Episode 25 - Sin

[transcript automatically generated - cleanup in progress]

[Music] so we have science mike who's in his prime form after he's had a little bit to drink it's always the best uh lissa pano is running her own sound so she's terrified with sweaty hair so nervous and so nervous and we're running so we got east coast we got central time and then i'm michael i'm living in los angeles enjoying the sunshine and just enjoying the uh the antics of these two clowns [Laughter] i've been enjoying the sunshine sweltering humidity large insects and mold what's your mold problem humidity and heat so talasia has constant mold and mildew it's pretty awesome speaking of mold and mildew we're talking about sin this week the mold and mildew of your heart that's right welcome to the liturgist podcast everybody [Music] so here's why i started thinking about an episode on sin and then when michael when you sent our topics list and sin was on it i got all excited because i watched this kind of online i don't know what you call it a blog war between progressive christians and atheists over the ideas of sin and brokenness one whether those were actual things or not and two whether they were even healthy ideas and i think most christian people are very comfortable one with the idea of sin and two with the idea of brokenness meaning that in some way humanity is broken when i was growing up as a southern baptist we talked a lot about total depravity meaning that humankind was completely worthless without god's redeeming love that humanity could do nothing at all to redeem itself and then there was a more open view in christian doctrine called partial depravity which meant that humans were almost entirely worthless but just had the tiniest glimmer of godliness in them who does that is that baptists that well that's that's calvinism like five-point capitalism's total probably tulip total yeah but what is bat what are baptist baptists would accept total or partial depravity as long as it's based on depravity in the baptist world there's been this whole movement like towards calvinism so like the old guard baptists are against five-point calvinism but like most of the seminaries have been pumping out five-point calvinist for quite a while so that's a whole tension in the baptist world is like how many points of calvinism are you anyway so there was this big discussion about does the idea of sin have any real merit is sin an objective truth or usefully subjective and the same thing with this idea of brokenness and i was fascinated with that discussion being a fence straddler as i am and and identifying very easily both with many progressive christian ideas and with many atheist ideas and sin is one where i tend to kind of split the middle i know we're going to have some listener contributions you're going to hear clips throughout this program of yourselves telling us what you think about sin but we wanted to pick that apart today like is sin a thing and is sin and brokenness a helpful or hurtful idea for people to me sin is really complex the world has so many rules to define sin from who you marry to what foods you eat the clothes you wear who can teach who you spend time with the bible is equally complicated with this list of rules making it difficult to discern what applies and what doesn't sin is a relational dysfunction which distorts the way that i relate to myself to god and to the world around me so if you've never heard of calvinism out there in podcast land i'm going to give you a plain english highly cynical towards calvinism breakdown of all these points and i am aware let me just say this okay we handle things in grace on the show we respect all different opinions and i know there are calvinists who listen to the show and you are good people and you do good in the world and i'm convinced you do that in spite of your belief system and i feel horrible saying that but i've just seen so many people crushed under the heels of calvinism calvinism more than anything illustrates the atheist critique towards christian belief and philosophy here's why total depravity means people are worthless as they are made because of sin sin completely ruins humanity and makes it impossible for humanity to be redeemed without god's grace and love which by the way catholics do not subscribe to the orthodox church does not believe in total depravity no it's not even all protestants except calvinism it gets pretty down one of the branches of church history some of the neo-reformed neo-calvinist calvinist oscars unconditional election you've got unconditional election that basically means god pick some people because god picks some people they get redeemed everybody else goes to hell uh limited atonement is another way of saying a lot of people go to hell irresistible irresistible grace means that your will means nothing because it is god that elects and calls you into salvation what's funny to me about the tulip of calvinism is the uli it all says the same thing and then because you don't choose to be saved we have perseverance of the saints which is more popularly said once saved always saved meaning that no matter what sins you commit from that point you're good you've been redeemed by grace although that believe me no calvinist would ever say you should sin because you've been redeemed that would not be a fair read of that theology but at the heart of calvinism is the idea of a perfect loving god who redeems worthless sinful humanity and i'll tip my hand a little bit i think those ideas are psychologically damaging in the result of trauma a lack of self-worth and a somewhat narcissistic struggle against pride people who are concerned about total depravity and fearful of pridefulness spends so much time worrying if they're humble or not that it actually becomes a warped form of narcissism nasty and that contrasts to another idea in the church are many in theology the armenian theology is not like tulip it would be like cruelly i guess because it's conditional election universal prevenient