Sin & Suffering

Welcome to the Uncut Podcast. I'm Pastor Luke.

And I'm Pastor Cameron. And this is the Uncut Podcast, where we have honest, uncut conversations about faith, life, and ministry.

We're sitting down this afternoon to pick up the conversation that we were having last

week in our last episode.

We kind of were kicking around kind of this question of what's the important theological

topics, ideas, beliefs that have kind of been lost or have kind of been maybe somehow have

not been sitting as important or clearly understood and are impacting church life, Christian life, all of these things.

And we talked about a lot.

Talked about particularly forgiveness, significant part of the episode was talking about.

This refusal to forgive, kind of a denying or an ignoring of some of Christ's teachings

on the importance of it. And then we started to kind of get into teachings on divorce.

Um, we were, we were kind of wading into some of those waters a little bit, um, kind of

wrestling with that question of like, you know, when, when people ask just, you know,

what, um, I think you asked the question, like if anyone's ever asked you if, you know,

Dave, you know, should they get a divorce?

Yeah, that's right. Um, we kind of talked through some of that.

So, um, yeah, I feel like it would be fair to pick up.

Just about anywhere with this kind of stream of thought that we were kind of on.

Well, it came from, the whole thing, didn't it come from a question that you and one of

your friends were talking about?

Yeah, it was a conversation a friend of mine, we were having, and funnily enough,

the topic of conversation that sparked the question was, I think, around the issue of

divorce in the modern church and how it's kind of become this thing where we just don't talk about,

it. Or his impression of it is that it's so ubiquitous that it's just kind of glossed over

in Christian theology. And we were talking about some other things, but he was of, I don't want to

overly speak for someone who's not here. But his particular thing was he thinks that some of these

problems had a root issue in bad theology surrounding sin.

Pete That's what it was, yeah. Paul That's what it was. He particularly felt.

You know, he takes a problem with the, well, all sins are equal in God's eyes,

And so, for some reason, that can and does end up kind of equating to, well, it just doesn't matter.

We don't take so seriously that kind of–we maybe use that as a justification to make our sins less

worse. Less worse. Not as pertinent or awful.

Yeah, it sometimes I think probably feels weird for people to hear someone else say

or talk about or to think that they should have a pretty robust theology of sin.

Mm-hmm.

Because we generally think of theology as the things that are descriptive about pastors.

Pastors. God. Yeah. You know.

Like theology proper? Yeah. Yeah. Or like the things of, the good things of God.

Yeah. You know, like salvation and the church, but not about sin.

Yeah. It actually reminds me that John Wesley thought that the doctrine of original sin was the

most verifiable of all Christian doctrines.

He was like, the most, should be the most undisputed, like just baseline, oh yeah, well, of course.

Sin is so extraordinarily pervasive, so how demonstrable it is in human activity and human behavior.

And so he felt like, he actually had a really, a really deep theology of sin that he wrote on.

I would say, he probably wrote less on sin than he did on grace,

because that's kind of what Wesley was mostly known for, is grace, but.

It's probably what most pastors should be known for, but. Right.

Well, it's what we know most for. It's not really what everyone,

like his contemporaries knew him most for. He was kind of an interesting character,

like denying communion to the fiance of his ex.

Um. Oh boy.

But anyway, you know, to certainly you begin to draw,

it's difficult to draw.

There is a sense in where Trinitarian theology begins to unravel if you don't have a good, theology of sin.

Like if you're not rooted and grounded in a theology of sin in whatever ways you want to

talk about it, you begin to run a ground of the necessity of salvation. And of course,

the necessity of salvation runs into the second person of the Trinity being Jesus, and then-

Jesus becomes an example.

Right. Well, and then the sending of the Holy Spirit for the empowerment of the church to go

on mission to proclaim a message of forgiveness of sins if there is no sin or sin is weak. So,

it does create some, I think it's a pretty significant theological domino effect.

Yeah. Well, it's you, you, I, you know, uh, probably I don't know enough to make the strong,

an overly strong statement, but it's probably fair to say that, um, the main nine main,

the, the difficult, the things that have been happening in mainline denominations that have

gone significantly liberal in their direction, you could possibly even just pinpoint it just

to what you just said, a lessening of sin, of original sin, of its pervasiveness, more

permissiveness of God and his view on what is sin, is not sin.

And then slowly that does unravel.

Yeah, or at least the lessening of the pervasiveness of what had like conservatively and historically

even was seen as sin. ride.

And I'll talk to you, I'm sorry, I'm leaning back like this because the Lord is letting his glory shine

in the room right now. And I'm gonna be a sweaty mess by the end

if I don't lean back into the shade.

