Sin: What’s up with that?
Most people who read this blog are, sadly, not able to make it to our Thursday night Zoom gatherings. While the two aren’t often connected, there was an interesting discussion last week that may bear further reflection here on the website. So, if you’re up for it, let’s think about sin and try to answer the question, “What’s up with that?”
Getting up to speed in John’s Gospel
We’ve been slowly working our way through the Fourth Gospel, usually attributed to the apostle John. (Here’s a primer for John’s Gospel, in case you have some time and want a quick refresher.) Last week, our reading and discussion turned to chapter 19, the crucifixion of Jesus. One of the ideas we looked at came from Nicholas J. Schaser, who points out some eerie parallels between this section of John and the book of Genesis’s account of Creation—or, more specifically, its account of the Fall of humankind:
Jesus receives crown of thorns (Jn 19:2) // Ground cursed with thorns (Gen 3:18)
They say Jesus must die (19:7) // God says they will die (3:3, 19)
Pilate becomes afraid (19:8) // Adam and Eve become afraid (3:8-10)
Soldiers take Jesus’ garments (19:23) // God gives them garments (3:21)
Water/blood from Jesus’ side (19:34) // Eve from Adam’s side (2:21)
Jesus placed in garden tomb (19:42) // Adam and Eve placed in garden (2:8, 15)
Mary arrives while it’s dark (20:1) // Darkness prior to creation (1:1-2)
The point being that John seems to be intentionally recalling and reversing many of the themes in Adam and Eve’s story. This invites some imagination about just how Jesus’ death and resurrection works to undo the bad stuff in our lives—bad stuff that we, perhaps not literally but theologically, think of as originating in the garden of Eden. But in order to ponder Jesus’ undoing of the Fall into sin, we sort of need to have a sense of what “sin” and “the Fall” actually refer to.
Was there a Fall? Is there sin?
In my discussion group last week, our conversation included some deconstruction and reconstruction around sin and the Fall. We were pretty heavy on the deconstruction. Here were some common ideas that we decided need to go:
Reading Genesis 1-3 literally
Viewing “sin” as something genetically passed on to everyone at birth, a moral or spiritual defect we all have at all times
Defining sin as nothing more or less than the state of being separated from God
Blaming Eve for what happened in this story (and thus extending some extra blame on women in all times and places, or concluding they shouldn’t be spiritual leaders)
Assuming “the knowledge of good and evil” is bad because of the fruit tree
Just generally not trusting or loving ourselves because of “sin”
We didn’t attempt much reconstruction around the Fall. It’s not a story that makes concrete sense in light of evolution anyway. But so long as we consider Genesis 3 a profound myth that reveals real spiritual insight about humans, temptation, and God, I think we can continue to glean wisdom from it.
While we may be able to take or leave a “Fall into sin,” sin itself is a bit more unavoidable. No matter which terminology we choose to use, and no matter which reading of the Bible we prefer, at the end of the day something is wrong with this world… and, it would seem, with us. People abuse, hurt, and kill each other. Wars consume entire regions. Natural disasters wipe out thousands at a time. Even when none of this is happening, we can feel loneliness, insecurity, despair, rage, greed, or disgust.
What is wrong with us? And what does it have to do with “sin”?
My favorite framing of sin comes from Lisa Sharon Harper. Also drawing from Genesis 1-3, she notes that the world, when all is as it should be (as in its imagined pristine early state), is “very good.” We hear this from God’s own voice. But what is it that makes the creation “very good”?
According to Harper, the Hebrew Bible suggests the fabric of the world’s goodness is God’s shalom. The word means much more than its translation to the word “peace”; it points to a holistic harmony in the interrelationships of all things. When relationships—between person and self; person and person; person and nature; person and God—are whole and life-giving and full of love, we experience shalom.
The definition of sin, at this point, pretty much writes itself: it is anything “that breaks any of the relationships God declared very good in the beginning.” If something causes a person to hate themself, it is sin. If something leads a person to harm another person, it (and the harm itself) is sin. If something kills trees and habitats, it is sin. If something causes a person to abandon God’s ways, it is sin.
This view of sin seems to account for much that simpler definitions struggle to explain. For instance, “sin” can be individual and interpersonal, or it can be systemic and societal. When a person crushes another person, it harms a relationship that is meant to be whole, so it is sin. When a racial group enacts policies that crush another racial group, it harms a network of relationships that are meant to be whole, so it is sin.
But Harper points out: “Sin is not about the personal imperfection of the self.” This will take a long time for many of us ex-vangelicals to process. We have been told otherwise for so long. But since shalom was always about whole relationships—not perfect persons—sin is about the breaking of relationships, not persons being imperfect.
We’ll have to leave the rest of the reflection for another day. But this viewpoint seems to position us to circle back to the question of how Jesus works against sin. As we consider his death on the cross, we are freed from thinking only about penal substitutionary atonement. We can dwell instead on his words to mother and friend: “Woman, behold your son. Behold your mother.”
This is God’s peace.