grace which basically god's grace is always working even preemptively in the hearts of men universal atonement uh aka love wins resistable grace now that means like you could thumb your nose at god and he'll let you uncertainty of perseverance it means that salvation is not guaranteed and a huge part of that would be libertarian free will meaning god made people in a way so they can act autonomously basically armenianism is the opposite of calvinism's tulip you just take the eyes and tulip and you flip them and both of those are based on the idea that sin is a real thing that separates people from god an idea which obviously atheists don't believe in god that's how you become an atheist and therefore they don't believe you can sin against god most atheists would say that objective morality doesn't exist so here's the deal with calvinists that in my experience there's one thing that's really cool about calvinists a lot of them that i've met seem to have you know they put a lot of emphasis on grace which i think is cool right i mean like there's a humility there's a certain at least on the surface humility of it's not me i'm not the one who gets to decide my own salvation or anything there's something that's good about that but it kind of just goes to some dark places i think like i was talking to this was years ago and i was raised mostly armenian sort of theology so i was talking to calvinist right out of college i think and and really trying to understand like okay so people don't get to choose but god decides to send most people to hell so okay so let's take a theoretical example here so a girl is born in india and she is sold into the sex trade at seven years old she exists in a world of brutality and rape and abuse and then she's murdered shortly after the age of accountability whenever that is 12 13 years old and she's never heard of jesus she's never experienced anything but pain and what happens to her is that she moves from brutality and rape and drugs and abuse to burning forever in a lake of fire and this is because it's god's will and he's like well i know it sounds rough it sounds tough i'm like yeah i mean it sounds like that god is sadistic and he's like well imagine that we're at a jewelry store and i'm gonna show you a diamond what am i gonna show you that diamond am i going to bring out a gold tray to show you that diamond on or am i going to put it on a piece of black velvet and let it shine as in opposition to the black darkness i was like so you're saying yeah i just thought for my mouth a little god and i actually don't remember if i'm the diamond in this scenario or if god is but either way god he's he's making it hell for this little girl so that his redemption of me looks that much better okay so if you believe that i get i get why you'd be afraid of god but can you tell me like why you would love god if that's the story if that's the good news isn't this the worst being that could even be thought of isn't hitler a saint compared to this god because after all he i mean he only he killed him quick in the ovens this this god tortures them in the ovens for all of eternity because of what they are beyond their ability to choose so in that case hitler is perhaps the most godly example of a human being ever is that the truth needless to say i'm not a big fan of the beliefs of calvinism but it's weird that but i also think like most calvinists don't think about it that way here's the thing here's the problem most calvinists i know really wonderful people yes i agree that really really wonderful people i agree who work hard to serve people are pretty loving maybe have some self-esteem issues because they're a total depravity thing but uh it's an odd psycho-social construct that i'm completely worthless compared but god's love is infinite so it's almost like god's love cancels out the personal worthlessness and it's a roundabout way of seeking ego annihilation which can be interesting but i still think it is core like maybe calvinism is one of the most damaging forms of christian theology that's ever been thought of and it's super popular if you look at the top religious podcasts is it most of the top ones are a lot there's i mean i think prosperity gospels probably got the edge over uh calvinism these days in podcasts and media but yeah and i've listened to some of them and they're not bad shows a yeah i don't want to name names but there are a couple of podcasts i listen to that even have maybe like reformed in the name that i think are pretty good shows so that that's kind of the odd disconnect here is i cannot stand the theology i'm pretty okay with the people i think most of the harm that calvinism does is inwardly focused it causes psychological harm to the the person who follows it studies it deeply i think for your casual everyday calvinist maybe someone who believes some of these ideas but doesn't even hasn't heard the term calvinism doesn't know four point versus five point those kind of things but it causes people psychological harm and also it tends to create some pretty authoritarian power structures through church discipline and and other things that that are hurtful all based around this idea that sin is so powerful that the only thing that can stop it is god's infinite grace the word for sin in greek is hamartia which in an ancient context is understood less as sin and more as missing the mark so any time that we aren't functioning the way god designed us to function that is considered sin but in an ancient context they also distinguish between sin and what is probably better defined as trespass which would be like a false step and so what we typically consider a sin in our context is more like a trespass where hamartia in greek would be more of the nature of humanity now after the fall okay so we are talking about a subject like sin how do we bridge the divide between the skeptic and the fundamentalist and you know like how do we talk graciously about this subject because that's what we're always trying to do so i think