Last night at Seven24 we talked about the passage from Mark 9 where Jesus talks about sin. You know, that whole “if your hand causes you to sin cut it off” passage. Frankly, it’s a passage that’s pretty difficult to tone down or otherwise marginalize. Jesus is saying in very stark terms that as his followers we must be willing to do whatever it takes to eliminate sin in our lives (though as I mentioned last night, the whole “cut it off” statement is certainly a metaphor).
As I prepared for the message over the course of the last week, the question that kept popping into my head was, “how do you talk about sin in a postmodern world?” To talk about sin is to assert that a) it exists, and b) there is some objective criteria for determining that an act/thought/etc. is sinful. The reality is , however, whether this is the result of a cultural construct or the result of some sort of reaction to hyper-judgmental Christianity of the religious right/moral majority era, it is very difficult to talk about sin in a tactful, biblically faithful manner. That is what I attempted to do last night, and I guess those who were present will have to evaluate how effectively that was done.
My primary thesis, that I stated last night in different words, was essentially that as Christians we have the resources to deal with sin that are unavailable to the rest of the world. In other words, we can engage in critical self-reflection in a healthy way, knowing that our God is a God of grace who seeks to forgive us and empower us when we repent of sin rather than judge or condemn us. My hope was that all of us in the room last night, myself included, could then be honest with ourselves when it came to acknowledging our own sin knowing that we can do so without fearing judgment. Even still, I believe engaging in that sort of reflection is difficult because it is so easy to justify and ignore our own junk while focusing on the struggles of others. Furthermore, the whole idea of confession and repentance (especially when we involve other people in the process) is one that is both highly awkward and rarely found in our culture. I believe that, more than anything, is a reflection on the declining value we place on interpersonal relationships in our culture, but that is another story.
One verse I didn’t mention last night comes from 1 Corinthians 5. In verse 11 Paul lists a handful of vices that he insists should not be present in the church, and then proceeds to say in verse 12, “For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?” In other words, Paul is urging the Corinthian church to not project their morality outward, but instead focus on maintaining the purity of the church. When the church is pure, it is able to instead project the grace and peace and Christ towards the unbelieving world. This, I believe, is the key to talking about sin in a postmodern world. In the church we can talk about our own sin in a way that might seem awkward (or overly self-disclosing) because we are able to do so in a way that merits corrective, grace-filled judgment (no, I don’t think that is an oxymoron), as opposed to condemnatory judgment. The grace of Christ, when fully understood, allows us to do that.
The alternative is to ignore our own sin, ignore our own holiness, and continue to condemn an “immoral” world that we somehow expect to be “moral” without knowing the grace and peace that comes from Christ. It is my hope that all of us who carry the name of Christ can begin to further recognize the freedom that Christs gives us to be honest about our sin, to confess our sin, and take seriously the call to Christlike living that the New Testament so often espouses.
