Amok. Part 2.

Finding myself a bit bored, I wound up re-reading my last blog post and the related comments. As always, once my brain has had more time to "gel" with an idea, I think of things that I should've said, should've left out, or should've clarified. So, finding myself still bored, here goes...


I don't ever mean to convey an idea that sin can be defeated without Christ. Ever. Even though I insist that we take responsibility for our sin and not wait on some "spark" to move us to act, I'm ony talking about making good choices...avoiding the paths that lead us down roads that cause chaos in our own lives as best we can rather than do things that we know are wrong, excusing our actions because we haven't been "convicted" by God to do otherwise. Instead, we ought to "man up" and take our actions and our thoughts captive to overcome sin in our life. In my opinion, this is still a grace-driven "effort" - even our conscience I believe can be Spirit-governed, so, in a sense, just the desire to make the right choices is Spirit-led, IMHO.

But our own efforts can only take us so far. Our thoughts, our actions often contradict the desires of our hearts to do good (read Romans 7 if you want some harsh insight into this fact). Real life change can only happen if God is changing us from the inside out. I was assuming that in everything I wrote before.

Grace is implicit to all I believe. Nothing really changes apart from it. But our faith-response - our response to grace (whether a spirit-prompted emotional response or a response to living the kind of lifestyle we read about in Scripture) is important, too. If something as grand as salvation is offered to us free of charge - the price has been paid, I think that ought to move us to live accordingly. My Savior died for me; I'm going to live for Him. I'm going to listen to his instructions. I'm going to emulate his life as best as I can in my fallen state. Not because I have to to earn the gift of salvation given in grace, but because I want to die to the sin in my life that Jesus died to free me from. Die to it...pretty strong words...

This has been on my heart a lot lately because of things I've seen - observed or experienced firsthand - over the past few years. In this thing called the emergent church, I'm finding the whole discussion of sin increasingly frustrating. Before I dive into this, let me clarify: I love the emergent movement. I love the effort by churches and Christians to let go of traditionalism and seek new means to carry the Gospel to people in a world that's become jaded to all things 'religious' and the church seems to become more and more irrelevant. These are exciting times. It's a time of new awakening...where traditionalism is being replaced with innovation; legalism replaced with love; religiosity replaced with community and mission. My support of this is something I've blogged about a lot in the past.

But with any movement comes maturity. And as I think about the things I've observed, I've got one or two concerns:

As we learn to engage our culture on its level, there's a strong temptation to not only adopt cultural styles but to adopt cultural values and moral standards as we attempt to build relationships with people. While the effort to connect to our culture in relevant ways that move beyond the norms and structures of the past (which I'm ALL FOR), the re-shaping of Scriptural standards is freaky. Maybe because the whole "sin" concept has been overworked in churches (to the point of abuse) over the years, it's more fashionable nowadays to downplay it. Sin, if it is talked about, doesn't condemn you to hell, but - at the most - condemns you to a life void of self-fulfillment or self-actualization. The language has become humanistic. Sin has become a word that we avoid right up there with "pew" or "pipe organ."

The motives may be good. People who've been exposed to the abusive power that churches have wielded over the years that have left trails of unforgiven wounded people in the aftermath need to experience something different. Furthermore, constant "sin-talk" often builds more barriers with the people we're trying to reach than it opens doors to discussions of grace and forgiveness. So there's good motive in avoiding the most infamous 3-letter-word in history: S-I-N. People need grace where they've only known condemnation. They need love where they've only known or seen little or no acceptance. They need the message communicated in new, innovative ways that contrast the monotonous approach of tradionalistic churches (nothing wrong with tradition itself, but traditionalism - the old way is the ONLY way - is foolish). So - like I said - I can wholeheartedly embrace emergent churches that want to reach people in innovative ways....that want to go to where people are rather than wait for them to come through the doors of the "sanctuary"....that want to engage our culture and let them know God loves them no matter where they are.