maybe just throw this into the pool here most people would agree that there are things that happen in this world that we don't want to happen right you know like genocides and wars and murder today as we're recording this podcast there's another shooting at a school oh my god um there's just so much evil and what we would all call evil even though people you know an atheist or skeptic might say there's no objective reality is evil if you talk to 99 of those atheists and skeptics and say well then are you cool with people going into schools and unloading automatic weapons they're gonna say no you shouldn't do that or whatever you know they might however the language would be we're all against it right i mean um which is enough that's what they would say it doesn't have to be objective for us all to decide we're against it for logically supported reasons so most of us are on the same page with most things regarding good and evil and what we might call sin i would think at least the big the big ones you know if you're harming people overt selfishness that puts yourself over other people most people know that that's just not the ideal way to live but the christian tradition uses this sin language and always has and it stems from our jewish roots or all the way back to genesis here's where it gets interesting because now we're in a place and if you've listened much to the podcast you know that we try to be open to the traditions of scripture and everything but we also still hold science and the modern ways that science has showed us that the world works we hold that very important and actually as a testament of god as well so traditionally the historic christian church sort of ascribes sin to something called the fall right and this is in the story of genesis you have these human beings adam and eve that are placed in a garden in this perfect garden where there is no death there is no decay there is no sickness and disease and having babies apparently doesn't hurt and work is easy and everything is good and then there's a serpent that tempts eve to eat an apple or a fruit and she does and tempts adam with it and adam does and suddenly original sin enters the world through the fall and now death has entered the scene and through sin through disobedience and rebellion and pride against our creator human beings have ushered in the fall [Music] i mean that's pretty widespread theology right i mean it's hard that's pretty christian the problem is now we're at a place in society in history where we can look back anthropologically and through records and arguments and and now even science and dna and see human beings didn't come from a single pair of parents in mesopotamia 6 000 years ago but what does that do to our understanding of this story and to our doctrine and our ideas of sin and the fall it makes it more complicated for sure when i left faith i decided sin wasn't a thing there was ethics and there was morality but those were ways of talking about limiting suffering and avoiding the violation of someone's consent those weren't you know objective things like protons or precipitation they were just things we use to make it easier for human society to exist and because we have such big brains looking at things in terms of morality makes it possible for each person to live the best life they can without getting knocked down by other people so i kind of let go of sin as a objective thing at all and i think that's kind of where we're moving is as more and more people are really troubled with the idea of personal sin or sin that separates me from god those ideas seem to be declining in popularity in modern society i mean have you guys noticed that i live in tulsa oklahoma i don't notice that what is your understanding of sin lissa that that you've been raised with and where are you at with it now oh no that like you saying all that is exactly true i mean that's what i've learned it's original sin that's where it all went wrong and how we like entered into this world by choosing sin and now you have to like give those sins up and ask for forgiveness for those sins this like betrayal of the law of god i to be honest with you i don't know if i think of sin that often like as deep as this for sure i mean as you're saying this i mean it's definitely there it's in my subconscious what about the end of brokenness you ever think about that no i just i know like what do you mean by brokenness like are humans inherently sinful or in some way do we automatically fall short of some ideal are we broken in some way i don't i don't know i don't like that idea but you certainly see evidence of that as you look around don't you yeah i mean i'm trying to think of my two-year-old daughter like the choices of rebellion in her but would i call that sin does that w does that make sense like the brokenness i feel like it would start there let me ask you this question how does this sit with you i heard this guy talk about that every action has some sort of good intention at its onset i don't know that i buy that why i've done stuff that i didn't have good intent for i did it knowing it was wrong in some way but because i thought it would be fun or enjoyable or i had a compulsion of some kind so when i get really really really stressed out if i'm not paying attention this is honest to god truth uh i'll take a pair of scissors and trim my body hair and not even know it and then i'll just be like what the heck like i'll i'll literally be like out of the shower and i'll be like what happened to my arm and it took me a long time to figure out like i had this like weird compulsion that was happening somewhere in my nervous system other than my conscious faculties that was when i was stressed out training my body here and the only way i could stop that was to keep the scissors away from my desk there was no good intent that drived that you were like losing time no i was like working on something and not realizing i was doing it as i was doing whatever i was doing okay what was what was the intent