Why Do We Sin?
And the Lord said, “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave.” Genesis 18:20 NASB
Sin – What is your idea of sin? Where did you learn that definition? I suspect that most of us inherit our theology of sin in the symbols, rituals and vocabulary of our culture. For example, the idea of sin is different in Reformed theology, evangelical thinking and Jewish understanding.
Sin in Jewish thought is fundamentally a mistake. It is a breach in relationship that can be reconciled but it is not an essential quality of Man. In Jewish thinking, human beings can choose to follow good or evil. Whatever they choose is not deterministically calculated from an essentially evil constitution. The Jewish idea of human being is essentially positive, recognizing the powerful influence and disastrous consequences of bad choices.
This stands in opposition to most Reformed Protestant theology. Based on Plato’s idea of dualism, sin is seen as an essential characteristic in the human constitution since the Fall. In other words, as a result of the Fall, every subsequent human being inherited a sinful nature that causes the person to sin. Therefore, being human is a negative concept. Only the power of God in an act of salvation can rescue the essential nature of fallen Man. Just like all of creation, Man’s corruption stems from his connection to the earth. It will not be fully reconciled until the coming to the heavenly kingdom.
With this background in mind, Berkouwer called sin “insanity” because it destroys the only connection necessary for life. Most Christian teachers who follow this train of thought treat sin as depravity, moral corruption or unpreventable disobedience.
Some Jewish thinkers have provided another answer. They do not diminish the tragedy of sin or its consequences, but they notice that what we call sin is related to emotional mismanagement of life events. They recognize that every human being makes mistakes, but those mistakes are also the opportunity for future correction. Mistakes are usually cases of trial and error, not fatal one-time occurrences. In this regard, sin is what happens to me when I do not nurture myself in ways that improve my relationships—with others and with God. The question surrounding potential acts of mismanagement (sin) is “How am I going to manage what I have been given?” or “What will I decide to do now?”
According to Jewish thought, what we need is a guidebook, lessons from the lives of others plus instruction and advice from someone who has not mismanaged what life gives. In other words, we need a book that shows us who we are, what we are capable of doing to ourselves, and how to avoid those bad things. Then we employ training in watchfulness—that is, learning by mistakes, trial and error; mistakes that don’t kill us.
Maybe we sin because we don’t know or don’t choose better ways to deal with the emotional encounters life throws at us. Maybe we continue to sin because we don’t learn from the trauma we have already experienced. Maybe shalom is just being at peace with myself and the world because I know who I am, what I have done and what I will continue to try to do. Bessel van der Kolk makes an interesting related comment about trauma:
“Self-regulation depends on having a friendly relationship with your body. Without it you have to rely on external regulation—from medication, drugs like alcohol, constant reassurance, or compulsive compliance with the wishes of others.”[1]
What happened to the psyche of Man when the Church taught the Platonic dualism that the body itself was evil, totally depraved, and incapable of doing anything God would recognize as good? Doesn’t this imply that I cannot help sinning because I embody sin? How can I expect to make choices that are in alignment with God’s purposes if I am at war with my own embodiment? One of the difficulties with the Christian idea of sin is that it pits me against myself in a hopeless battle. Unless God alters my essential constitution, I am lost and until He does this, I live a pitifully impotent life.
You might find it interesting that hata’, the principle word for sin, means missing the mark, not being depraved. It is a word about what we do, not what we are. It is also the root word for sin offering and purification from uncleanness. Missing the mark entails trying again, doesn’t it?
Topical Index: sin, hata’, Genesis 18:20
[1] Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma, p. 99.
I think perhaps to ask the question “what is sin?” I need to ask “what is righteousness?” first. If righteousness is relationship (shalom with all around me) then sin must be anything that prevents or breaks that relationship. Sin is, literally, that fracture BETWEEN. Both, then, are essentially actions. If I am a point in time/space, and everything and everyone else could also be considered points also, then both sin and righteousness are referring to what happens (action) BETWEEN (referring to relationship) those points. Both sin and righteousness are functions, then – actions that determine HOW nouns (identities) relate to each other. That is how Skip has taught me to understand the Hebrew way of thinking about this, anyway (still learning).
However, if what Skip is saying is that in the West (primarily) our concept of sin as a NOUN – a THING in its own right – is wrong (according to the Hebrew concept), then our concept of righteousness must be equally flawed, too. If righteousness is likewise considered a THING (being a corollary of sin), then both sin and righteousness can be objects – forms – or, points in that space/time, too. They would both be possessors of identity, then (as forms) and not the actions (function) OF identity. Things (nouns) can be possessed; I am a thing (form with identity), too. Things, or, forms, in Greek thinking, never change. If I am sin itself, I – as a person in my identity – need to be destroyed and replaced. Righteousness, also, with this thinking, can be possessed. A pure and holy person (if righteousness is a thing, or, point in time/space) is, therefore, the embodiment, or, identity, of that ideal form of righteousness. A righteous person, then, would not be referring to what actions they took, but what essence they were in their IDENTITY.
In the (Greek) world where forms are the only reality, action – change – gets to be the tail on the donkey (a consequence), and not the determiner of reality (or, cause). Forms of sin and forms of righteousness, then, CAUSE the actions of sin or righteousness in this way of thinking. There is no room for either mistakes or for relationship (Skip is right) if this is true. Personality, likewise, has no real place, either. I am either the FORM, or, embodiment (identity) of sin or righteousness, but no one cares who I am as a person. Who I am in identity AS ME has no meaning at all.
In the Greek world, function always followed form; actions were only consequents of unchanging states of primary causes. Identity, then, referred to states of being (form) that, as ideals, could only be endured (or replaced) but never changed. With this thinking, I, as the essential form (identity) of sin, can only produce the actions (function) of sin. For me to quit BEING sin, I need an identity transplant! If that does not make any sense, we might could pause and consider that what is not actually true (real) never does make any sense. (I have a headache now!) Thank you, Skip (as usual).