Totally lost my train of thought there. You know, when you talk about like the modern denominations and their unraveling and how

that might equate to their view of or not view of sin, what is sin, what isn't. It's interesting,

where that perspective might come from because the denomination that I'm most familiar with

obviously is United Methodism, it's what I came out of, which just had like a,

Some would call it just a colossal unraveling,

and collapse schism, so to speak, which seemed abrupt and sudden,

but I have colleagues, older colleagues, in fact my mentor, who has been retired for 10 years now.

Nine, 10 years, and did 40 years as an elder, said that, so essentially for the last 50 years,

It was a big issue back when he started.

Questions generally around human sexuality and homosexuality and all of that

and whether homosexuality is permissible in Christian theology and Christian thought

and Biblical theology, anyway.

And so...

While there are many, many issues that the church, the United Methodist Church split over,

that seemed to be the litmus test for individual conferences and congregations

and even individual United Methodists was where do you stand on that issue?

Yep. Which was really not even so much an issue about human sexuality as much as it was,

or at least from my vantage point, a issue or where do you stand on the role of scripture.

In guiding the church? Like the role of biblical authority. Do we take, how do we read scripture?

And then how do we take scripture in its application and apply it to a modern view or understanding of the church?

Because, so let's say, you know, you will talk to progressive,

now they're just United Methodists, you know, progressive United Methodists

who will say, who will stand firm on,

like, homosexuality is not a sin.

And so, no, the church didn't unravel because of its allowance of sin.

The church unraveled because it failed to love or it failed to offer an affirming voice

or there were those who took the way of judgment rather than the way of love and grace.

And so you have this sense then of even now.

Like the church, it requires the church to define even what sin is.

What is sin an offense to?

Yeah, if a sin is an offense, right? What is it an offense to?

So. Right, is it an offense? Is it just, I don't know, is it non-existent?

Is it?

Yeah. So, you know, I think it's an interesting question to talk about, you know, whether.

Theology of sin as it exists in the church and what a right or a wrong theology of it requires

for us to... RL – Yeah. I would probably say that the most popular – because we're even wading

into morality a little bit, right?

And probably the most...

Common Definition of morality that I know of is in modern society is do no harm Mm-hmm,

Right as long you do you as long as it doesn't interact with me. Yeah, doesn't harm me, right?

Which sounds really great, you know, just like Let people be people let people do whatever they want ever they want

Hippocrates loves it.

Right. Hippocrates. Hippocratic Oath. Right.

Just, you know, take, you know, let people kind of do what they want to do, and then

they will, that'll be fine.

That's the, that's the greatest good is just, maximize individual freedom.

And the limit to individual freedom is when someone's individual freedom starts to harm another person.

Which is great on the level, right? And if you think about this and then you start looking around, you'll see this in play in

a lot of ways. People talk about what's right and wrong.

The problem is, is defining that line is a lot harder than it actually sounds like it is.

And also, it has to do with harm to who.

Exactly. You have to be able to divide who's the other that I'm infringing or harming, right?

Well, and it doesn't always necessarily take into account the corollary effects of sin. No, so you talk about like if you take a do-no-harm.

Viewpoint to Personal drug use right?

You know and you say okay, do you know, you know, what what does it matter if I?

If I do heroin, if I choose to do that, and I'm not trafficking large amounts of heroin,

why does it matter?

Why should it matter to the cops, or why should it matter to you, a person who loves me, or

why should it matter over here?

Thinking, I think what it does—I'm kind of just shooting from the hip here a little

but I think we both are, is that it views sin as purely individualistic and not a not

a scourge of humanity, but just a scourge of me.

Which I think may, if you follow a logical rabbit trail, may lead to being like, well,

then there must be people who are less sinful than others, right, people who are just more morally or ethically good.

Sin is individualistic. It can be escaped by an individual, but just being more good, less bad,

than a person that I'm compared to.

And so even that view begins to like disintegrate theologically when you trace it, you know,

at least in the way that we understand the scripture, so.

Yeah. Well, and then it, you know, the place where this really start,

well, one place where this conversation, you can see this being played out in like real time

is the debate over abortion, right?

Well, my choice, my body, doing no harm unto, I'm not doing harm to another, because that's not

another person. That's where this comes into play. And all of a sudden, you now have, we're in this

giant society debate over trying to define, well, who's a person? Who's the other that my freedom

gets to, or not to, impinge upon.

And. Apparently the only thing you're not allowed to identify now these days is a fetus. Right.