the intent of your unconscious brain was apparently to relieve stress yes that would be true and that's a fine intention is it not even when you're doing acts of that you know aren't good it's for fun so the intent was but then that drinks this whole thing like this just to have fun it's real fun noble intent it's fun that you know noble is too strong is that a good intent it doesn't go in a good direction but at the onset of the desire to do whatever you're doing that is evil that obviously turns in a direction that's not good you know whether it's xbox one two and an xbox one which i don't but if i had one and somebody had an xbox one game i liked and i just took that xbox one game and stuck in my back pocket and walked out of their house you're saying that starts with a good intent okay i i guess you you intend to enjoy that game you eventually transgress some good morality on the way to putting it in your pocket because you're now taking it from somebody else and somebody else's loses as a result of your desire to enjoy your life to have a game that you can play and and enjoy it's without the consequences what is it what is the main goal without the consequences is that good or is that bad yeah if you weren't hurting anybody and taking that game if nobody lost the game if you took the game and and it magically replenished the game for them and they never lost anything if i'm a masochist that gains pleasure from other people's pain and i poke someone with scissors to hear them yelp is their good intent again it's so like it's it's it's horrible to say it's horrible to say yes but it's the same thing you are trying to experience joy the thing is it gets bent right the the desire to experience joy to experience pleasure in its raw form before it gets bent and hurts somebody else see i think there's just too many constructs there it's like there's a picture and you put an instagram filter on it and then you put it in your camera roll and you put another instagram filter on it and you put it in your camera roll and then you see what i'm saying you did that over and over until you came to see the original picture i think that construct of the good intent to begin with it's elegant like rhetorically and but it doesn't line up with neuropsychology or cognition how so it assumes there's such a thing objectively as good or bad whereas human brains are just these uh massive networks of competing impulses and desires and in certain contexts they are they can all be good and in some contexts you're still ascribing a subjective opinion to you're saying they can be good they can be bad that's still assuming that they're yeah yeah i'm taking a very pragmatic subjectivity but sure it's still subjective i'm saying from the perspective of the organism in terms of its well-being good being beneficial bad being detrimental an evolutionary good and bad if you will which as you can imagine when i made a sin axiom it was based on those sorts of uh precepts what is your si what is your syn axiom you've never heard my synaxia no that was post all right there we go sin axiom uh if i can remember it sin is at least volitional action or inaction that violates one's own understanding of what is moral or causes suffering in another person or violates another being's consent sin comes from the divergent impulses between our lower and higher brain functions and our evolution driven tendency to do things that serve ourselves and our tribe even if this is all sin is it is destructive and threatens human flourishing it's almost as good as my third grade poem mike if bad is good and good is bad do i want to be bad bad or good good so this is a poem that i i discovered she was in third grade and i discovered this creepy typewritten like a typewriter that like between every letter and word she like pulled up the paper a little bit like it was just written sketchy and random all over the page but yeah uh so like a serial killer wrote this note he said if god is good and bad is bad then what shall i be good good or bad good this is the question she's a psychopath that's amazing i really like that you remember those third grade poems it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourself or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house and you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through better help you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions betterhelp has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better help that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com liturgists it seems to me that if god is personified in christ and is love and truth then a sin as was explained to me growing up are things that take us away from god or separate us from god so i could only understand that to mean things that would fight love and truth um and probably serving others so anything that would break our ties with humanity and i think therefore god but why that requires sacrifice in the form of blood of an animal or of christ himself i've it's awkward but i'll admit it it that's never been made clear to me okay so have you guys read rene gerard at all i've been fascinated with this book that i've been reading his and so here's i'll i'll butcher him a little bit in this but he has this idea of this thing called what he calls memetic desire and how it easily turns to rivalry and scandal and eventually violence that whole process is what he says satan is essentially so he's saying mimetic desire is basically this thing that makes humans humans it's what separates you know a human from a different animal and that it's not just instinct like a baby lucy if we're trying to feed lucy her food a lot of times she won't go for it until she sees us do something to make her think that we value that so like we take a bite of it or we go like yum yum this is gonna be good and then she'll eat it why because she values what we value she sees that we desire and she goes oh i want that too it's like this thing that all of us have you give a kid a toy and