Okay, I have a question for group discussion. Anyone feel like playing?

I’ve been thinking lately about sin. Not sinning. Sin…and its nature. I’ve been spinning my own wheels on this topic for a while and I’m curious what other schools of thought are out there that I might not be aware of. So, the first question I’ll answer to give you an idea how this thing goes.

Q: Where does sin originate?
A: Our own desires (James 1:14-15), in the Garden (Genesis 3), possibly when Lucifer rebelled against God (Isaiah 14:12-15 ?)

The follow-up questions are open to all replies. Multiple answers (as above) are okay by me. Any and all thoughts are acceptable and encouraged…

Q1: Is there sin in heaven? Most traditional thoughts say no, based on an interpretation of this single verse in Revelation 21. This is tightly linked to the idea of free wil in heaven, too. Thoughts?

Q2: Can sin exist in the presence of God? This is related to the first question, but slightly different. I’m thinking specifically of the teaching concerning when Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, why have You forsaken me?” I’ve always heard it taught that God had to “forsake” Jesus because Jesus had taken on the sins of the world, and God could not bear it. Any alternate teachings out there?

I know I’m probably biting off more than I can chew, but I am interested in what others have to say about the issue. I’m especially curious about alternate or non-traditional teachings. Leave your comments if you want to play along.

Been reading hither and yon lately and thought I’d share some of the things that passed through my brain. Perhaps you can see a theme developing…

Makeesha talks about evangelism and the event-centric focus in the modern Evangelical church. I think she over-generalizes some, but I don’t doubt that many churches are following that trajectory even if some aren’t as far down the path as others.

Every week we go to the urgent care center(church) where the doctor(pastor) tends to our discomfort giving us medicine to ease our pain, comforting words to make us feel better about dying and then we discuss heaven and what it’s going to be like.

The pastor tells us how we can live our final moments the best way possible and we strategize about how we can get more people to join us in the hospice, talking about how sad it is that there are people “out there” who refuse to join us.

We discuss our bed sores and other maladies and commiserate and then we leave urgent care and enter the village of the dying. (read more)

iMonk laments how God ruined church for him. If you’ve found yourself identifying with various church traditions and unable to affirm everything you find in your own then you need to read this :

You see, it’s supposed to work like this: The world of churches is like a big mall, and there are many different kinds of stores. You choose one store–ONE–and you go there for everything you need. You are LOYAL to that store. You BELIEVE in that store and what it’s all about; in the way it does things. You persuade others that your store is the one and only store real shoppers patronize. You buy name brand merchandise at every opportunity. It’s your store. Yes, there is a mall, but you only need one store.
…
And then there are those of us who, because God has ruined our shopping trip by showing us the good and the not so good in all these stores, are trying to shop in the whole mall and get back home. When God ruined everything for us by showing us the value and the limitations of all the stores, he didn’t give us the gift of feeling great about never really having a “home” of our own. (read more)

Brant Hansen quits the church and then does a little Q&A on why :

It seems that a real line has been drawn in the sand here between what you think healthy church is and is not. It seems you think that you have been involved in the not-so-healthy side of things for a while.

Nearly my entire life. I’m a PK, myself, of a fundamentalist background. I’ve also been a full-time youth minister with a church I still love. (Short bio note and disclaimer: I’ve told few people my whole story. But when I have, the usual response is, “It’s amazing you’re a believer.” With that as a backdrop, and if I am all wrong here, please be patient with me.)

I have found that many of the trappings — the non-essential, cultural understandings of “church” — are at odds with the movement that Jesus intended. Honestly, I *think* this is less about the continual hypocrisy, at high levels, we’ve run into, and more about growing in our understanding of what Jesus was talking about. (read more)

10 propositions on worship from Kim Fabricius. Definitely not from a tradition anywhere close to mine but I found myself nodding my head as I read through them - even if I didn’t understand all the words :). Here are some of my favorites :

5. How should worship begin? But worship never begins, or, rather, it has always already begun. You could say that we are always late for worship, because we always enter worship in medias res, the praise unceasing of the communio sanctorum. Never forget that when there are only three old ladies and a dog in the pews.