So. I get fired up. I get really fired up about that topic. I know it's been on our possible topics

to talk about since the beginning of the podcast.

But maybe today's probably not the day to. Maybe not. Not the day to get into that.

But it is an excellent case example for where and why utilitarianism and this kind of moral

philosophy of do no harm really struggles of who is the other.

And if someone is, you know, less than, right, like, you can, like, um...

There's, like side note, well, no, things that I think people, theology I think people

really need a better understanding of is the image of God.

And the reason I think so is because a lot of times, a lot of the material I've interacted

with over my course of study and time in theology has been a descriptor of usually they say,

well, the image of God, which is something that has been given in scripture at the beginning

of the Bible in Genesis. God says, let us create mankind in our image. And then he makes us. And

so the question's always been, well, what is the image that we bear? Is it that we look like him?

Well, no, we're physical. He's spiritual, right? So, there must be something characteristic about

us. And then what normally happens is people study the attributes of God, and then they divide those

up into two, his communicable attributes and his incommunicable attributes. It's a fancy words way

of saying the attributes that God shares, the attribute God, only God has, right? God shares

some attributes with us and then they list a bunch of things. And my problem with that.

One, other than like, it's fine, it's not a terrible thing, but I don't think it quite goes

far enough in actually defining what is the image of God, because what it really ends up doing

is it ends up leaving the image of God in a place of utility and function.

RL – What he does, the economy of it. JF – Right, the economy of it. So like an example of this is God is creator. While God

God has communicated that attribute to humanity, we too create, right, through procreation,

creativeness, right, all of that, which at the end of the day are all things that we

We do.

And so, the question then is, well, what if somebody who is unable to be creative,

are they less the image of God? What if those who are mentally handicapped or physically handicapped,

to a place in which they are less able to express those things? Do they less bear the image of God?

And if our theology of the image of God is only attributes, only things in which we do,

then yes, that's where that kind of falls short. I very, very much am very passionate about

abdicating the fact that we need a theology of the image of God that holds to the fact that

being human in its very self carries value and carries dignity of being in the image of God.

Mm-hmm that that there is some sort of spiritual moral essence in which we carry as being human.

That sets us apart and it is this you know undefinable divine spark if you want to call

at that. And I think that's a closer definition of what the image of God is than rather than these

just kind of like communicable attributes. ACKERMAN Can you think off the top of your

head where you would see the departure of that really affect our theology, our life, our world?

Well, I think it comes in like one, when we're talking about abortion, it's a significant

place of like, you know, well, because what defines a human?

Another place where that comes into play would be...

The forgiveness. We were just talking about forgiveness. But if someone is like, well,

they're a monster, they're somehow beyond deserving of forgiveness. Well, no, right?

Like when we come into a place of dignity of humankind of, well, they've, they've, have they,

has anyone, can someone lose the image of God? And therefore, anything we do to them would be

permissible. And that comes into questions of like, I'm not going to…

CB – Capital punishment?

AL – Capital punishment, which is not going to pretend to answer that question here.

CB – I've got opinions on that too.

I do too. But it's a, you know, do we, can we say that someone is no longer deserving of dignity?

Right? You know, the fact that we have things like the Geneva Convention, which like dictates

how humans need to be base level treated in some of the worst circumstances, like acts of war and

things like that does kind of hint towards this intrinsic understanding that there is a way that

we ought to treat one another, even when we are at the most opposed odds that we possibly could be.

All of those things, I think, really start to play in how we treat people who are

disabled, whether that's physically or mentally, that's a significant place of

of where that kind of begins to come into place.

So, yeah.

Yeah, I do think that that's a good one. What else? Do you have any other examples of,

theological things that you feel are… MR. Missed? CB. Yep.

MR. Yeah. CB. Let's hear them. MR. So this is probably the big one that I've been thinking about the last, I mean,

I think about it a lot, but I've been thinking about the last couple weeks fairly intensely,

is, I kind of define it as a more robust theology of suffering. So when I talk about a theology of

suffering, a lot of people will say, oh yeah, yeah, I know that when bad things happen, God is.

There with me going through it, and that maybe God has something good that he might bring about it,

Right? That's, if someone has a theology of suffering, that probably is a pretty good

summary of what that theology ends up looking like. That's not bad, but I think it's short.

I think it falls short of a theology of suffering. I think that not only is God there if suffering

happens, but he will be there when it happens. I think our current context, we can kind of live

in this kind of idea of like, I can avoid suffering. I can achieve happiness, and that's.