watch what the other kids do or any adult i'm we're house shopping right now in los angeles and the neighborhoods that everybody wants to be in are more expensive and you see everybody going craz it's everywhere and what's really interesting that he does is he lays out this whole thing about how that desire it's it's fundamentally good right i mean it's what without that thing human culture wouldn't exist uh we wouldn't have art and technology we wouldn't have human culture in itself the desire that we get from our neighbor is good i want what they have they like that now i like it but what happens is okay i see my neighbor has a chicken and i want the eggs from that chicken too so i asked him if i can have the eggs of that chicken and he says he sees that i desire that and all of a sudden he realizes eggs are more valuable than he may have felt so he protects it more and he's like no i don't think so i'm gonna need those eggs in turn that makes me desire the eggs even more i can't have those eggs i want those eggs what can i do to get those eggs he sees my increased desire and it makes his protection of those eggs even more firm so now he builds a fence around that chicken and he says no you can't have these eggs eventually this creates violence and eventually what he makes this the case of which i think is fascinating is when you have this happening on a large scale in a society eventually there's so many calls these things scandals that are basically stumbling blocks on the way to what you desire that there's so much pent-up violence that either the society is going to destroy itself or they're going to find a way to refocus all of that violence on a single victim and so they find a scapegoat and his argument is this the ultimate example of this is jesus and the cross and that is the satan that is this scapegoating and the essence of sin really in some level and the direction that sin takes so it starts with something good but it gets bent and it gets bent towards the self and even the people that have talked about total depravity like augustine that idea of kind of bent is is all you find that a lot in theological discourse on sin that our basic desires for pleasure for love for safety that that is something intrinsic to what it means to be human and as far as you can say human existence is good and christians would say that human existence is an image of god and is therefore good that all those desires are fundamentally good but they get bent and that is sin well first of all i don't think mimetic desire is unique to humans chimps elephants i think probably penguins i can think of a lot of species that desire something more when they see a member of their species or even a similar species go after it i i think i read once that like a monkey in a lab setting neurologically responded to a banana only after a person picked it up but when that happened the same neurons fired that happened if the monkey itself were to pick up a banana or have a snack and it created this this new desire for the banana that did not exist when the banana was just sitting there this is very common with mammals and birds and mating season uh some mates are not desirable until a male or female tries to mate with them at which point they become desirable to other members of the species out of a competitive drive so i think that that kind of i want it because someone else wants it is not unique to humans what might be unique to humans is the ability to pass that through a moral filter and a moral ethic to intermediate that with some higher order abstract thinking and of course i definitely think scapegoating is unique to humans i'm trying to think of an exception and i can't i'm sure the folks out there on podcast land will let me know if i've forgotten something i do actually really like that as a definition or an explanation for what we talk about when we talk about satan because i tend to have trouble thinking of of satan as a being bent on opposing god it just seems kind of an odd construct compared to the construct of god it seems to undo the god construct if you have something like satan can i read this little thing that he said about the devil i wrote it down yeah we talked about the devil the devil's quintessential being the source from which he draws his lies is the violent contagion that has no substance to it the devil does not have a stable foundation he has no being at all to clothe himself in the semblance of being he must act as a parasite on god's creatures he is totally memetic which amounts to saying non-existent as an individual self oh man i just this guy's awesome but he also said that like that he's always a person or he said something to the fact like but you always find him as a person like when jesus said get thee behind me satan to peter because peter was trying to get jesus out of god's kingdom and into the realm of human rivalry i kind of want to slow clap that that's why that's why i can't like i can't get on board with the progressive christian idea that sin is an objective morality and that people are fundamentally broken or worthless but nor can i get on board with the atheist idea that there is no merit to the ideas of sinfulness brokenness or even satan even even this idea of a of a of an accuser an opposer to god because what what gerard just said there is oh man that's a that is extremely well put even though i don't believe in satan as a being i believe that satan represents a very real aspect of the tension between our higher and lower brains and how that gets organized in memetic competition that that we through our own actions personify satan into a being and create a presence in the world very much like the biblical satan yeah which of course the uh sorry biblical theologians i know there is no single biblical satan but you understand my point when paul talks about systems and powers of this world or no sorry powers and principalities of this world i think that's a fascinating reading of that and when you see like this demonic satanic force