Marci Glass on (Re)Imagining Christianity

This post is part of an ongoing blog series on Pomomusings entitled “(Re)Imagining Christianity.” To read about the series, as well as get a full schedule of participants, click here.

What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that we must hold onto and live out more fully so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?

I have some ability to be flexible in worship. Note that I said “some.” I don’t want to overstate this. But the one practice that I can’t do without is corporate confession of sin. When worship doesn’t have confession, or when the confession is completely upbeat, it just doesn’t feel like worship to me.

I serve a primarily progressive congregation and there are many people in the pews who would love it if I ditched the Prayer of Confession. “It’s depressing.” “It makes me feel like a sinner.” “I don’t like it.”

In my most pastoral voice, I respond, “good. That’s what it is supposed to do. Isn’t it a gift? I love confession!!!”

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Credo: Humanity & Sin

Credo-Creation

This post is part of the Credo Blog Series (which has been a little slow coming – but I hope to get back into the groove of writing on these important theological topics). For some basic information about the series, go here. Photo Credit.

I believe that man is made in God’s image and that God created man to live in perfect communion with himself. However, God gave man free will. It was because of this that man chose the knowledge of good and evil over his creator God. Thus, sin entered the world. Because of the sin of the first Adam, all are affected by it. Humans are inherently morally corrupt by nature and can only do good by the grace of God. The sinful nature of man keeps us from wanting or even having the ability to know God. Therefore, God wanted to restore the broken relationship between himself and man. He accomplished this by condescending himself to his created world.

While I entitled this section “Humanity & Sin” – it certainly is mostly about the sinfulness of “man” [sic]. Let’s see what we have:

  • Man [sic] chose the knowledge of good and evil over his [sic] creator.
  • Because of the sin of the first Adam, all are affected by it.
  • Humans are inherently morally corrupt by nature
  • The sinful nature of man [sic] keeps us from wanting or even having the ability to know God.

Sounds like I covered it all there – wow. In a nutshell: “man [sic] is screwed.” Seems like kind of a bleak picture, if you ask me.

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Re: What is sin?

Question 7: What is sin?

It’s been awhile since I first posted the “What is sin” question – but I still want to finish off this blog series. I think my main beef with sin is that so often it is thought to mean only personal, individual “bad things” that people do. Sin is so much more than that. A few years ago, I wrote an exegesis paper on Isaiah 1.14-23 entitled “A Theology of Sin: Arguing For a More Social/Communal Understanding of Sin in America” (this was when I was in my “Long Paper Titles Will Get the Best Grade”-phase). You can find the paper here, if you are interested. In that paper, through my exegetical work, I argued that personal piety meant nothing to God as long as there existed rampant social sin. When we think of sin, it is important to realize that sin includes much more than just bad things individuals do. It includes the social, systemic sins. It includes the structures that are in place in the world that cause oppression, injustice and so much more. I think this is what some of you were getting to in your comments.

This is not to negate the fact that there is often a personal or individual aspect to sin. Gustavo Gutierrez, liberation theologian, wrote the following:

“…sin is not considered as an individual, private, or merely interior reality…sin is regarded as a social, historical fact., the absence of brotherhood and love in relationships among men…When it is considered in this way, the collective dimensions of sin are rediscovered.”

Any good theology of sin will include both the individual and the corporate idea of sin; to focus solely on the individual is to avoid obvious social evils and forces of tyranny and oppression and to focus solely on the social aspect is to lose any type of human culpability and responsibility for the evil that is taking place, often times in social institutions because of individuals. Many times this occurs because of humanity’s desire to stop looking outside of themselves: “Man is tempted to make himself existentially the center of himself and his world.” ((Tillich, Systematic Theology II)) Tillich does a good job of recognizing the similarities and links between both the individual and the social and more universal aspects of sin: “Sin is a universal fact before it becomes an individual act, or more precisely, sin as an individual act actualizes the universal fact of estrangement.” ((Tillich, Systematic Theology II))

So, what is sin? Sin is individual and social, personal and communal. Sin is that which gets in the way of the work of God’s Kingdom on Earth – whether it be individual and personal issues or social and communal ones.