---I didn't take the time to edit this for sequence, so ignore the fact that it may seem to wander---
A number of years ago I started re-evaluating my religious standing. Whether or not I believe in a god and so on. Eventually I stopped believing then came back around to it. Through this, however, I decided some things about what Jesus, God, and their other pal want the world (and their presence in it via their followers) to be like - nothing like it is now or really has ever been since...I guess only a few years after Dr. J had left the earth.
Reconciling this with my work, youth ministry, is not an easy thing to do. As ill informed as my thoughts may be, I do believe that they are accurate but no modern Christian wants to hear what I have to say because it turns everything around. So, I'm in the season now where I introduce Jesus to the kids. Last semester I introduced God. I didn't grant any credibility to the OT (creation story) being really true, but that was something to be understood in it.
Basically how I set it up was that God created us and had 3 things in mind. 1) Love 2) Community - he realized that one person wasn't enough so put another and said "Multiply". 3) Trust - when he set us loose in the 'garden' he pretty much said "everything here is yours...GO NUTS!" This comes into play as an atribute of God that we should emulate but have chosen not to.
The caveat was then that there was this tree. When we ate from that we basically took matters into our own hands. Instead of trusting him, we decided that we now know what is best, and would rely on our own judgement.
I made that point with a story (though admitedly not the intent of the parable) about a dad who asked one son to work in the field. The son said Ok but didn't work. Dad went to the other son and said go work and the son said no but later changed his mind. My point was that we get to make decisions and sometimes they end up good but sometimes they don't. Essentially, we create the reality that is around us by the things that we do.
So I come to the point of my talk tonight. I thought through that last point: Do we do things that create our reality or do the things that happen to us and things that surround us create our reality. Of course this is a neverending debate but I feel pretty secure in thinking that the former option is more true.
When I was thinking about this, I realized that it is basically Marx's idea of "mode of production", that the things that people do are what makes a society work, not that the society working (via trade, property rights, etc.) makes the people because ultimately we get to choose whether or not we partakein such things. This is definately oversimplified by the point stands.
Tonight I focused on the idea that what other people say don't matter - in terms of Jesus, people had a lot of different names for him but he really only chose two to describe himself as - so say the scriptures: Son of God and Son of Man. I wont get into why I think that is important here, but it is.
Next talk I'm going to talk about what Jesus did and how that effected the world around him.
Eventually I get to sin. What does sin look like here? We have effectively chosen to be our own God. By taking on the understanding the difference between good and evil we have set ourselves up to be the judges of the world around us. Sin, then, is the fact that we have taken our assumed responsibility and completely messed the world up. That the decisions we make as individuals translates into billions of people making similarly bad decisions and we have the world we have now. What we lack is knowing what truth looks like, so our judgement does us no good, only bad. Because by our nature we act as our own God thus choose our own truth and that truth is different for everyone so there is conflict. I don't buy into the typical Young Life (the organization I work for) notion that sin is a separation from God. Since God is supposed to be everywhere, he has given his gift to all people, and he apparently is involved in our everyday activites I don't see how this traditional approach to sin as an incurable separation really holds any weight.
So, this leads to Jesus how? Because he was sent to us as the Son of God (in the sense of "like father like son") in emulation of God, and the Son of Man (an instance in the human species - much like saying I am Ben Huffman's son and so is my brother and my other brother, so I am only a bit of my fathers collective SON), to show us a better way to use our "judgement", our knowledge of good and evil. By also emulating God and remembering that part of that is to trust - I guess, to trust He who actually knows how to use this distinction between good and evil properly.
It then comes back to us to make that decision to use his example wisely. And I think, this is how I will describe salvation. For example, in Matthew 19:28 (I think...it's in there somewhere) Jesus says that basically those who do what God wants will have a seat in Heaven next to the father. The arguement against this is that there is the part in the NT where it says that the wages of sin is death. I say to that, that the OT says that if you eat from the tree you will surely die. Obviously A and E didn't physically die, so it must be a spiritual death of some kind. From that I can assume that perhaps Paul is talking about a different death than physical too. Maybe even a different one of heaven versus hell. The death that Adam and Eve experienced was here on earth right? Being banished from the garden and having to deal with the consequences of trying to be their own gods. That is a death here on earth. I suppose that comes in the form of being unhappy, of the remorse over physical deaths, of going day to day without food, of experiencing loss, and so on.
As I type there are a thousand different things that pop in to my head as to why this approach also would not be attractive to kids. But that's not what it's really about for me. The truth is, I'm not scared for the kids' or anyones afterlife, so why do I really need to be concerned with whether or not they accept the gospel as I present it. What matters is that I present it the best way that I understand it to really be.
Some would say that I'm afraid of talking about sin because I don't want to hurt the kids' feelings. Though one who would make that claim would not believe me here, that's not an issue at all. It's that I truly don't think it's right. My thoughts and strategy here are much softer than traditional depictions of sin, but I don't think they are wrong. And I don't think that the traditional Sin is even an effective way to understanding what sin is...especially for these kids who don't have any grasp on the concept of consquences. It may seem at first glance that my approach is not dealing with those consequences that I speak of, those consequences that the kids don't understand. But on a closer look we see that we are presented with choices, those choices en masse create our shitty world, if we love God and trust God then we will do what is prescribed for us to do, otherwise our world will still be a shithole...granted, in the larger scheme of things it will still be a shithole, but in our more immediate surroundings we have the ability to create a "better world" so to speak, to create a better truth for our daily lives and those we encounter.
