Dan has been dragging a thread out for about 5,000 comments while he's trying to demonstrate that YHWH saves everyone, or that WHYH wants to save everyone, but can't because He's at the mercy of His creation, or something else that I don't understand. He's also back to introducing this notion of "trivial" or "minor" sins. These categories haven't been defined, supported, explained, or the like. Dan just acts like they are official categories and the YHWH agrees with him.
What I find interesting, and want to explore further in this post is how scripture speaks of sin and our relationship to it.
For example scripture tells us that we are "dead" in our sin, and the Jesus offers us "life" free from sin. Or scripture tells us that we are "slaves" to sin, and the Jesus bought our freedom from :bondage" or "slavery" to sin.
That language doesn't sound like there is room for "trivial" or "minor" sins, does it? Death/Life or Slave/Free sound like mutually exclusive categories don't they? Can you really be 95% alive and 5% dead? Or 95% free and 5% enslaved?
What I'm not interested in for this thread is Dan trying to rehash what he's already said elsewhere. If he wants to do that here, I'll keep posting his comments on the other thread. Or he can spout whatever he wants over at his place.
I'd prefer to not allow comments on this thread until I flesh the premise out a little bit more, but I suspect that Dan will find himself unable to control himself and will not honor my request. I could close comments, but if he's determined to comment on this before I'm ready, he'll just comment on another thread.
That's all for now. Hopefully I can revisit this soon.
I've fully intended to do a deep dive into this post, but the overwhelming number of repetitive, banal, unhelpful comments else where has prevented me from using my limited time to do so. I'm just going to point out that all of the language used in scripture to describe sin is binary, there is no sliding scale.
We're either:
Sick, or Well/Healthy
Dead or Alive
Enslaved or Free
For or Against
Guilty or Innocent
Wide Path or Narrow Gate
We never see the writers of scripture talking about humans just being a little sinful, just a little taint of sin. I realized that this language is so obvious and so well known that I probably didn't need to dig as deep as I was planning.
Have at it.
5 comments:
I can't wait...for you flesh it out or to post a comment. Sorry. But I'll just say I believe it's far more a matter of our sin nature than it is about any particular act or acts. It's the flip side of of "works". There are indeed sinful behaviors we're to avoid, as well as acts of obedience we're encouraged to indulge...all found in the Rule Book known as the Holy Bible. But the stain of sin requires Christ's sacrifice and our acceptance of Him to remove that stain.
I agree that it's much less about that specific acts, than it is about the motivation behind the acts. The problem is that we want to treat sin like crime (varying degrees of criminal acts), when sin is simply sin. I've said this before, but sin is rooted in self contentedness that tells us that when YHWH said don't steal, that He really had some exceptions to the rule.
Work has slowed down some, so I should get to this in the next day or so.
I really tried to muddle through Dan's "response" to this post over at the cesspool he maintains. What I think I got was that he doesn't like the "human tradition" of Reformed Theology, although I've never seen him either explain it properly or demonstrate any actual errors in it. Yet he appears to appeal to his Reason (which would seem to be a "human tradition), progressive theology (human tradition), and proper "interpretation: of scripture. Yet, strangely enough, he never acknowledges that he's simply following a different "human tradition", never (as far as I could stomach reading) gives any examples of his superior interpretation, and still hasn't given any proof that YHWH agrees with his (human) notion that there are "categories" of sin that include "minor" and "trivial". So far, pretty unimpressive.
He also seems to take issue with the notion of a "sin nature", despite the reality that concept is present throughout scripture. He seems to be claiming that we don't have a "sin nature", that we are born sinless, and yet we somehow manage to sin anyway. This human notion (I've never heard any actual theologian express this, nor any sect teach it, so calling it a "tradition" seems wrong), is simply unproven on any level, not taught in scripture, and can't be taken seriously.
Finally, he seems caught up with the notion that being "dead" in a spiritual sense with being dead in a physical sense. I didn't waste time reading his ramblings, but I'd point out a couple of options.
1. The language (dead/alive, slave/free, etc) is simply being used to point out the extreme nature of our separation from YHWH. That our sinful condition is eithre A or B, one extreme or the other. By casting the problem as one of such extremes, it points out that the only solution is equally extreme, and beyond our ability to provide.
2. The language indicates that there is an actual divide between the physical and the spiritual, and that it's possibly to be physically alive, and spiritually dead.
The more I listen to Dan try to make arguments on these topics (sin, heaven, hell, reward, punishment), the more obvious it is that he is grounding his arguments in himself. He relies on his interpretation of scripture, his Reason, his sense of justice, his subjective moral code, ultimately his human impressions. I suspect, because I've never gotten anything except some version of "we can't know for sure" when I've tried asking direct questions about anything non physical, that Dan is uncomfortable with anything that he can't experience with his own senses. He's unwilling to acknowledge that reality extends beyond the limits of our humanity. HE seems to acknowledge at some level, that humans do not have the same qualities as YHWH, yet denies vehemently that YHWH could possibly have a more complete grasp of what justice truly is. Finally, I believe that Dan's apparent skepticism about the supernatural, is based in is seeming need to believe that Science trumps Genesis.
In a sense, he's right. Interpretation of the Biblical text is vitally important. My problem is that I've never seen him actually demonstrate how his interpretation is more likely to be accurate than anyone else's.
Anyway, I didn't see anything in his rambling pablum that actually offered an explanation that made sense as to why the Biblical use of these extreme opposites means anything other than, the separation that our sin causes is so total that it can only be bridged by an extreme act on the part of YHWH.
I'll conclude with this. Dan likes to use examples of someone who's gone through their life only committing a relatively small number of "minor" or "trivial" sins. He'll then ask something like, "How will God condemn this person who's only committed minor sins to an eternity of torture?".
My first response, is I'm not YHWH, so I can't answer that question. But scripture tells us that it's incredibly unlikely that this is realistic, and that the punishment for sin is extreme by our standards. If I have to choose between what scripture seems pretty clear about, and Dan's human hunches, I'm going to go with scripture (even if I wrongly overestimate how big of a deal sin really is). Further, the notion of trying to go through life obsessed with trying to keep my sins "minor" and to a minimum, seems like literal hell on earth. Either way, I see no reason to trust Dan's hunches.
My second response is that we have plenty of religions that are based on humans trying to perform at a level that will get them the desired result (72 Virgins, reincarnation as a higher life form, Nirvana, heaven, etc), why would I take the one "religion" that isn't about keeping score, and try to turn it into just one of the others.
Finally, Dan seems to flirt with various forms on universalism, but also wants to know that certain sins will be punished in ways that he considers appropriate, but definitely not any sort of eternal punishment.
I'm sure he'll flood this thread with more of the same, and I'm sure that he won't provide any better explanation for the extreme (dead/living) language used to describe the effects of sin.
Just for grins, I skimmed the comments section. It's amazing how little Dan and his minions care about accurately portraying the views of others.
It's a strange moral code that allows it's adherents to falsely represent others.
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