because in the world and at play and you see like how can you watch something happen like what isis is doing by going around and beheading like women and children and innocent people and destroying human civilization like beautiful monuments and history how can you not see like some sort of evil some sort of bigger power or child soldiers how can the the systems and powers and principalities of satan i think that's a i think that's a great way of describing some of the things that you see in human culture i think right now in the united states the the mass shootings that's a work of satan i think i i think there's something about the systems and powers why is it in america so much more than everywhere else and why is it at the same time that you have the so many christians that like get on board with loving guns and talking about guns as though they're like a good for society and we champion war and the whole last episode nationalism somehow that and then our in the combination with how we uh elevate celebrity and and how these shooters get on the news and everybody talks about them and then you have mental health and all this all the system all the big things that are happening beyond one person's ability to do or control give rise to these to this awfulness and that happens in the world and that's satan um i can't believe you just convinced me there's a lot of merit to the idea of satan pretty surprised but again this i i agree with gerard i don't think that's a being no it's not a baby like some guy that's pull but it's a force of some kind it's like this thing that happens it's far too nefarious to be a simple being exactly it's that that that does not give the idea of satan credit enough to depict it as this being this consciousness that simply opposes god it is a emerging property of human consciousness and society whoa a memetic devil and sin perhaps is when we we play along with that you know like we we move towards towards what satan is doing in the world rather than what god is doing in the world and this sounds so weird to my own ears [Laughter] because it sounds like my mind right it sounds like i'm back in uh junior high reading frank peretti novels but i'm this is it's as i've been reading this i'm like wow there's something to that language there's something to those ideas that it was so simplified and cartoonish as a child as these like invisible beings doing battle and then somehow those beings like control us or something but it's easy to just dismiss all of it as myth and miss some of the power of of when you say so how do you defeat this sin how do you defeat this satan and when you see jesus on the cross being the cross being like the very essence of the satan at work in the world of all these rivalries and all this violence coming against this one scapegoat this one innocent victim to release the steam of the people and then you see how jesus responds and you see how he says forgive them they don't know what they do and you see how he has this he's imitating his father in constant generosity and openness and open-handedness and trust and not worrying and not holding on and not entering the rivalry and he's basically invites us to freedom beyond the devil and actually when you think of how society has progressed since christ it's quite amazing when you think of the whole sacrificial system and stuff when you look in most society how that has weaned off over the last several centuries and you don't have you know we're not going to finish this podcast and go slaughter a hundred goats for the bad things that we said on this podcast but systemically there has been a move in society away from some of satan's kingdom from what you've had in early human history which i think is fascinating so in some way the memetic satan's weakened even as we think the world is going to hell in a hand basket and in other ways the potential consequences of sin and supporting those powers and principalities have never been more dire vis-a-vis co2 in the atmosphere methane in the atmosphere or tightly packaged uranium inside of warheads yep like one of the things i think that's keeping the world in check right now is the terror we all feel based on what we're capable of the biggest nation states aren't going to go into total war because total war will glass cities and so it's it's a it's an odd sort of not necessarily a call into healing or salvation or holiness to use christian language but instead we're just actually just so afraid of what we're capable of i can only quote richard rohr before transformation sin is any kind of moral mistake afterward sin is a mistake about who you are and whose you are for me is no longer about a checklist or doing things right and wrong but morality is a response to union not an earning of union so mike what does christian doctrine of sin what value does it have for you at this point with where you're at because and we're talking on grand scales so far right i mean and again probably everybody listening to this podcast hopefully wants to rid the world of things that are very destructive for all of humanity and everything like that but how does this come down to to me what is sin in my life and what does does the bible if anything have to tell us about that and how do we how do we start thinking about it in a healthy way how do you think about it i am on a constant quest to send less than i used to believe it or not that is an essential part of my personal moral philosophy my understanding of salvation is heavily influenced by greek orthodox views of salvation today and that god is always calling humanity towards god and in that process calling us towards healing that we are in some ways sick or hurt and we're invited to heal and become whole so there are ways in my life that i am broken because i've been hurt are there ways that i'm sick and i understand that sickness mainly is a tension between ancient parts of the brain which were focused on keeping me alive as a solitary organism and newer more sophisticated parts of the brain