Not true. Suffering is part of the human existence. You will experience pain, suffering, loss,

hardship. It will look different for everybody, but you will experience it. It is one of the

guarantees of existence. And God is doing something in that when that happens. And even to go beyond

just like the experience of suffering, let's just kind of go to how we experience our personal life

and growth in Christ. I think that a large number of people believe that if I follow Jesus right.

I should mostly be going from mountaintop to mountaintop with Jesus. If I'm praying, having

faith, if I'm reading my Bible, if I'm singing worship songs, going to church on a weekly basis,

I should always feel close to God, or God should always feel close to me.

Faith should always feel dynamic, and I should always be kind of growing in this linear forward

progression, mountaintop to mountaintop. I genuinely believe that probably the majority

of Christians in America have that mindset, whether they have acknowledged it explicitly

or not. And that's just categorically wrong. You can be 100% faithful to God and still lose it all.

And not experience God's presence. The Book of Job is Exhibit A, right? Jesus on the cross is

Exhibit B, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

In the midst of suffering and pain. In the midst of suffering and pain. I think that we need to have a bigger understanding that God,

grows us, yes, through his graces, his goodness, his gift, but then also grows us in a different way,

when we experience suffering or when we experience just his felt absence.

This is such a big topic, but in the history of the church, people have looked at what does it

look like to be a Christian over a course of someone's life? And usually when you––there's,

like stages of growth. This is probably the best way to talk about it. I cannot remember the old

dead guy that came up with this, but he has these four stages of love in the Christian life. He's

He's like, everyone starts out at loving myself for myself sake.

Right? That's hedonism. I do what makes me happy, right? Love myself for myself's sake.

The second stage is when you kind of meet God for the first time and you learn to love God

for your own sake. I love God because following God is producing good fruit in me. I love the

way that it's changing my life. I'm experiencing forgiveness. Usually this is where the new

believer is. If you've ever met that new believer or if you remember your own new faith experience

and you're just like, oh, I love reading the Bible, I love worship. Why? Because it feels so good. It

felt so dynamic, felt so alive. Everything was just about growing and growing and growing and,

getting closer to Jesus. And then at some point, that kind of stops. And our assumption is that we

should actually always be feeling that way. But the reality is, is no, because if you.

Continue to feel that way, you'll never move on to the next stage, which is loving God for God's

sake. Loving God because of who he is, not because of how he makes me feel. And the only way you go

through that and move up to that next stage of Christian life, of development, is if God begins

to withhold some of the pleasures that are motivating your faith in the first place.

And then you come to a decision point where you have to say, am I gonna follow Jesus? Am I gonna

follow God because He's God? Because it's the right thing to do? Because I know that He's there?

Because I know that he's got a call on my life, or am I going to stop following God

because it doesn't feel good anymore.

And I think we have a crisis of people who hit that experience, which will happen in your faith

life, and then they jump ship. They deconstruct, they jump ship, or they just kind of settle into

this like kind of very quiet, settled faith. And so I think that's a, I don't know exactly

what to call that. I don't know if that's a theology of suffering in some way, or a theology

of spiritual growth. Maybe it's the two together, but it's this old church theologians would call

consolation and desolation. And I think we know what consolation feels like, which is all the good

stuff. And then when God brings desolation, where we feel the absence of things, I think we

interpret that as like, we made a wrong step somewhere. We need to find a way to re-experience

consolation, and we get stuck.

Yeah. And then what's, well, I mean, just for the sake of the fourth step, what's the fourth step?

Oh, the fourth step, the final place is, I believe… loving God for others' sake.

Is it that? Or is it loving? I was just guessing, so I'm not sure.

No, it's loving self for God's sake, I think.

Ah, okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah. It's this idea of being so united into the love of God and into God himself

that you're able to see yourself rightly, not prideful or… You made that a part of the spiritual life class, right?

Yeah, that was a pretty core, pretty, I mean, the idea that I just expressed is a significant

core idea in that, and it was in teaching that spiritual life class that I was like,

this is like the, it began to kind of formulate in that I think this is a consolidation of what

I've been thinking for many years is a place where people get stuck. Because, I mean, I don't know,

what's your own experience in that? Have you ever, have you had to kind of wrestle through that?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, there have been times where there's this sense of like.

Passion for life, passion for calling, passion for, you know, you can call it passion for family,

passion for ministry, passion for X, Y, or Z. And you feel like, wow, like this will never go away.

This is who I am now, right? And then it does, and that you may, and sometimes it is true,

sometimes there are circumstantial things that cause a shift in the perception of a season of

life. Yes. And then sometimes it's just a removal of the thing

that was keeping you in a comfortable position so that you may be forced essentially to find,

comfort in the Lord himself rather than in the thing he's called you to or gifted you for,

or brought you to. I think it's in the perseverance through the valley or the.

