Definition Of Sin
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The First Link When you search in Google for Definition of Sin. Very straight forward look that uses the 10 commandments as the base of Gods moral that we should follow.
How can we know right from wrong without some kind of “LAW” passed down from God? It kind of makes sense why people often tend to lean towards legalism even though it is restrictive. Sometimes I think legalism is more about people feeling comfortable because we know what to do, than leaders trying to controlling the herd.
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I wonder how this topic would change if we invited new language into the discussion. For example, what type of baggage does the word sin carry?
For me, I think the language of sin carries a lot of patriarchal baggage with Eve perceived as the ‘Original Sinner.’
This role of temptress has positioned Eve — and women for centuries — as the cause of our ’sinful nature.’ This patriarchal social order is bound to the notion that Eve committed the first sin.
There are some sects of feminist theology that abandon this word entirely.
Feminist Pamela Norris has an interesting interpretation of Eve that challenges our notion of original sin and its defintion:
“Eve had excellent reasons for eating the forbidden fruit: it looked good and was nourishing, and it promised her the priceless gift of wisdom. She took and ate, and was rewarded with the ability to pass on her knowledge to future generations.
…Perhaps what is most important is Eve’s recognition of the need to challenge boundaries, to make the imaginative leap, however difficult, unpredictable, and even dangerous into a new place of existence.”
I encourage you to try this discussion and embrace new language to see how it stimulates a different perspective on this issue.
Try words like iniquities, transgressions or injustice. I’m interested to see how this changes the conversation without the layers of patriarchy that interact with the term sin.
“The limits of my language are the limits of my thought.” Benjamin Lee Whorf
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And eventually — for a future topic — I may ask, how are your podcasts influenced by its representatives?
Does it hinder – or help – that there are three men, caucasian, and from similar evangelical upbringings forming these discussions?
Can you consider your religious traditions objectively without having other voices represented?
How are your discussions influenced without the gender respresentative of half the population?
Moreover, when you define Christianity in the context of your own western, anabaptist experience, do you feel that you’re missing perspective from other Christian traditions?
jpeg I honestly was not thinking about original sin when I posted this. Even though the picture I chose seems to prove otherwise. The heart of the question for me is where do I get my morality from? And if it does ultimately come from a higher power how do I determine if It (the higher power) disagrees with me on my morality. Thanks for the other words for sin. I think it will definitely help us see it from another perspective.
As for our bias because of gender/race/social upbringing. I couldn’t agree more. The reality of our situation is that it happened to be the three of us who wanted to start this thing. I think we are aware of the bias and are doing our best to mitigate it but I understand some of it will always come through no mater how hard we try. That being said I think I can speak for Zac and Montana in saying that we would love to have someone as well worded and knowledgeable as you on as a guest some time. We are trying to post upcoming episode topics early so if something strikes you please let us know and we will set it up.
jpeg,
Great comments. Responding well to all of your points would take far too long for this one thread, although I would like to pick up on a couple of things you touched on.
Language: You are absolutely right, the language we use will determine much of how we conceptualize and understand the content we are exploring. In some cases then, it is helpful to rephrase language that is burdened with nasty history. I wonder though, to what extent is this a cop-out. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am all about using this different language and I myself do the same all the time. However, what if the solution isn’t changing the “term” but RECLAIMING the term. You mentioned a feminist author. I think that one thing feminists taught us well is that as human beings we can reclaim previously damaging language to be a source of empowerment. Thus feminists reclaimed the derogatory term “Bitch” to be a term denoting independance, strength, and identity.
I wonder if in this case, we can do the same with the term “Sin”. Of course, its got a lot of baggage, but so do a lot of other words. What if we were to reclaim the term “sin”, not necassarly as a familiar and safe term, but as a term that makes the conversation more difficult and that causes us to think deeper about the term “sin” than we have had to previously since the term seemed to have such a static meaning.
