I’ve finished my final edits for the second edition of my first book—a much more polished and precise piece of art than before. While reading through it I was struck by several passages, particularly this passage below on sin. It may sound strong or harsh to some people—in fact the only criticism one friend had of the book was my chapter on rebellion; he thought it was too strong and too definitive—but to be honest we need a strong and harsh view of sin, because of how bad and devastating it is.
Often I hear of sin being talked about in terms of “brokenness.” I think this description of who we are, what we’ve done, and what has happened to creation is incredibly weak. The problem isn’t that we are merely broken. The problem is we are rebels against a holy God. It isn’t that creation is merely broken. Creation has been torn apart, utterly ruined and sullied, vandalized—by every person on the planet.
Earlier this year I taught a theology course for a ministry school in Grand Rapids. We talked about how when we sin we are rebelling against God, and in the process, deliberately vandalize God’s good creation. I riffed a bit off of how Cornelius Plantinga talks about sin in Not the Way it’s Supposed to Be. As he says, “God hates sin not just because it violates his law but more importantly because it violates shalom, because it breaks the peace, because it interferes with the way things are supposed to be…God is for shalom and therefore against sin.”
Here is what I said in favorable response to this quotation:
Plantinga calls shalom the way things are supposed to be, and sin the way things aren’t supposed to be. I think this is a very good way of looking at sin: it is culpable shalom-breaking. Which Jesus says cashes out as unlove of God and people.
Therefore, every time we sin, we scream a big “Yes!” to the vandalism of shalom. We say we want “More!” of the way things aren’t supposed to be and “Less!” of the way things ought to be.
Even more importantly—we want to replace God’s original intent with our own. In essence when we sin we are saying what God originally intended is just flat out wrong…that things should be this way, that I have the right to act this way. This is how things should be…not what God intended.
In essence we follow in the footsteps of our ancient ancestors Mama Eve and Papa Adam by trying to be like God Which in essence is at the core of the nature of sin.
During this lecture we had a great honest conversation about the severity of sin. I think these twenty-somethings saw sin a new light that evening: Sin isn’t merely brokenness, but a deliberate, active posture of rebellion against God and the active, deliberate vandalism of the way things are supposed to be. It is not a passive state of affairs, like a shattered teacup at the hand of a clumsy fool. Sin is active and it is violent. I think we as a Church need to recapture how devastating sin is for us and our world, and I think the terms rebellion and vandalism capture that devastation well.
Because I liked how I talked about sin in my first book—and I’m in a book-pimping mood of late—I thought I’d post those thoughts below. Any comment on how we talk about sin? Is anyone else concerned with the brokenness in contrast to the violent, deliberate, active language of rebellion and vandalism Scripture seems to use for sin?
The rebellion that plunged all of creation into brokenness resulted in what French theologian Jacques Ellul called, “The Great Rupture.” ((Jacques Ellul, The Humiliation of the Word (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1985) chapter 7.)) When Mama Eve and Papa Adam pursued their own Rhythm of Life instead of the Way and Rhythm of God,
something tragic happened.
A Great Rupture occurred in the depths of reality.
Shalom was vandalized.
Not only did our relationship with God rupture, our relationships with each other did, too. Now not only do we not love God as we ought, we do not love other people as we were originally designed. Even though we were made for each other, made to live together, and created to find our meaning and purpose not simply in ourselves but in one another, we find doing so incredibly difficult. Every generation in every part of the globe has experienced a Crusade, the Conquistadors, Trail of Tears, Holocaust, Rwanda, and Darfur. On every part of the globe The Great Rupture is evident in broken, oppressed relationships between tribes and nations, between friends and family.
I think most of us intuitively know this, though. Just look around you: isn’t it pretty obvious that things aren’t the way they are supposed to be? Many of our postmodern poets think so. While most of the top forty pop-culture songs usually celebrate the screwed-up things we humans do, many also despair over the evil that has stolen into our world. The American instrumental post-rock indy band Explosions in the Sky asks this very thing. In “Have You Passed Through This Night?” they wonder where this great evil that permeates the world has come from, how it has stolen into the world, what seed and root it has grown from, who’s killing us and robbing us of life and mocking us with the sight of what could have been. ((From the album Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever. Copyright, Explosions in the Sky.)) And then they ask, “Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed through this night?” ((Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever. Copyright, Explosions in the Sky.))
What an intuitive group. They seem to realize just how much creation has ruptured, just how much we’ve ruptured. But as they ask: Where has this great evil come from? Why are things the way they are? Why are we the way we are?
As we saw in our creation, everything was originally complete, whole, and very good. Creation was complete and pure shalom reigned, which isn’t simply peace, but wholeness and integration. Shalom is the way things ought to be.
The first humans rebelled, however. Yes, they were drawn, beckoned and wooed into rebellion, but they rebelled, nonetheless. The thing about any rebellion is that it is always directed toward a relationship. Whether toward our parents, spouses, friends, or government, a “someone” is rejected; a relationship is severed.
The same is true for sin: it’s always committed against and directed toward God. We cannot understand sin apart from reference to God, nor can we understand shalom apart from vandalism of the way God originally intended things to be. As Cornelius Plantinga says in his masterful book, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, “God hates Sin not just because it violates his law, but more substantively, because it violates shalom, because it breaks peace, because it interferes with the way things are supposed to be. God is for shalom and therefore against sin.” ((Cornelius Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1995) 14.))
I like the way he defines sin: it is deliberate vandalism of shalom, vandalism of the way it’s supposed to be between God and human, between human and human.
Sin is un-love.
Therefore, every time we sin, we scream a big “Yes!” to the vandalism of shalom. We say we want “More!” of the way things aren’t supposed to be and “Less!” of the way things ought to be. When we sin we reject relationships, primarily with God our Creator, but also other people, God’s His Image-Bearers. Every time we sin we affirm the Event of the Great Rupture, and continue to ravish relationships and the wholeness of God’s original creation.
Let me say that again: when you and I sin, we both affirm the original act of rebellion that shattered all of this, and we scream a big “Yes!” to the continued vandalism of shalom, the destruction of others and rebellion against God.
How devastating, indeed.
Because of the Great Rupture, because of the vandalism of shalom, the consequences of human rebellion are exhaustive and holistic, infecting every crevice of creation. Human rebellion has caused a rippled effect beyond humans to all creation, which now groans for ultimate restoration under the weight of sin.
Human culture is fallen and polluted by sin. While human society is capable of producing much good, such as art and science, it is still undeniably broken and incapable of restoring itself to the way God intended it to be. While one social scientist declared, “the end of history” in his similarly titled book—claiming modern Western society had reached its crowning achievements economically, politically, technologically, societally, and culturally—9/11 destroyed such hope in modern man’s efforts at self-salvation through utopian human efforts. While society insists we can save and repair ourselves, the evil that slammed into New York that September day reminded us all just how weak we really are, how evil we can be.
Likewise, I believe the earth itself and the animal kingdom are damaged by the pollution of sin and human rebellion. Through this pollution natural evils occur and animals are affected so that they eat each other, resulting in deaths not intended to be. Creation is broken, too, resulting in famine, massive earthquakes, tsunamis, and drought. No part of creation’s original shalom has not been disrupted. As the apostle Paul writes, every corner and crevice of creation groans in anticipation of rescue. ((Romans 8:22))
In short, the rebellion of humans at the beginning of creation shattered the shalom of all reality, vandalizing and polluting it to death. Consequently, all of creation groans under the weight of sin, while humans are especially cracked because of our willful rebellion.
From the (un)offensive gospel of Jesus • Copyright © 2008, 2012 by Jeremy Bouma
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