A Christianity Worth Believing 2

So, I wake up this morning and see that I have a response to my blog post from last night. Either Mr. Pagitt himself has somehow found my blog or someone is playing a great trick on me. Wow, what an honor to have the author of the book I am blogging through comment on my blog. I guess I found a couple of people to dialogue with. Thanks.

I am just going to jump right into chapter 13. You aren’t going to understand any of this if you aren’t reading the book yourself. I'm not taking time to set up my comments for those who aren’t reading the book. Here goes…

“There is a debt to be paid, so Jesus comes along and pays it on our behalf. This blood atonement is the restitution laid out for our crimes. For many Christians, this is more than just a metaphorical way of understanding sin; it is a synopsis of the gospel” (150).” That is a really unfortunate place to be in. When we put rules over relationships like the Pharisees did with the Sabbath, we have taken God’s law and made it into a rod to beat people down rather than something to revive the soul.

I agree with Doug on page 151 when he says that he is not convinced that the judge stepping out from behind the bench metaphor is the best model for understanding the way sin affects the relationship between God and humanity. But I ask if we should totally get rid of it. For starters, I don’t see that it hamstrings God. Different from judges in America and different from city councilmen, the laws God is following were created by him, one who has infinite foresight into the future outworking of these laws and infinite goodness so that he is not making these laws for the benefit of some and the detriment of others like so many zoning laws do. Really, I don’t even think God is following rules. He is just being himself but we can’t understand someone being himself and being that unchanging because the only time we are that straight is when we are following the rules perfectly. So, we assume he is following some cosmic rules that are above him when he in reality is just being himself. No doubt that some people, even though they would never say they believe this, are living in theological constructs that are outworkings of a thought that makes God subservient to some cosmic rules. I can totally see the danger Doug is talking about here. If the gospel I am preaching starts and ends with God as a judge, then I am not giving the whole gospel. I am leaving a lot out. I love the quote from Willard about vampire Christians who need Jesus for his blood and nothing else. Christianity as a pessimistic, evil-obsessed religion of sin management is not Christ centered, God partnering, life at all. In fact, it is very self-centered. At our church, we say all of the time that Jesus did not come to give you a get out of hell free card. He is a savior once for all and today. I love the way a video (Welcome to our church) we show sometimes says it. That video says that Jesus didn’t come to give us a get out of hell free card but that he came to give us a live life to the fullest invitation.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is suggesting a different way of living for his followers but I don’t see it as having nothing to do with the legal system I think it is showing us that following God’s laws is about what is going on in the heart because what happens in the heart is what dictates what happens in the hands. This doesn't negate the legal system but gets us to the roots of our problems before they become full blown ourworkings of our hands. The religious leaders in Jesus' day (and today)were so worried about what the hands were doing and they paid no attention to what the heart was doing. When we focus totally on what the hands are doing is when we begin to get out our point scale for sins and this is where things begin to really get nasty.

When people talk about point scales for sin (making some sins count more than others) I think they have gone into the territory of the Pharisees, thinking that some people are beyond God’s usefulness and forgiveness. But this is where I begin to see beauty in the doctrine of depravity. In it, there is no point scale for sin. It’s not the individual sins that make us enemies with God. It’s the fact that we are sinners that makes us enemies with God. There is no point scale for sin. No matter what the sin is, no one is ever beyond God’s usefulness or forgiveness. I think Jesus hung around the prostitutes and tax collectors for many reasons. He wanted to show the Father’s compassion on people that the Jews seemed to have little compassion for. He was living out Micah 16:8 by showing justice, mercy, and humility. Among many other reasons, I think a huge reason he hung around them so much was that they were crying out that they needed God in their lives because without him they were hopeless wrecks.

I think that one of the metanarratives of the Bible is that we are hopeless wrecks and we need God’s help and grace in our lives. I see this especially in Genesis 3. Humanity had one rule. ONE. What did we do? We broke it. We are helpless to do it on our own. We need God.

On a separate point, what do we do with Romans 5 saying that we were once God’s enemies? I think humanity was created to be God’s partners but we became God’s enemies. God was not slow in showing us that we had become his enemies but just as quickly as he showed us that we were his enemies he showed us that we didn’t have to stay that way. He offered a way for all of humanity to be blessed and he used Eve to give humanity that blessing. There is a relationship between God and humanity that is not broken. The Holy Spirit works on our hearts to pull us closer to him. The Holy Spirit shows us our sinfulness but he also shows us the path to righteousness and life in the kingdom of heaven.

I agree that its not the breaking of some code that is the problem of sin. It is the twisting and distorting of humanity’s relationship with our creator that is the problem. Like Switchfoot says, “We are meant to live for so much more.” It is because God is not distant and far off but intimately calling me by his Spirit that I know that. The point made on 158 – 160 is beautiful stuff. We can envision life without sin and that is why it frustrates us so much. I never thought of it that way. This is it. Life as a Christian shouldn’t be thinking about punishment for those who we have fractured relationships with and who have fractured relationships with God. Life as a Christian should be about seeing how God is going to use me to repair relationships with others and repair their relationship with him.

That’s funny. I like the overall point Doug is got to in chapter 13 but I don’t like some of the things said on the way there. Doug seems to be fine with the end result of the desperation for God created by the theology of depravity but he doesn’t like some of the things done along the way (and hey, I'm with you. I don’t like some of the things in the heavy Reformed circles either).