For example, perhaps, as you suggest, we could explore how “Sin” has previously been used to defend patriarchal systems that demoted Eve to the role of original sinner/the source of the first sin. Perhaps we could look at the Genesis text again and ask; “Did not Adam really “sin” as well when, being questioned by God, he tried to pass on the blame to Eve? Was this not just as sinful? Must we really get in a debate over which Sin was THE FIRST, and is this not itself just as sinful as it seeks to dogdge the responsibility of all Genders to live lives in faithful freedom? And is this perhaps not one better conception of sin: that human beings throughout time have always wanted freedom but then when they use it unfaithfully, want to avoid taking responsibility for their actions? Or that human beings act out of their essential freedom without the sense of how their actions either empower or destroy those they are connected to (which is really everybody and everything).
Norris’ Interpretation of Genesis: While I appreciate Pamela Norris’ interpretation of the “fall story”, I find it hard to draw out the kind of meaning from the biblical story that she draws. It seems to me that Genesis’ author’s intention was not to say that what Eve did was actually a positive thing (as Norris is claiming). True, the exercise of human freedom and desire is not inherently bad (in fact God invites Adam and Eve to exercise their creative freedom in cultivating the garden and naming animals, etc.), but how it is used is where things can go wrong.
Now, of course, if you want to disagree with the thrust of the text itself, then that is a whole other discussion that has its own difficulties and merits. However, from a stricly exegetical standpoint, the meaning of this passage seems to me to be that humans did not trust God enough to be content with what they had been given. Of course then, the story is a metaphor and not a literal lineage of the first humans. I think this view of the myth also relieves some of the tension surrounding the discussion of “original sin” as well. Especially if you believe in evolution at which point one has to ask, was there really a “first” human, or did many “first” humans arise at different points throughout the world at a similar time. This being the case, was their really a first sinner that then somehow passed on (genetically) the sin nature? In this case, no. Also, there could be humorous discussions about whether or not apes were the first sinners.
Anyway…all to say that I think that once Genesis is understood metaphorically, we can shed much of the tension surrounding sin as a simply “moralistic” and “internal” problem that occured through the single decision of one woman, and see it more broadly as the tendency of all humanity to use the freedom they have been given for actions that hurt not only themselves, but all of creation.
Anyway…I’ll stop now. Thanks for your comments. They are making me think!
Z
In my reply to jpeg, I mentioned human responsibility and the human’s unwillingness to take responsibility as a potential definition (among many others) of sin. For your pure enjoyment,I thought I would through Slavoj Zizek into the mix. I think Zizek hints at this, one might say, Marxian notion of owning up to our own “divinity” or if such a term scares you, our own responsibility:
“Although Kant famously wrote that man is an animal which needs a master, this should not deceive us: what Kant aims at is not the philosophical commonplace according to which–in contrast to animals, whose behavioral patterns are grounded in their inherited instincts–man lacks such firm coordinates which, therefore, have to be imposed on him from the outside through a cultural authority; Kant’s true aim, rather, is to point out how the very need of an external master is a deceptive lure: man needs a master in order to conceal from himself the deadlock of his own difficult freedom and self-responsibility. In this precise sense, a truly enlightened ‘mature’ human being is a subject who no longer needs a master, who can fully assume the heavy burden of defining his own limitations. This basic Kantian (and also Hegelian) lesson was put very clearly by G.K. Chesterton: ‘Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act is an act of self-sacrifice.” Along the same lines, a promiscuous teenager may engage in extreme orgies with group sex and drugs, but what he cannot bear is the idea that his mother could be doing something similar–his orgies rely on the supposed purity of his mother, which serves as the point of exception, the external guarantee: I can do whatever I like, since I know my mother keeps her place pure for me….The most difficult thing is not to violate the prohibitions in a wild orgy of enjoyment, but to do this without relying on someone else who is presupposed not to enjoy so that I can enjoy: to assume my own enjoyment directly, without mediation through another’s supposed purity.” Slavoj Zizek – The Parallax View
Of course, whether or not we can actually reconcile such a quote as this: “a truly enlightened ‘mature’ human being is a subject who no longer needs a master, who can fully assume the heavy burden of defining his own limitations…”, with the creation story in Genesis which seems pretty strongly to imply a divine “limitation” imposed on Adam and Eve, I think we can readily see how such a call to “assume the heavy burden of defining our own limitations” has some connections with the human freedom that HAS been given to us by the divine.
Thoughts?
Z