that are designed to help me exist inside of a social fabric a society a culture a tribe what have you so i actually view sin as essential in making my own decisions the reason i made an axiom for sin was so that i could have a decision point on knowing what actions to take it informs my moral ethic so before i take an action or if i wonder if i should take an action i think does this action like violate my understanding of what is right and wrong and is my understanding of what is right and wrong complete to know that i have to consider does this cause another person to suffer or does this violate another person's consent and i am on a constant quest to do that less because whenever i'm contributing uh to sin whenever i'm creating sin in the world i'm preventing the peace that's possible that i believe god is somehow trying to create in the universe even if trying is a an idea i'm projecting onto god but i have to admit it's essential i'm very much in that space where this is language i stopped using for a while and now have started to use again i'll say it on the show i'm a person who once again reads my bible every day and not because i believe the bible is inerrant or infallible but because i believe people have been wrestling with these issues for thousands of years and the church has gone through extraordinary effort to assemble a library of instructive writings that help me understand my own experience and help me make decisions that doesn't mean i accept everything the bible says like some kind of rule book but it means i look at the ways that biblical stories wrestle with moral ideas and use that to inform the way that i make my own choices and decisions how do you know that you have accurately discerned what sin is and what it isn't i don't i don't know how i've accurately discerned anything the only thing i can do is be a pragmatist observe the outcome of my actions be open to hearing correction from other people empathize with others have compassion have mercy and do everything i can to make less hurt and make more wholeness and i am absolutely certain i'm often going to get that wrong so when i do that i make it a discipline to apologize quickly and find better ways of doing things is that possible though to have that sort of individual discernment on a broad scale you know what i mean like doesn't everybody sort of do what they think is right anyway or maybe they don't i guess they don't but in talking about sin i mean i just i guess what i'm getting at is the spiral dynamics idea of this sort of different levels of consciousness that that human beings tend to grow through and it seems like at a point of of human development there is a necessity for rules and prohibitions you know and that's the whole idea of the law like the old testament it brings some order to some chaos don't do this don't do this don't do this and then what's interesting is and what the new testament recognizes is that those prohibitions actually end up making those things become more attractive to us anyway to make i want to do them more it's the whole desire thing again to me at this point like commands and rules they're they're almost like training wheels or something because they do point out a lot of the real ways that people sin and you know the ten commandments don't murder each other don't commit adultery don't do all this stuff these are ways that people live destructive lives and calling them out and making these rules at certain places of human development if you don't have that i don't think people i think we kind of go ape on each other literally trying prohibitions don't lead you to freedom they don't lead you out of sin necessarily they might stop some some really destructive behavior for a while and keep you safe for long enough to you know to evolve farther new testament you see that where it's like grace and you see everything is permitted but not everything's beneficial and it's it's sort of a more nuanced and mature way of seeing sin and morality i think where you start to say okay i knew i grew up hearing that masturbation is a sin and it was very taboo to talk about in my christian school uh and then i you know we do all these youth events and we'd see listen i was jumping on this you see these teenage boys like at the altar crying and like repenting of their sin and i was always thinking like guys they're probably just masturbating and like really feeling bad about it it's like i always say i i wouldn't say i struggle with masturbation oh my gosh i can't believe it'd be because honestly the whole like sex shame masturbation shame this is a perfect example of where beliefs about sin go wrong masturbation scientifically speaking is good for both men and women it is i'm sorry it is it's good for people you're pro masturbation absolutely two it is a easy relief valve for uh sexual needs so if your thing is you want teenagers to be abstinent you shouldn't be telling them not to masturbate you see what i mean like that's the that's the opposite of problems of what you should be doing you should be like no it's okay anytime yeah that's a great way to you know get your freak on whatever and so i'm not kidding like i can't even laugh about it because i'm so serious the way people approach masturbation is the perfect example of the dysfunction christians have because of the way we approach sin it absolutely is to the point that if i say the word masturbation gungers can't stop laughing right i can't but it's it's not that's because i believe that that's because psychosocial it's become associated with taboo and shamefulness and it shouldn't be you see what i mean like it's not even it's not even a biblical idea that masturbation is in some way evil that's been inserted i mean you could vaguely vaguely tie it to the sin of oman but not really and yet it's become this thing that like no one can talk about and the funny thing is it's not even like i'm a frequent masturbator you know what i mean that's not like oh i just really like to beat it it's not it's