But how far is too far? Is there such a thing? Where do we cross the line in our avoidance of the sin "discussion?" Where are we compromising our own walk with God?

Is the use of four-letter words just to engage our culture in its medium an okay thing? Is the use of lewd language full of explicit sexual content okay among Christian adults who are, by nature, sexual beings? Does drinking too much alcohol (to the point of drunkenness) with other Christians make it okay if it's part of the bonding experience of community? Is sexual promiscuity okay because we believe we're more careful and more enlightened than our ancient forefathers (besides sex is just sex and we have condoms today)? Can we say or do whatever we feel like - online, offline, privately, whatever - in the name of "feedom?" Is it okay to excuse sin - any sin, big or small - simply because we're trying to be "authentic?"

I'm asking these questions both to challenge our thinking and because I'm searching for an answer that satisfies the standards of grace and forgiveness - while at the same time - satisfies the standards of our mission to reach the lost in innovative ways AND to live lives worthy of our calling.

In books I read recently, I read about a pastor who walked into a church where they employed a homosexual preacher but asked the pastor to remove his hat during the worship service. Weird amalgamation of an affirmation of Christian tradition alongside simultaneous rejection of a moral standard. How does that happen? How do you affirm one meaningless norm, yet overlook a pretty big sin issue (according to Scripture) so casually?

In college, I had a fraternity brother who drank heavily. He did stupid things like drive drunk or, on a less serious note, order pizza and then pass out before paying for it. Heh. But seriously, there was a real problem there. When drunk, he became pretty forceful with women to the point one girl accused him of date-rape. He became pseudo-violent. Even when not drinking, he could be combative when it came to talking to people with opposing views and his outlook on life was pretty negative.

Oddly enough, one summer he decided to work as a summer youth leader at a local church. Finding this a bit odd for someone who pretty much rejected anything "church-related," I asked him about this decision. He commented that he wanted to reach teenagers...to show them who Christ was. Though he held to a fairly liberal "Jesus-didn't-rise-from-the-dead" view of Jesus, what prompted immedate concern from me is that this guy was pretty much drunk every Friday and Saturday night, yet leading teenagers in Bible studies on Sundays. Being pretty combative myself in my earlier years of my faith, I asked him, "How can you lead a group of teenagers to life in Christ is you don't live this in your own life?" He answered, "Well, I can't connect with teenagers if I'm not going through and doing the same things they're going through and doing myself." For him, that was the end of the discussion. Conveniently, sin - specifically, consistent drunkenness - was not sin since he could "use" it as a connecting point to reach teenagers. My last words to him were, "If you're not living a Christ-like life yourself, then where, actually, are you going to lead these teenagers?" I'll give him high props for being mission-oriented, but - to this day - it troubles me that the Gospel for him had been reduced to an impotent collection of words about forgiveness and grace that failed to acknowledge what exactly we're forgiven of and why we need grace in the first place. (Read: "sin") If it's okay to do whatever we want, what exactly did Christ die for anyway?

So what happens when a casual "overlooking" of sin gets out of hand? Well...it's not pretty. In a church in my college town, I saw a college minister start sleeping with girls in his college ministry. He'd quite literally lead these younger girls to Christ, pray with them, then get them to take off their clothes and...you get the idea. It happened with several girls. When the pastor of the church was approached about the actions of his college minister, he simply stated that those who approached him were being legalistic Pharisees and that they needed to forgive instead of condemn him. "Love over legalism," he said. Though I firmly believe this guy could and would be forgiven of his sin, why it was casually overlooked bothered me a lot. I knew some of these girls. They were confused. They'd felt betrayed...as if they'd been led into a lie. And the confrontation with the pastor and his insistence on forgiveness made no difference. He continued to 'seduce' girls. The situation ended ugly. One of the girls he'd slept with - who'd become a Christian partly to escape from a life of promiscuity - was deeply confused and wounded by the guy's sexual involvement with her and consequent cover-up of what happened. So she started talking. "If this isn't wrong, then I'm going to talk about it." As people found out, the church tore itself apart and was reduced from a thriving body of believers to a derelict building that housed maybe a dozen senior citizens on Sunday mornings. And the girl who talked? She walked away from all us "hypocrites."

