Last month I light-heartedly referred to one of my sins of omission. This got me thinking about sin in the biblical sense that sin is any thought, word or deed that has the effect of separating us from God: the one who created us to share eternal life with him.
Sin is a three-letter word about seven millimetres in spatial length but, in the biblical sense can be as long as infinity. This leads me to note that Space and Time are two constraints built into our worldly existence. But not, according to the writers of the Old Testament, into the God that created them.
The Old and the New Testament say a great deal about sin, yet during my lifetime preachers have been loth to say much about it, preferring to talk instead about being nice to each other and doing kind things to those who are not as capable or comfortable as are we. I think this may be because preachers know that they, like everybody else, is a sinner and so feel uncomfortable with the subject. Many preachers however do preach the Gospel that we are saved by God’s Grace for eternal life by repenting and being baptised..
Trouble is that we can’t stop being sinful when compared with the perfect life lived by Jesus, and so rather than me getting all theological about who solved the major problem, I will restrict myself to saying that the Bible shows that there is no hierarchy of sin, We know that when we act fraudulently or deceitfully it has the same effect of separating us from God as does the multiplicity of sexual sins. Pride and conceit have the same effect as theft or fraud.
In the sixties the theologian Rudolf Bultman asked: “If a hungry mother stole from a supermarket to feed her child, is that theft? Many took his thinking to the point where they then justified such actions as being necessary and, in some cases laudable. This was called Situational Ethics. Meaning Sin depends on circumstances.
Because the costs of theft are always paid for by others including shoppers, Government law apply to such acts. God however doesn’t judge shoplifting; his judgement is on our fitness for eternal life.
The distinction between governmental laws for behaviour in this life, and God’s laws preparing us for eternal life in the Kingdom of God are set out clearly in the New Testament. The Prayer Book also leads us to pray for forgiveness for our sins of thought and word and deed.
There are however people today who earnestly believe they can build their own Utopian kingdom on earth. Their kingdom also has sins of thought and word and deed which can lead to social cancellation, loss of job and freedom of speech. However, unlike the Biblical Kingdom theirs appears to lack mercy and does not have a Saviour who paid the price for their sin.
The same day as I wrote the bulk of this ‘View’, I cleaned out the outside-freezer and found a dish which contained an assortment of left-over Fresh Cream, Condensed milk, Vanilla essence and Double cream. All mixed in the hope that a kind of ‘ice cream’ would result.
From its place in the freezer, it looked as though it had been there for some time, Solidity was enshrined within that plastic tray. Nevertheless, I set out to get pieces of ice cream onto a piece of apple pie.
The spoon bent, as did the knife,. A wooden spatula became kindling and the metal thing I use to turn eggs over incurred a permanent ‘twist.’ De-frosting was too long-winded for a man on a mission. Failure was on the cards until ‘man’s intuition’ came to the rescue. An old-fashioned bull-nosed tin opener did the trick. The ice cream was delicious but:
the frozen plastic dish shattered into fourteen pieces.
View from the Pew 