GOD AND A SINNER IN DIALOGUE
I need hardly tell you that the “dialogue” that follows is the kind of thing I presently and fervently believe God would say in dialogue with the “average Christian”. I need hardly tell you that I can be mistaken both about what God would say and what the “average Christian” thinks. Write and correct me if you choose to but offer me “reasons” rather than just criticism—if you wish to correct me. If you just want to vent your criticism that’s okay too.]
Lord I’m a sinner.
Yes, I know that better than you.
Lord, in some ways I may be a great sinner.
Yes, you are, and I’m a great Savior.
But Lord I sometimes think my sins are worse than everyone else’s.
You can’t know that. Only I know it because there are too many elements that enter into how a particular sin is to be assessed. The matter is beyond your power. But even if it is true that your sins are greater than everyone else’s I can save from all sins; old sins, new sins, strong sins, deeply entrenched sins, seemingly invincible sins, respectable sins and repulsive sins, sins of the mind and sins of the flesh. There is no sin I can’t and do save hosts of sinners from.
But you need to know that all sins are the same in essence.
But some sins have more serious consequences than others.
This is true but sometimes even the same sin has greater consequences. And when it comes to measuring “consequences” a lot would depend on how far you’re able to trace them. I can trace them as far as they go but humans like you can only go so far before you give up.
I suppose that’s true, but I meant, committing a murder is more serious than telling a lie.
I know what you meant and it makes good sense within limits but, of course, not all murders are of the same “quality”—are they? The murder of a tyrant by his longsuffering victim is still murder but it isn’t the same as a murder of an innocent child committed by a heartless brute, is it? A lie is always a lie but it doesn’t have the same quality under all circumstances, does it?
I suppose that’s right but the social consequences of a murder are greater than the social consequences of a lie.
That may or may not be true about a specific lie or murder. Slander and lies, bitter speech and heartless criticism fill the world and they shape it with anger and the hunger for reprisal. Humans are simply too quick to categorize sins and view them as isolated events. The “normal” sins have effects beyond your imagining. The popular saying that “everyone lies” can be true but because it’s so characteristic of humans you tend to think it is less harmful. Wicked words create planetary devastation. I hate a lying tongue and those who sow hatred, bitterness and division among fellow humans make themselves my enemy.
But surely paedophilia is worse than gossip.
My soul rises against all abuse of the vulnerable, and innocent children have a special place in my concern. But if you want to talk consequences you should probably be interested in counting numbers. I’m telling you that the cases of anguish in the earth from the violence and cruelty of sins of speech number in billions and drive tens of millions to lifelong misery and often to the grave. That you’re revolted and incensed by sexual violence against children is to your credit—it’s part of my work in you—but your too casual view of the destructive and cruel power of gossip and slander and lies and scorn and unbridled criticism is only another marker of humanity’s widespread blindness. The tongue can set a world on fire! Two arrogant war-lords half way round the world insult each other and the words become the trigger for the misery and abuse and starvation of millions. Children who’ve never had a hand laid on them in physical or sexual violence are stripped to the bone with words, day in and day out, and hosts of them wish for death. Not only are they unloved, they’re crippled and often unable to love others and so the blessing they could bring to the world is smothered. Even many paedophiles recognize the shame of their evil but those who sin with their destructive tongues are experts at finding ways to justify their evil and call it harmless or “only human”. Sometimes they even call it good and “necessary”. Often those who sin grievously with their tongues are called “preachers” who sin with their heartless words in daily life but who sin most in the pulpit by offering peace when there is none or in the ugly sectarian and brutal way they make people sad whom I have not made sad and bind strugglers with burdens they can’t bear. [Click here.]
Lord it sounds like you are more concerned about some sins than others.
I’m concerned about all sin. I’m more concerned about warm righteousness than about sins but I’m opposed to all sins—without exception! What I deal with is not only ‘sins’ for they’re simply the outgrowth of the inner world. I’m concerned and work toward the obliteration of the condition of the human heart that expresses itself in murder and adultery and war and the trafficking of humans and the bankrupting of nations by national predators and hypocrisy and moral smugness and self-righteousness. I take specific sinful acts seriously but I concern myself first with the direction of the heart out of which all specific sinful acts arise. Perhaps you’ll be interested in speaking to me again about faith’s relation to a transformed heart.
Yes, but what you’ve been saying might give some comfort to those whose sins are especially ungodly.
Then they would misunderstand my words as it appears you do. I comfort no one in their sinning! Sin and I are enemies and there can be no truce or living at peace with one another. I give forgiveness to all sinners who look to me and I give the comfort of assurance to all sinners who long for holy freedom that I will make them holy through and through. I am faithful and keep my promises.
Yes, but you seem to be saying that the sins we can’t help doing are as wicked as rape, drunkenness and murder or sexual immorality such as adultery and homosexuality.
That is what I am saying! You think that I am making less of rape and adultery and homosexuality and murder—I am not! I am making more of the sins you say “we can’t help doing.” I’m not making less of the violent and the perverse I am making more of all sin even those you say “we can’t help doing.” It’s precisely the fact that you “can’t help doing them” that makes them a problem only I can fully understand and only I can deal with. They are so much a part of the world humans have built and are so much a part of each of you as a family that you find yourself saying “we can’t help doing them.” When an alcoholic says he “can’t help drinking” you and he tend to think he is making less of his problem—he’s making more of it. He is enslaved!
Part of your problem is that you isolate every sin from another and compare sins as isolated units of wrong. What you fail to understand is that sin is a “human family” problem and that all sins rise out of the corruption of the entire human family and that that corruption is a single organic whole. Sinners aren’t born nor do they fall straight out of the sky—the human family shapes and nurtures them in sin and as sinners.
You tend to think that murderers, rapists, adulterers, homosexuals, drunks and the like as sinners are alien forms, different from everyone else. They’re not! They’re fellow-humans, fellow-sinners in whom the corruption of the entire human family shows itself in particular ways. Because you don’t sin in the ways they sin you forget that you are one with them as sinners and because you have no taste for the way they sin you make their sins the true crimes against me and others and your own sins as hardly taking notice of— "because everybody commits those."
I recognize better than you that some sinners must be dealt with in ways more stringent than others. You don’t always do that wisely or well but you do make an attempt to deal with it and for that I commend you [Clickhere] but it’s characteristic of you that you forget that you are sinners dealing with fellow-sinners.
You fear that my making all sins equally heinous in essence will give comfort to the decadents and the violent. You should fear that your practice of making the decadent and violent the “real” sinners will generate self-righteousness among all other "respectable" sinners and mask their massive contribution to the ongoing cosmic corruption.
The greed of huge companies and their stockholders that hold farmers, wholesalers and little businesses to ransom, the freedom of speech that’s used to publish pornographic filth and video games that glorify lust and violence, and shape entire generations, the corrupt collusion between some scientists and medical personnel and pharmaceutical companies that alarm millions and sell unnecessary “cures” [Click here], the bosses who abuse power and render people unemployed and unemployable, the war-mongering government officials who live off those who pay with their lives, the vengeful spirit that insists on reprisal and counter-reprisal and generates ganglands and international war, the conscious framing of laws that make it hard to be honorable, the ceaseless lies promoted on televised advertisements by unprincipled communicators and companies, the self-serving TV religionists who are parasites on the vulnerable poor and who speak lies in my name—all this and more, supported by “decent” people I see and take into account.
All this and more I have come in and as Jesus Christ to deal with.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com