Sin as "How"

I've written on this topic before, in "How vs What", and would like to further explain how sin is truly a "how" equation instead of a "what".

I understand there to be a very limited number of "whats" in the realm of human experience. And I also understand all of those "whats" to be good. In order to arrive at this understanding, I need to examine and understand the underlying desires that drive my actions. I say this because, on the surface, there certainly seem to be "whats" that are sin. For instance, in the biblical narrative Cain's murder of Abel certainly appears to be a "what". Yet upon further inspection we discover that Cain's action was motivated by something deeper than simply wishing to eliminate his brother's existence. He wanted equality and justice. He felt that he had been wronged before God by his brother, "shown up" if you will, and sought to correct this. He wanted approval from God. That is in no way a bad thing. In fact, it is supposed to be a Christian's basest desire.

However, how Cain went about achieving this "what" was terribly wrong. In this sense Cain's action, on the surface a concrete "what", was really "how" he sought to gain his ends. The same goes for the original sin narrative in Genesis 3. Adam and Eve fell into sin when they tried to circumvent God's means for acquiring knowledge by some immediate means: the fruit.

So then, lets connect some dots. If sin is truly a "how" and not a "what" scenario, then sin is not a static being, but a dynamic series of methods. It is then not enough to want justice, or love, or God's approval, for in the wanting there is no righteousness. It is how you pursue justice, love or God's approval that determines righteousness or sinfulness. This then has tremendous implications for how we formulate our ethics, and demands of us an ability to hear and obey God's word, instead of relying on a series of principles that are supposed to govern our actions regardless of context.

But in another sense of the word, how do we do this? If our "how" determines our "what", how do we know the proper "how" concretely? The answer I think will take much more than a blog post to sort out, but I think I can sum it up here.

First, it requires a careful attention to God's word, and a properly humble approach to it, allowing it to inform you as opposed to you bringing your own ideas to it. It also requires patience, as God's methods may not seem direct to us. My imagination plays out a scenario in which a student informs a teacher that she does not need to know everything. The teacher responds that this is a good position to arrive at, but in order to properly arrive at this position, the student has to go through the process of learning that she cannot know everything, and only then can she arrive at a place of peace in not knowing everything. In the same way, God's methods may seem circuitous to us, but perhaps in order to reach the goal that both we and God are aware of, we need to experience things so that the goal will be good and not evil.

Forms and Meanings

I am writing this during a time of musical worship led by great friends of mine. That is an important caveat for what is to follow. 

I can't connect to it. Why? Am I too far gone into some long suffering plot of doubt and questions? I don't know. But here's my best attempt at understanding it.

We are singing a song that repeats the line "the Great I Am", and that is the line that gives me pause. What did God mean when He named Himself "nameless", the I Am, the Existent One. In difference to the pagan deities who claimed for themselves extravagant titles, the God of Israel declined to name Himself. Instead, He claimed that He was existence itself. Names cannot contain His being, so He declined to select one.

So then, what's wrong with an arbitrary selection of a title so that we can talk about God? Likely nothing. However, I understand it to be indicative of an absence in our worship, or perhaps a miss-direction. I think we have mistaken the Form of God's name for God's name itself. I think that God applies the meaning to a word about Himself, and when we worship the word instead of the source of the meaning that the word points to we are engaging in idolatry. 

I finally have more questions than answers. Have I confused the form that God has given me to engage Him with God Himself? Am I worshiping a word and calling it God instead of understanding that God has given no such name for Himself so that I would understand His all encompassing power and the inability of our faculties to comprehend Him? Do I exchange God for the forms and patterns of His interaction with me? Probably.

Yet there is an other side of this equation. Life is patterns of living cells. The cellular make-up of my genetic "code" do not exist as isolated individuals but a complex pattern of life that combines to make more life. And even though those cells do not disappear when I die (although they may change form), I, as an existential reality, have ceased to be because the pattern that caused me has ceased to be. By extension, is God a pattern, or a philosophical reality? Is worshipping the pattern of God really worshipping God Himself? I confess I do not know, and it is entirely likely that I never will. This is why Grace is the greatest meaning that I can think of. Though I try my best to understand, I never will. Yet this is precisely the point. I can't understand, and I will almost inevitably always be wrong, but for whatever reason God still extends His grace to me, forgiving and bearing with my foibles and failures. 

I may never be comfortable in a contemporary worship service. Grace isn't an excuse to do something that I know to be wrong. But as I have no other option at the moment, I choose community over isolation. Even though I have my reservations and doubts as to the validity of what perhaps amounts to idolatry, I will continue to live with my fellow human beings and identify with Christ's body, as flawed as it may be. 

"Still Darkness Waits"

An Old Poem:

Like first fruits born
Of a barren womb
Empty I came
So I was consumed
The dust drank up
The blood which called
For the harvest of men
For long since the fall

Still dreams persist
Long past grey dawn
Through a chorus of souls
Still I stumble on
Beneath watchful eyes
So deep and so worn
Like the end of the age
That sad, tired morn

By cross shaped trees
And blossoming tombs
I peer through the dust
Of my own upper room
And to my ears
A whispered fate
Your voice remains:
"Still darkness waits"