As I told you before, initially, my list of reasons for still doing Christianity was a spur-of-the-moment kind of project—I wanted to get out of the dreadful task of “giving my testimony” at a time my life felt anything but testimonial. (This detergent wasn’t working for me.)
I brainstormed the reasons, pared them down, shared them with the small group that had invited me to speak in the first place, then misplaced the notes for a couple of years.
It was only later, when I found them and began to put them in writing, that it first struck me what wasn’t on the list.
There was nothing about salvation from sin. Nothing at all about sin, in fact.
I once heard that your true god is whatever you fear.
That thought really slapped me to my senses back then.
I was an odd, lonely child, bullied or shunned or laughed at throughout the eight years of primary school. Then I entered high school with high hopes, and what do you know, I was in for more of the same.
And something happens to you when this kind of treatment has been going on for a long time. You enter the character. You play the part without questions. You arrive at the scene; you become the victim. You let the fear direct you. You allow it to choose your lines, mold your posture, alter your habits.
“Fearing people is a dangerous trap,” says the author of Proverbs.
Whatever you’re afraid of will ultimately direct your life. It will become what you watch for.
Tell me what you fear, and I’ll tell you who you are.
On that note, how would we characterize the god of Evangelical Christianity? What does this movement worship? What is it deathly afraid of?
I admit it might be a bit of a tendentious question, and “Evangelical Christianity” is painting it with a large brush. But bear with me.
Think back to the conversations you had while deconstructing. The doubts you aired. The ideas you floated with people you called “fellow believers.”
This experience will to a large extent depend on your milieu, of course. But I have found out that Christians can be very accommodating of your questions when they think of you as “one of their own.”
How was it for you? At which point does this accommodation stop?
I would posit that I could discuss maybe not all, but easily a lot of the topics broached in this newsletter with any reasonable Evangelical Christian. (I have discussed them all, in fact.)
We’re talking about issues like spiritual abuse, the need for the fourth power in church, the church’s neglect of the soma (=body), the church’s failure to engage doubt, doctrinal minimalism, or whether the modern church experience is fit for highly sensitive people.
But when the conversation veers into topics of abortion or men having sex with men, or arrangements alternative to marriage, or women dressing “immodestly,” or divorcing “for any reason,” or dating outside of the church, or whether it is ethical that a large and powerful institution is pressuring young and vulnerable people into signing a contract that we know has had a millennia-worth history of abuse—suddenly, the mood shifts.
Suddenly, the specter of sin is looming large over our heads, and we’re about to transgress against this frightful deity, relativize its existence.
And now, the fear settles in.
But we don’t need to conjure up such extreme scenarios.
Let’s think back to the time before deconstruction, the time we spent in church.
What was the topic that was brought up most often?
What dominated sermons, small groups, youth group discussions?
For me, one question kept coming back in countless contexts, countless disguises: “So is it ok to ___________?”
Is it ok to dance? Listen to this singer? French kiss? Watch this program? Watch this scene? Go to parties? Drink alcohol? Work on Sunday? Wear spaghetti straps? Cuss? Flirt? Let my child read this book? Send my child to public school? Socialize with non-believers? Counter your husband on money issues?
Messages crafted by Evangelical role models—pastors, authors, influencers—often seem bent on creating sins in much the same way as capitalism creates needs. Doesn’t matter how much junk you have accumulated at home already, we’ll make sure you believe you desperately this new life-changing gadget.
You’re already going to church? Let’s see what sins are the ones we see in church most commonly.
You’re already saving sex for marriage? Remember daydreaming about guys is emotional cheating, too.
You’re already growing in your faith, doesn’t seem anything is obviously wrong with you? Remember the dangers of pride and “self-sufficiency.” Beware of the “hidden sins.” Also, if you’re a woman, resist the temptation to “lord it over” with men.
This culture of organizing your life around the concept of would-be sin triggers me even now. Especially when children are involved.
Those who know a thing or two about marketing will tell you that advertising is ruthless when it comes to targeting parents. Commercials zero in without mercy on our instinct to protect our youth.
The church does the same thing. It is merciless in making the most out of the parental guilt, out of the fear that we might not be doing everything in our power to give our children the very best.
Protect your children. Shield them from the wicked world. Monitor their friendships. Break the spirit of pride and arrogance. Catch their failings in time and discipline them. You have a God-given responsibility.
So what is “sin,” anyway? What’s your favorite definition of that which we call sin?
The most common definitions talk about “disobeying God” or “transgressing divine commands.” Both attempt to clarify a cryptic concept by muddying the water even further.
Because who is God? Why is He (He, of course! The Ultimate Male Commander!) in the business of issuing commands to us?
Why does the definition imply we listen to Him?
What are these commands?
Why do they happen to align so much with the patriarchal status quo?
As for “obedience,” nothing wrong with that stance per se—but is “obedience” really the be-all and end-all of our existence here on this earth? Is this really the life skill we want to teach our children?
Not too long ago, someone sent me a Glasbergen cartoon picturing a father and a son.
In the cartoon, the father says, “Son, when you grow up, I want you to be assertive, confident, and courageous. But as long as you’re a child, I want you to be passive, polite, and submissive.”
The rule of sin (=sinocracy) that dominates much of today’s Evangelical church will keep coming back in this newsletter—impossible to cover it all in one post.
We’ll be talking about all the things the Bible does not say, even though they are frequently sold to us as biblically sanctioned—and used for manipulation.
We’ll be talking about the language around the conquest of Canaan (or, more accurately, that which is portrayed as the conquest of Canaan in the Scriptures) and how it may provide some hints as to the genesis and function of our relationship to the Sacred.
