Sin is Bad, Really, Really Bad

Some of my favorite lines from movies are the short, overly simple ones. The founder's statue in Animal House with the quote, "Knowledge is Good", or Spaceball's Dark Helmet's ominous (and false) statement just before he is defeated - "So now you see that evil will always triumph. . . because good is dumb." They are great line because they are so simplistic.

Here is one for today. Sin is bad, really, really bad. But it is true. Now, in general I dislike people banging on Postmodernism (because often people just look at the down side instead of how a Postmodern approach opens up avenues of discussion), but one thing we have seen according to the big religious survey is that less and less people claim to be Christian. I am going to lay this at the feet of popular Postmodernism.

Technically speaking, Postmodernism is really a skepticism of assumed truth - that just because a society or culture has said, "X is true" doesn't mean that it actually is true. What a culture believes could just be their perception. For an example - "criminals ought to go to prison" is not a universal truth, but a societal one. There are plenty examples throughout history where the typical punishment for crime in general had nothing to do with prison. Criminals going to prison isn't a universal truth, rather a "social construct" claiming to be truth. It is an idea our culture has. . . cultivated. Now, Vulgar postmodernism blows beyond this by assuming that ergo there is NO truth - classically speaking, Postmodernism itself just is skeptical and attempts to peel away the ways in which the understanding of truth has been culturally manipulated. Cultures and the people who shape them gain influence and control by manipulating social constructs (if interested, Foucualt's "Discipline and Punish" is an accessible place to start to look at scholarly postmodernism - but it still is a nasty hard book to read). This approach has impacted the way people perceive their religion.

It is true today, my generation and younger are more apt to be skeptic and simply assume that what their parents said is not true. They are more apt to claim no religion. Does this mean that there are suddenly less Christians now than there were say 20 years ago (what was it 88% to 75%?). I'll argue no - it just means that there are less hypocrites and works-righteous Pharisees who vainly try to live up to false standards. It means that there are less people who simply claim to be what their parents were because of cultural expectations.

I would contend that the actual problem has remained the same - be it now, be it 50 years ago when the religious elite were rubbing their hands together thinking about how to make Christianity relevant. It boils down to a simple truth that is Universal. Sin is bad, really, really bad.

Specifically, your sin. Your sin is harmful. And this provides our avenue of approach, I believe, in this era of skepticism. Truth claims about God and about what happened 2000 years ago can be brushed aside with ease today (just like they could in the Modern era, by the by) - and so can blanket statements of morality. Different cultures have different standards of morality - thus the claim that yours is right can easily be questioned. But what cannot be brushed aside (as easily, and not at the layman's level) by the Postmodernist is personal experience.

It's the second use of the Law. Show people their sin, and its negative consequences - not necessarily in terms of divine retribution or eternal damnation which they can't have experienced yet, but just in the sense that if you sin, it doesn't bring real pleasure. When you make that connection, when you can say, "On the basis of the long standing faith to which I hold, I can tell that ______ is actually empty and doesn't really satisfy you," and you are right, you have established a strong evidence of truth for the faith.

Sin is bad. No faith, no group in the world teaches the true impact of sin like Christianity, for not only is there the eternal aspect, not only is there the divine aspect, but with the examples of Scripture (especially of Genesis and the Old Testament) we clearly teach that when one sins one is never satisfied. The fruit always looks pleasing to the eye and sounds like a good idea, but it leaves you worse off than you were before.

Today, sin is downplayed - it becomes a matter of please yourself. We can show people why they are not pleased - and when they see their sin, then we can explain Christ the Living Water - then we can explain why we hold to this faith and the benefits we get from it. If part of what we teach is true in their life, directly and immediately true in their life, then they are prepared to hear.

Of course, this is nothing more than saying what we have been taught - you must preach the Law before the Gospel - but rather than being a stick that beats the person over the head, sometimes the preaching of the Law is finding the bruised and battered person and saying, "I can tell you why you are bruised and battered."

We as a culture don't understand, don't assume sin anymore - and we are lost as to why we are hurting. As Christians we know - and that will be our greatest avenue of approach to people - that will be what resonates. In a day when there are no truths and explanations, we know the Truth.

**Edit**

Pascal's Wager was a horrible thing. Why do we end up assuming that if we live according to God's Law here that we give up or lack anything? The gains of Christianity are not just a future matter - they are a present matter, and not in terms of "stuff" but in terms of peace and satisfaction. We gave ground we should not have given. Here my various strains of blood (including German, English, and Jewish) are in agreement - what good comes out of France?