that oh my god everybody kill michael jackson everybody else doesn't want to talk about it but is doing it constantly and feeling shame and i think it's healthier to talk about it and do it than not talk about it and live shamefully do you see what i'm saying and i think that ties up what is dysfunctional in the ideas of sin i don't think i want to be in a conversation with my brother and be talking about any type of masturbation my palms are sweating again i'm so i'm my face is red flushed with embarrassment so i found this really interesting as of the recent years in noticing how my understanding of sin and goodness has radically changed from when i was a kid and not even a kid like for years some of the people that in my life that i thought were the most if you ask who's the most holy people the the most living the most righteous lives unsinful lives i would have categorized piety as like the highest moral so people that prayed a lot i'm thinking of some individuals that pray a lot read their bible a lot go to church a lot speak about god a lot but honestly a lot of those people if i'm in trouble they're not who i'm gonna call you know like if when shit hits the fan uh i'm not i'm not to call the person that's just self-interested in their own religious piety all the time i want to call the person that's actually going to like listen and show me some empathy and some love and maybe actually help you know like my idea of piety that i inherited it seemed to be this sort of puritanical the people oh and the people those people also were the people that like didn't masturbate like avoiding pleasure was the high moral good and things like taking care of your neighbor things like caring for the poor things like taking care of the environment things like the all sorts of goods that i believe in now were like sort of under personal piety and avoidance of pleasure as some sort of like asceticism and i think that's bizarre how that's turned around for me just saying i mean i i feel that way as well but i'm not sure why maybe it's because i feel like the judgment will be stronger from the person that prays every day unironically quote paul again uh you can do all sorts of amazing pious things and have love and it's nothing it's a resounding symbol it's a gong it's noise i don't care how pious you are give me the the samaritan right the good samaritan i i have such a severe state of agreement i can't even vocalize it you're really making me go through some tough feelings i have about paul right now [Laughter] paul was either like just killing it like massive wisdom or just like personifying memetic satan he had no middle ground i love that we included both in the bible that's a quote for the books okay so the one thing i think we haven't fully addressed yet is this idea of the fall still because that is central to how christians most christians see sin and why it happens and what it's all about original sin all that so what's the story with the fall okay like one i i hear that a lot because when i go to like my axiom of sin and people are like wait but hold on what about original sin without original sin we don't need salvation etc etc which i think is kind of silly because whether adam and eve existed or not there was original sin in my life like i don't need adam and eve to have fallen short in some way i did that on my own you know what i mean like it's kind of an odd moving of the goal post where it's like well if if they didn't sin originally then soon no whether adam and eve sinned or not like i've sinned i've stolen things i've lied i've i've eaten pizza when i should have had salad uh but also i i think this example of a garden is a good one i think that's a story that is coming to terms with something you know these earlier cultures were tying into that has scientific merit namely that in the garden of creation which was filled by evolution one species really does stand differently and the garden perfectly illustrates it because we can stand in front of a tree and think should i eat that or not because of our large developed orbital frontal cortex we can make ethical projections we can model morality and we can't imagine in a way no other animal on this planet can the potential consequences of our actions not only for ourselves but for other people so while i don't think there was literally an atom and an eve that there was literally they ate from a tree and it was the original sin i think this story of a garden really does illustrate phenomenally well the philosophical implications of a species that can create a moral ethic and then has to live with the consequences of their decisions and a consciousness that models reality enough to incorporate that consequence in a way other than conditioning so i don't need the garden to have been a real place i don't need adam and eve to have been real people for that story to be incredibly instructive about what makes humans human and what are the potential consequences of following sin amen i agree i'm just over it like the whole debate is it literal or not who cares it's useful and it's beautiful literature these are the stories of people who like me have tried to follow and love and serve god and i just think they're beautiful and instructive and helpful you're a good guy science mike well thanks for listening to liturgist podcast everybody uh this has been a pretty out there episode even for us so we'd love to hear your thoughts you can communicate with us at the liturgist on twitter at facebook.com the liturgist or you can go to the liturgist.com podcast and leave a comment we do read those and occasionally even comment back i do want to let you know that we have something coming up in the near future called belong in london that we're really excited about that you can go the liturgist.com belong and learn more both time and tickets for belong are running out so if you're thinking about going you want to make a move soon i'm science mike i'm melissa fano i'm michael gunger thanks for listening everybody [Music] you