IS sin inevitable?
I love it when the kids turn out to be glorious men and
women of God. Is there anything more precious to Christian parents than
that? I can’t think of it. And how they beam—these parents—when someone
turns to them and says something like, "You two have done a wonderful job with the children." And why wouldn’t they beam? That is a great
job you’ve done with that garden, fence, extension or whatever! That
pleases us so why would anyone imagine that we wouldn’t (or shouldn’t)
be ecstatic about our kids and grateful that we didn’t get it all
wrong? Certainly we realize we didn’t do it alone. There were our
parents or friends, Sunday school teachers and preachers that helped
shape us and so blessed our children. Rejoice in this, I can hear John
saying (see 2 John 4 and 3 John 4).
All this joy assumes that our input matters! All this assumes that the nature
of our input matters. We think—and why wouldn’t we?—that nurturing
children in the good is vitally important. Is there anyone anywhere that
thinks differently? Even behaviorists like B.F. Skinner and
bio-ethicists like E.O. Wilson would agree with that. Nurturing people
in the good helps them to be good. It doesn’t guarantee that the child
will be good in later life because there are other influences operating
but to deny that someone raised in a loving, warm and disciplined home
where righteousness matters and Jesus is Lord isn’t helped toward faith
is nonsense! If a child raised in such a home grows into a fine
Christian man or woman we shrug with joy (not presumption) for we more
than half expected it. If a girl raised in such a home became a vicious
serial killer we’d be astonished precisely because it runs against
expectation. Even Christ marveled when he met unbelief in Capernaum (it
might have been Nazareth—see Mark 6:1-6). And why did he marvel? Guess!
All this is so obviously true! And what about the other side of the
coin? What other side? The child is raised in a house of garbage! He’s
nurtured in moral filth and stink. He is taught bitterness by the two
leading figures in his life and knows how to mistreat a woman and how to
get even when you lack physical strength. He is shaped by cruel peers,
bullied by people in power, fed moral muck in movies, books and
cyberspace. And how will he turn out? Well, in point of fact we know
many young people who beat all that junk and grew to be glorious people.
Of course, praise God! But weren’t we amazed with a glad amazement?
Didn’t we shake our heads in happy disbelief? And why is that? Guess!
So move beyond the individual to the family and then the community
and then the city and ask what we expect of people raised in moral and
spiritual gloom. Haven’t we said things like, "Well, wadaya expect in
Miami (or New York or London or Belfast or San Francisco)? Move from
there to nations and ask about expectations? And then ask yourself about
the human family. Do you really think we will grow to manhood without
sin? When Jesus both holds us responsible for our offenses and
says they’re "inevitable" we need to affirm both truths. See Matthew
18:7 and 1 Corinthians 11:18-19. This inevitability is not something
laid down in eternity on the basis of some flaw in the nature of something. It is an existential inevitability. In the light of how the world is, in light of how the Corinthians were occasions of sin and division are inevitable.
They "must needs be". It’s for this reason that John in his epistle
says that anyone who says he/she doesn’t sin is not only kidding
themselves, they walk in darkness.
There was one Adam and one Eve and when they sinned they set
something in motion that swept the world and swept the human race up in
it. Since they introduced sin to us the world has never been the same.
The idea that we are born into the same world they were is foolishness.
The notion that our situation is like theirs is nonsense! We don’t
inherit their sin but we are born into a human family that has
been twisted like a corkscrew by ceaseless sinning that has affected
structures as well as individuals. We are born into a planet shrouded in
moral pollution and we breathe that junk until we too become sick and
start coughing up our own configuration of pollution into the moral
atmosphere. (I’ve developed this a little in a thing called The Dragon Slayer.
You might find that helpful.) None of us growing to adulthood gets out
of life without sinning. Say that we are responsible but insist also
that what Jesus said is true—sinning is inevitable. If we have
difficulty affirming both truths the right response is not to deny one
or the other but to work to integrate them both.