7. How should worship end? With an ellipsis…. For when the liturgy is over, the service (λειτουργία) begins. Leaving the church is the ultimate liturgical act: Ite, missa est. On Romans 12:1-2, Ernst Käsemann observes that “the cultic vocabulary serves a decidedly anti-cultic thrust. Christian worship does not consist in what is practiced at sacred sites, at sacred times, and with sacred acts. It is the offering of bodily existence in the otherwise profane sphere.” Or as Michael Marshall puts it: “You do not become a Christian by sitting in the pew anymore than you become a car by sitting in the garage.”

8. What should we get out of worship? Wrong question. Worship is not a utility but an offering, i.e. a sacrifice, an economy of grace that interrupts and critiques the feverish cycles of production and consumption – which is why the collection is not fund-raising but cultural critique. If you want relevance, excitement, or profit, go to a rally, a concert, or the stock exchange. To put it most counter-culturally: Blessed are the bored, for they will see God. (read more)

Steven at Doggie’s Breakfast explains more on his resolution to understand the Gospel better :

What my early experience, and these pseudo-quotes display is a belief that the gospel is only to be preached to the unconverted, but once you are saved you need to leave it behind and move on to “living the Christian life”. You see what I’m saying? It is easy to think that “living the Christian life” can be done without the gospel.

The fruit of this thinking can be quite startling when one’s eyes are opened to it. For example, not long after my conversion some of my new Christian friends were attending a church that had a morning “teaching” service and an evening “gospel” service. The interesting thing was the attitude that they developed to the evening service. They were bored by the “gospel” service. At the time I swallowed this. It seemed reasonable: if I were to hear the Four Spiritual Laws, or whatever, week after week then, sure, I would get bored too. (read more)

The boys at the Tavern are talking about how to react to people who “hear God’s voice”. I’m not sure why they haven’t asked me for my insight on the whole thing…. Anyway, if you want to read the entire conversation, start here and work your way up.

A comment/post from a guy named Brian(cool name - must be smart) caught my attention :

People hear amazing stories about how God works or speaks or makes Himself known around the world. In a lot of cases these are genuine miracles or whatever you word you want to use. But like Jack, I am not prone to judge one way or another right away–it’s not my job. But anyway, instead of taking these things and rejoicing that God chose to bring fame to His name in these ways, we make them into methodologies and/or standards for normalcy (Joel, is that a word?). People say things like–if we would just get where we need to be and pray a certain way or fast a certain way or ______________ a certain way, God would speak to Americans like that. Implied is that if that isn’t your experience your messing up. But God does not fit into this way of thinking. He is not obliged to adhere to our methodology. He is perfectly able to act a certain way in a certain place and never, ever do it in the same way again. Our western thinking doesn’t like that.

His point about where the blame gets put is spot on, IMHO. If we’re not hearing God then we must need to get something straightened out in out spiritual life. Pray more, fast more, get into that quiet place so we can hear that still, small, voice. Or if we’re doing those things then we need to somehow do those better. This assumes that God wants to “speak” to us on such a regular, consistent basis that the only way we could miss hearing Him is if we somehow lacking in the necessary maturity.

I could go on, and probably will in future posts(perhaps to my detriment), but for now just think with me. Where oh where in scripture is “hearing from God” listed as one of the marks of maturity. Yep, it’s just not there. If I missed it, let me know.

Jim is trying to decide whether God wants him to go an a mission trip to Mexico for spring break. He has prayed about this but hasn’t felt God leading him one way or another. But just within the space of a few days it all becomes clear :

• A missionary from Mexico speaks at the Sunday night service
• Jim’s friends decide to take him to the Mexican joint for his birthday
• Jim’s mom gets a chihuahua since all the kids are out of the house

And it all becomes clear. These are obvious signs that God is telling Jim to go on the mission trip. Who could argue with this?

You may chuckle but this is exactly the kind of method that many Evangelicals use to determine what God wants them to do. The events are deemed just too coincidental to be an accident and so therefore must be direction from God.

But what Jim sees as signposts from God are the kinds of things that go on around us all the time. There are thousands of events that happen every day that we could play connect-the-dots with if we so desired. But there is no evidence that God has so arranged these events to be in some kind of code that we need to decipher. In fact there is nothing in scripture at all to hint that finding God’s will is such an elusive affair. We have read this into scripture - perhaps because we want God’s personalness to be more explicitly evident in our lives. Perhaps for other reasons.

But knowing what God wants us to do - or rather, how He wants us to behave - is not so hard. Let me give a few examples :

So, the knowing is not the hard part. The doing, on the other hand…