But I'm mandated by Young Life to present sin and other such religious abstractions in a very particular way. As the powers-that-be state, they are the Non-negotiables of Young Life. What this means, I do not really care.
For anyone who may read this, feel free to present me with counter arguements because it will help me work this out. Or even feedback on how to make it better. At this point I'm pretty set in this thought process. I'm really more concerned with how to present my talks in a way that the kids will actually care to listen, so that they can hear a different approach to the God that they may have grown up with.
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4 comments:
well, now that I have a bit more understanding about where the marxism part fits in, I have some thoughts on this.
there is much I agree with, and little that I am unsure of. I am not quite sure that the idea of us messing up the world with our assumed responsibility (which, by the way, I like the phrasing of) is in conflict with the idea of separation from God. I often find myself interacting with sin with the same idea- we've taken things into our own hands and botched it terribly, individually and collectively, and I like that you say it's because we lack knowing what truth looks like. could that be part of the separation? not that God isn't there, but that we don't even know what he looks like to know he's there? maybe we're blind to god, because we only acknowledge ourselves as the deciders of our fate. I do believe it's possible, at least in human terms, for one party to be fully present and desiring a relationship, and the other party fully rejecting it. it doesn't negate the first party's presence.
I am not yet ready to give up the separation idea, temporal or eternal. but I am thinking about it. it still makes sense to me that the decisions I make make for a broken relationship, broken community.
I agree that the wages of sin is death means so much more than "you go to hell". many deaths, big and little, happen every day based on the selfish choices I make- and emotional and relational death seems far worse than physical death. hell is somewhat of a moot point to me right now in my life- and I think in the lives of most kids. death and what happens after is a far away fairy tale, and it's fairly irrelevant in the terms of what abundant life would look like today. and that's what I am more concerned about.
so. the marxism part. are you saying that as a society, the world's mode of production is each of us choosing our own truth and those truths conflicting? vs... God (or the church, or some authority?) creating the structure, the way it goes, and us working within that? I am not sure I really understand that yet.
I haven't studied much on marx, but I am a big fan of theoretical socialism. I am not sure how either works out in practice. not that capitalism is a successful picture of who God meant us to be, but that's another train of thought all together.
also, a few years ago I got into an interesting conversation about the meaning of jesus as "the way", and whether that means something akin to a porthole, like much of evangelicalism seems to believe, or more of an example to follow- ie. jesus is the way which we are supposed to live.
maybe both? it's an ongoing conversation. but growing up in conservative christianity, the former is the norm, and the latter is a new concept to me.
I guess the same way that you might have a hard time letting go of the separation thing, I have a hard time buying it. That's what I believed sin was from the time I started doing YL, but over the last year or so that just didn't seem right.
Basically, God was involved with the world from the day that we left the "garden." When God gave his little poem in Genesis after he learned of the two eating from the tree, he did talk of broken relationships, but it was between fellow humans. Since then he sent prophets: Moses, Elijah, on and on, and then Jesus. He kept commanding his people to do things. That doesn't seem like a separation to me. Granted, he does seem to limit his interaction to the hebrews.
So I suppose that the point could be made that God's relationship to the world historically has been with the Jews - in that sense, I suppose it could go to reason that there may have been some kind of separation or at the very least a broken relationship with him. But I wouldn't necessarily jump into that conclusion without more thought. But what we're dealing with now is post-jesus times. And now we know that the relationship is definately open to all. It has been given to all. Throughout the NT we get this message. See, God has chosen to have a relationship with us whether we like it or not.
Can God make a rock that even he can't move? If he can do all things, then of course he could do that, but he could also move that same rock...
I add that to underline that we don't get God. We don't get how he works and to assume that he cannot have a relationship with us because he is perfect and we are not (as is our common theology) makes just as much sense as the above statement because God can do all things so he can have a relationship with whomever he wants.
As for Marxism, that's just a random thought that popped into my head. I guess the point is that it's all on us. God has done his part and continutes to, now it's our turn to take care of our end of things because that's the life we've chosen...to take matters into our own hands...the choice is then to put our choice-making abilities back in the hands of the dude who knows what really is good to do.
hmm. well, you make me think about stuff, and that is good. even in the sacrificial/temple system, God was still in relationship with the Jews. few of the metaphors used for the relationship were very positive (hosea comes to mind, but there's always song of solomon to hold up as an ideal, I suppose). the jews were always screwing things up, literally or metaphorically, and the "separation" was dealt with on a smaller scale- goats, birds, bulls and whatnot. but the sacrifices were both payment and covenant.
then jesus comes along as the ultimate sacrifice- meaning we no longer have to make the payment, but I feel like (and I should probably do some reading about this, rather than just feeling) there's still the issue of covenant. that although God's part of the bargain is fufilled, we still have a choice to make- we are still the broken part, choosing to be separated. well, until we stop choosing that anyway.
I suppose I should read up a little on my calvin and remember which parts of TULIP I agree with and which I find to be less defensible. for sure I want to look more into hebrew history and their relationship with God, pre and post Christ. and take a look at those crazy early gentiles...
anyway, more reading for me!
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