about it, don't expose yourself. Relationship with God invites something else. He asks, "Why? Who are you, Jessica? What do you need? Do you know what you need? Have you shown your husband your heart? Let's process this together. Don't be afraid. I know who and Whose you are."

That's intimacy. And not only is it more fulfilling than behavior modification, it is life changing.

We think of holiness as restriction. It's not. It's our best life. Living it fully, completely, hand in hand with Him. It's not behavior modification or rules, because there is no way we can achieve holiness by those things. Holiness is really, Wholeness. It's our whole self, fully realized in Him.