I Digress – The Sin Condition: Prone To Wander

I’m currently in between jobs and to bring that era to an end I recently had an interview for a post.  On my journey there I was reflecting on different things and my mind came onto again the sin condition.  I think it’s really sad that this language is only used among certain people with a knowledge of it anyway and it seems to be passē for the sophisticated.

I was also thinking about it in terms of some people’s progressive sense of history.  Implicit within the macro-evolutionary thought and as has been subsequently developed by other thinkers there is a look at history as seeing the progress of the species from one stage to another and the current is something different and inherently better than the previous.  It’s also hinted in super hero narrative with the concept of ‘the next step on the evolutionary chain’ going from homo sapiens to homo superior as exmplified in the mutant.  In all this there is a sense that man is going from strength to strength and getting better and better.

This is further reinforced by technological and scientific developments over the last few centuries that has seen us go from discovering new cultures in different lands to discovering the wider space beyond the planet and exploring different stars and galaxies.  From the age of the printed press to the electronic era.  From bi-pedal beings utilising horses to planes transporting whole contingents of people from one end of the globe to the other in breath-taking speed.  Where once certain diseases would wipe out towns and cities advances in medication has developed vaccines and cures for these saving lives.

Apparently we’re getting better and better.  Sure there are things to indicate this journey isn’t all good and there are always deviants and malcontents, dictators and despots only too willing to mess up the story, but this human story overwhelms these efforts and as we become more aware of ourselves and what we’re capable of we engender the human spirit to work out solutions to deep lying human problems.  Whether it’s cancer or the Middle East situation, as apartheid and Nazism was defeated in a previous age, we have the means to eventually find the key that unlocks the door to further solutions on these life-threatening issues.

Yet as I sat in that bus I got the impression we were missing the point and that is exactly the whole concept of the sin condition – missing the point.  It’s great to make advances and have more knowledge and tools at our hands now than ever before, but it misses the point.  It’s great to stand up for social justice throughout the world as the major cause of life – but in a real way even this misses the point.

It misses the point – we digress rather than progress – because these initiatives draw us away from the Source of life and brings us back to ourselves as the total and end of all that is.  We are all that matters in the universe – this view would follow – and as a result focus on self is the most important thing.  Yet there is always in the picture the presence of the Creator of the universe, the Holy Loving God who created us to be God-focussed rather than self-focussed, so that in always being connected to the Source we may know and live out the fullness of life that was always in mind from creation.

We can criticise people for apparently standing still while the world moves on, but in a real way it’s not as though they do stand still.  It is a conscious effort to try and maintain and retain elements of a bygone era that was deemed to be the essence of life.  So it’s not regressive as some would argue – going back.  On the contrary it is digressive.  And that in a nutshell is the human problem when it comes to God.  Rather than acknowledging how far we are from Him – His character, His love, His call to Him – we take noble causes and moral standards, rally around those and think these will give life and lead to a better way – we digress – we are prone to wander.  Maybe, so this thinking goes, if we can just get rid of what makes us different and hold onto what makes us the same and make everything subservient to those qualities we’ll live in a better world.  Yet that again isn’t progressive – that’s digressive.  The way to peace and peace-making does not come at the absence of the issues that divides, but at the resolving of those issues in the light of One who truly makes whole.

Put in another way, God doesn’t call us and say we can get on in a relationship if we put aside our difference and focus on our similarities.  God calls us and addresses the condition that divides us – by the cross and the message of reconciliation through the gospel, the ongoing journey in the way of His Kingdom.  Anything else isn’t progress at all as seen in the fact that for all the technical, philosophical. ideological and medical advances in actuality the human condition – the state of the heart and mind – is hardly any better than any other era in history.  Our sensibilities don’t stop genocides and other grotesque abuses of humanity.  Our enlightenment has not quashed the dark realms of man’s insidious nature whether overt or covert.  Psychoanalysis and the plethora of spiritual alternatives on the market only make it clearer that the problems that face the human condition are as prevalent as ever before.

The Way of the Cross once more offers the only solution, the only way of making real progress – journeying towards the being we were always meant to be, in the light of God – Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer and Lord.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd