Theology for Dummies: Sin-cerely Yours

So I've been thinking a lot about sin lately.

It's just vaguely possible that came out wrong, so let me come at it from a different angle. A lot of different inputs, including some reading and a Casting Crowns concert, have me meditating a bit on the nature of sin.

I'll mention first, as I have before, that Mark Hall of Casting Crowns has an amazing gift for boiling down the Christian life -- whether in a song or in his remarks from the stage -- to a phrase that goes straight to your heart. Well, OK, mine. Tell me if this is the way it is for you: when someone says something that's true (not just "factual", but a truth about God, about life, about something that matters), I can almost hear a little "ding" in my head. My belief, or at least my prayer, is that that represents God's gift of discernment in me. I don't think it's just me grooving on something I already agree with, because it's not always a message that makes me happy. Anyway, I find that almost everything Mark Hall says or sings sets off that little bell.

At the concert he was talking about sin -- which in itself is pretty remarkable; not the usual concert fodder, or for that matter talked about much anywhere in the Christian community. A lot of us would much rather hear how much God loves us (a lot of times with the sort of hidden implication that therefore what we do doesn't matter all that much).

But even that thought may lead us off in the wrong direction. Because although I understood this in my heart and I've probably even expressed it as some sort of significant insight of my own in the past, at the concert it struck me again and as if for the first time: sin has very little to do with what you "do" or the "rules" you might break, whether consciously or unconsciously (although one of my basic principles contends that we rarely do wrong unconsciously -- we usually look the wrongness right in the eye and choose to do it anyway, often with the help of a rationalization process that puts our "everyday" imaginations to shame. No, wait; that's just me... nobody else does that).

No (if you remember the original point before the parentheses started sprouting), the real definition of sin is anything that interferes with your relationship with God. Anything that takes your attention away from Him, anything that makes you less likely to listen to His voice, anything that takes priority.

So that can be a rule-breaking kind of behavior; anything we do that we know God explicitly doesn't want us to do -- and again, we usually do know... right? -- does move us a little farther away. Listening to that other voice not only makes the Original Voice seem less important, it also (I think) makes us a lot less eager to spend time with the Speaker. Again, probably just me... but I'd just as soon not be in the presence of Absolute Goodness when I haven't been very good.

But there's a mess of other things that are plenty wonderful that can take me away from focusing on God: jobs, family activities, blogging, church.... Yup, even church activities can make you so busy, and make you emphasize the wrong things. People who are "pillars of the church" are often so invested in making the church "work" as an organization -- and believe me, somebody has to think about those things -- that it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that it's actually one part of the Body of Christ and has higher expectations, literally, for how it behaves.

For me, I'm very involved in the "production" of worship: I have several roles in the music ministry and I help produce the worship PowerPoints. Even more than that, though, I've been occupied for so long with thoughts about How Worship Works that my first thought in any service is, how is this service going? Any glitches? What do we need to talk about fixing? How does that font/color scheme look on the screen? Is everyone singing? Maybe we need to not use this one again....

Matt Redman is a worship leader and top Christian musician who ran into a similar conundrum: he was so concerned with making the music performance perfect that he was forgetting the purpose of worship -- to meet God in person, to experience and enjoy Him, to ... um... worship. He found he needed to stop doing music for awhile in order to meet God afresh, and out of that came his classic song, Heart of Worship.

So I guess my point is that a lot of things get piled up between me and the view of God from here. Some of them are obvious, although no easier to eradicate; others are seemingly benign but can sneak into the way. I want to make sure I'm on the alert for both kinds of obstacles and concentrate on my first task: keep that pathway clear so I can see him and hear Him.