The darkness of the soul or whatever analogy you want to use, it's walking.

There's no getting around it. There's only one way through it, and it's through it.

You've got to walk through it. You can't avoid it.

If you're going to grow and if you're going to come into the next season or the next step.

You absolutely must persevere through it and really cling tightly, really cling tightly

to, I think it's good to cling tightly to the promise of God given to you in the original moment of passion.

Sure. So to cling tightly both to the promise of God, but also primarily to the person, the person of God.

The person of God. I think of the parable of the seeds or the soil, right? And you've got

the different seed gets planted and you've got the gets plucked up right away, it grows up,

but it gets kind of choked out by the thorns. I think that that's where in some ways the thorns

come into play of like growth was really great until suffering, concerns of this life. Maybe

it's now harder and it kind of gets choked out. So, yeah, I think that's a huge one because I

think there's too many people. It can just manifest itself in so many ways of...

Everything from people kind of attributing suffering to lack of faith, to, you know,

just you've done something wrong, right? All the arguments that happened in Job,

his friends come and accuse Job of like, well, you must have done something wrong or something

like that. We still fight to get that theology out of the church today.

Oh, yeah. Why is God mad at me? Why is God mad at me? Why is God punishing me?

And that's what Job's friends said to him, and that wasn't the case. But then it also just,

I think it runs into a very anemic spirituality of like, I need to find a way to keep myself

motivated in my faith. Let me find another book, another podcast, another preacher. This is where

I think people who chronically change churches every couple years, this is where I think they

kind of might be stuck sometimes, is getting to a place of like, yeah, this church was really good

when I first got here, but now I'm just kind of feeling fed. Now I know the people. Now I know

the people and the shininess has kind of worn off and I'm starting to feel the same way I was

feeling at my last church. And maybe I should go look somewhere else.

Yeah. Let's do a podcast episode in the future on right reasons to leave a church and wrong

reasons to leave a church. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely talk a lot about that.

All right. Make a note. We'll make a note. Make a note. Remind us about that if we don't.

So yeah, I think that's a, and that plays into the way that we do church. Like we've been talking

in the last couple weeks, we've had some conversations about what's appropriate inside

of church Christian worship and things like that. And I do think that not having this

understanding of the Christian life leads us to a place where we're kind of like hyping,

hype church. Like we are bringing you to a concert experience to give you a

spiritual shot in the arm on Sunday morning where you hear this fantastic Ted Talk, amazing worship, a great experience, high-impact service.

It gets you through the week, keeps you motivated and kind of feeling connected to Jesus because of

an experience. But all it's doing is it's numbing over the deeper call through suffering, through.

Pain into knowing Christ in the absence of feeling these good positive emotions.

Yeah, or just, yeah. You know, it's funny. The primary, this is kind of a diversion,

but kind of not, the primary reason that people give me for wanting conduit or their church to

have a midweek service is that Sunday wears off too fast. You know, that there's like a,

the spiritual inoculation that they got on Sunday, the hype, it's wearing off.

I have no control over it. My personal discipleship to Jesus makes no difference.

So can we have a Wednesday night service so that I can get fed up again?

Not fed up again. That's maybe a Freudian slip there.

So I can get filled up again. Can I get my spiritual tank taken care of?

Yeah, so by the time I'm coming down off the mountain again, it's Sunday morning. Yep.

And, yeah, it's a, you know, I don't, it's a very, it's a.

I wanna say this gently but also firmly that it's a very immature conception of the spiritual life.

Because it makes it all about me. How am I feeling?

How am I feeling? So, feel better, yeah. And I don't think either of us say this condescendingly

because we've had to walk through it in our own ways. Oh my gosh, I walk through it now.

I don't ever want to feel the absence of the presence of the Lord.

Emotionally, mentally, or intellectually, or just by experience now of walking with the Lord

for a long time, I know he is there.

So no, I don't like it. but it is what it is, and yes, I experience it too.

Yeah, so, yeah, I think that's a big,

I wanna keep, for my own self personally, I'm doing a lot of thinking around that,

because I think it's a really important concept.

Yeah, I agree.

Good, well, I think that that's a good bit of information for the day.

Yeah, probably. We traveled a distance there.

Well, we appreciate you listening, as always. Encourage you to always ask questions, either on our text line or you can drop it in the

comments.

Please like, share, subscribe, and all the places that you listen to this, appreciate

And thanks for listening to the Uncut Podcast. Yep, and we'll see y'all next time.

Music.