As one who is on this journey out of ignorance into the light, please allow me to posit some questions. Is it possible that righteousness as a state or identity and righteousness as an action are both valid? It is very difficult to see Paul’s use of righteousness in Romans 4 as something other than a state or identity (a THING). In other words, how can God credit righteousness to my account apart from grace if I earn it by my good actions? Is it not because I am declared righteous, i.e., God saying “you are now in covenant relationship with God” (even though my past deeds reflect otherwise), that I am now able to live righteously or have the motivation to want to live out the obedience of my faith? Isn’t Paul attempting to communicate within the context of Greek thought to people who have lived their entire lives with a Greek/Roman mindset? Is Paul’s capturing of the language for evangelistic purposes, if that is in fact what he is doing, wrong? Wrong-headed? (yes, I too can feel that headache coming on.)
I bet Paul must have had a headache, too…
I have to look at allegories and other concrete ways to visualize, so please bear with me in this one.
Because righteousness is connection, it helps me to compare it to manmade connections, .like electricity, or sound, etc. Consider a telephone wire between your house and your sister’s, say. You can pick up the phone any time and talk (righteousness). No problem. But one night you drive home too late and, falling asleep at the wheel (mistake) you crash into the telephone pole. Now the line is broken. As you are not an electrician nor do you have the materials or the license to fix downed wires, you need help to fix the line so that you can talk to your sister again.
In the Greek view of this scenario, what would the problem look like? Well, for starters, love just looks like a series of tragedies (shorts in the lines of communication) because the flesh is already disconnected from communicating (loving) correctly. This is the ‘natural’ condition of lost people, mostly – except for grace, of course (which is the only way lost people ever get to experience love, by the way). Right here, people in the flesh start to get their understanding (literally, “discernment of good and evil”) wrong. Because we have to approach the subject of love from the position of non-love, we already don’t see HOW it happens. We cannot see that love, or, connection, is a system that lies OUTSIDE of us, and so, therefore, sin also is a statement about what is happening between us and others, not a statement about the ‘essence’ of us.
If, in Greek (we could also call this pagan) thinking, you ARE (in essence, of course) the break in the line, then YOU need ‘fixing’; the line (function of love) does not even exist (because the Greeks could not see function; they could only see form, or effects of function) so therefore, in Greek thinking, we ARE the breaks and mistakes (or, chaos), bodily. (Um, that would make us the ‘essence’ of communication (righteousness, or, love) likewise, but I digress.) In other words, the ‘communication’ (love), or, righteousness, that is the fix for the problem, lies in the very ESSENCE of the end points, or, creation itself. People, (and animate and inanimate matter, too) are the CAUSES of love, or connection. This would be like saying that the telephone system between you and your sister was emanating from YOU, bodily; you possessed the innate ability to call your sister, and the telephone system was just a side effect of that ‘ability’. Therefore, to fix the problem of the downed pole, something has to be changed about you so that the pole could work again.
Don’t laugh too hard. I can see that the New Age (which is a recently cobbled together amalgam of Eastern mysticism repackaged for the Western penchant for thinking in form instead of function) has given us the concept of “oneness” that converges all into one giant protoplasm of ‘righteousness’ where we are all little sources of love, or gods. We are all little telephone companies emanating communication like so many remote cell phones. Who needs land lines, anyway? This completely ignores the fact of reality that communication can ONLY happen with land lines (which is the will as well as the Way of God; He IS the connection, bodily – NOT us); the satellite system of cell phones does not exist in reality; we just think it does (our own private “discernment of good and evil”). We fall for the wrong answers because we cannot even get the definition of the problem right.
Thinking further, if God Himself is the love in between all, then sin breaks HIM (bruises His flesh) as He pours Himself into the gap until we employ the necessary repentance and forgiveness that restores that love connection (peace). He IS the land lines in reality between all, and this is why sin hurts Him directly, and also why righteousness is simply allowing Him to love freely (connect us) again. I am not righteousness OR sin: those would be His functions or, conversely, His problems, as He already has “become sin (as well as righteousness, or connection BETWEEN us) for us”. Halleluah!
Sorry this was so long!
Thanks for this, I needed the reminder that it’s simply a choice of kingdoms. Who will I serve? Missing the mark, disfunctional behaviors, these cause divisions as we are choosing lesser lovers for our soul . With each choice we are giving our hearts away, but to what are giving ourselves? Not conscecrating our behaviors solely to YAHWEH is a slippery path into the sesspool of this words ways. “To day I set before you life or death, blessings or curses. …chose life” Says the true lover of our soul…
uggh words=worlds, kingdom of self=world system= Ha Satan who’s rallying cry is “do what thou wilt” that is let your will rule- rather than letting the word, way and spirit of God rule your way’s
Thanks, Skip, for parsing that out. It will help me when I talk to people about cultural differences between groups; especially those of the first century.
Skip,
I’m inclined to follow the view you’ve outlined here and in other posts on your blog, but I find myself wondering how this connects with Paul’s internal debate from the end of Romans 7. How does the principle of sin fit within this framework? Thanks for helping reconcile these two ideas.
– Mason
The “internal” debate in Romans 7 is probably NOT what Augustine (and others since) thought. Augustine considered this Paul’s personal statement of the struggle before conversion. But since Paul never converted, Augustine’s exegesis is flawed because he reads the passage from a Christian viewpoint. It is quite common for Paul to construct “straw man” arguments where he builds a case for what the world is like as an unbeliever. Mark Nanos does a good job of pointing this out. Try reading Paul as if he is providing a picture of the pagan world, not of his own conscience.