We’ll be wondering what to teach our children. What do they need to know about “sin”? What do they need to know about “divine commands” and the Sacred they allegedly come from? What do they need to know about ethics?
Even though I didn’t mention sin in my list of reasons for still doing Christianity, I don’t think the concept needs to be canceled.
It’s just gotten so fossilized, so much a part of fixed Christian jargon, that it’s hard to appreciate its true meaning.
It’s a term used to keep people in line. It’s a threat wielded against those who try to slip out from the under the radar of a system that lives off their control.
But there’s relatability and richness to the term that would be hard to replicate. I think if the Holy Scriptures didn’t talk about sin as much, they would be less relevant to the human experience.
The familiar story set in the garden of Eden can be interpreted in many different ways. One possibility is to read it as a description of an event that takes place in the life of every human being, no matter their creed or culture.
It talks of that moment when you first realize you have done something irredeemable—something you can never repair.
It doesn’t have to be anything morally hefty. In fact, I like that in the Genesis story, the mistake is very much amoral. Eating the fruit is not obviously harmful to anyone.
You could say the whole event hinges on a misunderstanding. A he-said, she-said. Somebody told you something, and you thought it wasn’t a big deal, but it was.
Trust is breached. And from that moment on, things snowball, the rift becomes a chasm in an instant.
The man doesn’t know how to talk to his partner about what has happened. Silence weighs between them, tears them apart.
He hides from his divine friend, a mix of unfamiliar emotions knotting in his stomach.
He wants it all forgotten.
Later, he’ll come up with signifiers for all this discomfort and queasiness—guilt, shame, sorrow, conscience.
He gets confronted about his mistake, but he lies (a novel idea—he didn’t have a reason to hide the truth before.)
He pushes his partner forward, tries to shift the blame.
It’s all ugly and familiar.
Haven’t we been there, in that garden? Still clinging to the hope that everything can go back to how it was before, the relationship might recover, the paradise could still be ours.
This story—the story of the primal error—recurs in myths around the globe.
In many indigenous myths of North America, first people were supposed to be immortal, just like in the Genesis story.
Tribes explain differently why it didn’t stay this way. (Read them all in American Indian myths and legends, edited by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz.)
Sometimes, it’s the trickster Coyote who throws the wrench in the works.
But in a Blackfoot story (preserved in the volume edited by Erdoes and Ortiz), the Old Man who created the world lets his new work, a woman, decide whether people will die.
He suggests she throws a stick in the river; if it floats, people will die only for a few days and then return to life.
But the woman, who is new to the world and doesn’t yet know how things work, throws in a rock instead.
Her mistake is silly, but it cannot be undone.
Doesn’t it all sound familiar?
We didn’t know. We weren’t ready. We didn’t understand. We didn’t want it to happen.
But the lesson has started already—and we need to look alive.
The Hebrew and Greek words we translate as “sin” mean simply “off the mark,” implying the existence of a standard, a target we aspire to hit—a learning curve. They both had ethical implications but were also used in their primary meaning of “miss.” For example, in Judges 20:16, we read of archers who could sling stones at a hair and not “sin.”
The venture into the ethical and moral is natural—an innocent slip-up can wreck a life.
But the value of the statement “off the mark” is its focus on the mark.
The quality aspired to.
Health is not only the absence of apparent ailments.
There are many people who may not have dramatic diseases, but their life remains a string of days—a rosary of sameness.
They spend their time in hurt lockers, taking rainchecks, barely breathing, accumulating tension, quietly uncomfortable, hard to thrill.
“Life goes on, and we don’t budge from where we are,” repeats, time and again, André de Leones in his novel Eufrates.
A while ago, while it was still warm here, I went for a walk in the woods with a friend, and we started to talk about our shared passion for reading. My friend has two teenage sons, and he told me how he worked to instill the love of reading into them. It was tout le bazar, as the French say, a whole production. I was utterly blown away.
He said perseverance and small steps were the most important things.
He would tell his boys how books were a source of all the amazing adventures they could live in their minds and hearts.
He would tell them a story or read a book and then stop at a cliffhanger moment, asking them to imagine how it might go on.
Sometimes at this point, he would ask them to close their eyes and get lost in daydreaming.
He would trade computer time and snacks for 30 pages read.
He tried to lead by example whenever he could—when they were reading, he’d sit beside them with a book.
He made sure the books they read were age-appropriate, well-translated, and aesthetically appealing.
He would tour libraries and bookstores with them.
He would talk a lot about how books made a person’s life richer, how they gave you an edge in life later on.
My friend succeeded—his boys are both avid readers.
Now, the question is, how important to this story is the notion of “missing the mark”?
In a sense, it is an integral part of it—the children start from a place where they know nothing about books.
They don’t know how to read. They don’t know that this laborious task can become so effortless and so enjoyable.
They probably don’t understand their father’s efforts all that much, especially at the beginning.
They fuss. They’d rather do something else.
For a while, they go through the motions just to get him off their backs. Their heart is not in it.
There might be times when they disobey him outright.
There might be times when they think, “None of my friends are doing this. Why should we do it?”
But the children’s ignorance or resistance is only a sliver of this story.
Mostly, it is a story of an adventure.
It is a story of a parent who invites his children to get to know a love that will carry them through life.
A parent who goes all out to reach them, pulling out all the stops with his creativity.
It’s a story about togetherness. A family daydreaming, roaming libraries, drowning in poofy plasticky bean bag chairs that rustle when you make a move, meandering between bookshelves, forgetting about dinner and the world.
It is a story of the children and the readers they become. There are so many ways they could go. And their father will be there to encourage and inspire them—and listen to their own discoveries.
It is a story of that moment when the child wakes up and says, “Dad, I get it now.
“Last night, I was someone else.
“I get it now.”