The blind acceptance of sin devastaed a girl's emotional and spiritual well-being. I'm not assuming this; this is something she and I talked about as she was packing her bags, leaving our college campus to start anew where people wouldn't know everything that happened with her and this minister. On top of everything - now that the sin had been exposed - the sinner-hating fundamentalists in our community jumped in and started chastizing her, too.

Wounded from both sides: The unforgiving mob of Pharisee-types and the sin-condoning leaders of a church that led her out of sin then right back into it.

...

Therein lies the struggle. On the one hand, I never want to fall into the legalist, self-righteous way of thinking that has dominated churches in America for a long time. In these churches, the gospel is reduced to a system of rules that govern everything from our sexual practices to the clothes we wear to church, binding us to law instead of freeing us from sin. On the other hand, I don't want to fall into the trap of excusing sin. Well, it's a good feeling to not be condemned by your peers when you fall down. I admit that. But does that make it okay to fall down without repentance? I don't want to the gospel to be reduced to a huggy, "the only sin is not to love," hippie philosophy that breeds half-hearted believers who have rewritten Scripture to accommodate rather than liberate.

Yes, we need to know how to speak of sin in a world that cringes at the very religiosity of the word. Yes, we need to acknowledge and rectify the abuse churches have caused in the name of "dealing with sin" in a shameful way that's hurt many more than it's healed. Yes, we need to emphasize grace, love, forgiveness, etc., where they've been downplayed in the past. Yes, we need to crawl out of our judgmental circles and engage the culture on its level, daring to meet, greet, and make friends with those who do not yet know Christ. Yes to all of this. The message of the cross is indeed one of love, BUT... ("Um, how can you put a "but" on Christ's love?" you say?) Because Christ's love comes at GREAT cost - the death of Christ on a cross, atoning for our sins. Sin - and what Christ had to do to rid us of it - ought to grieve me. Sin causes God sorrow. If Christ had to die to save me from it, why flirt with it?

If sin is so serious that Jesus had to die for it, then I ought to take it seriously, too. Not because I need to earn my way into heaven or earn favor from God or other Christians, but because I don't want to allow things into my life that Jesus died to free me from. Because I want to respond to that kind of love He showed me.

That said, I'm a sinner. I always have been, I always will be. Not because I want to be, but because I am what I am - a person. So life, for me, is a struggle to let Christ rule in my life instead of my own human nature.

...

How do I sum this all up? I dont' know. Too many random thoughts bouncing around in my head, so I'll end with this:

The church is the bride of Christ. We ought to remain faithful to Christ. We don't need to whore ourselves out to our own desires or messed up ways of thinking. I don't mean not having an open mind or arrogantly assuming you can ever have every facet of our walk with Christ figured out. But too often, instead of walking a path of holiness as the bride of Christ, we're instead sitting alone in our personal 'closets' committing spiritual masturbation as we'd rather follow our own self-gratifying paths than truly remain faithful to him. Seriously, imagine being married to the most beautiful person in the world, but opting to self-gratify rather than spend intimate time with that person... How weird and stupid would that be? Or worse...we commit some kind of weird spiritual threesome where we try to merge our own philosophies/ideas/sins into our spiritual marriage bed, so to speak. Put that image in your pipe and smoke it.

Think that's too harsh? Too over the top? Think about it: How many people do you know who compromise something? How many people try to claim Christ and salvation but don't give a crap about how they live their own lives? Or at least 'excuse' some aspects of it?

No wonder hypocrisy creates so much atheism in our world. If we can't walk what we believe, we send a message that our God is impotent, and time is spent better elsewhere.