Grocery shopping like royalty
Early rise. I spoke at two separate church services in the Vail area this morning. Mom and Finn rose with me, but they stayed behind.
I drove 90 minutes to the event, living on little sleep after a fatiguing day. Unlike many other jobs, you cannot call in sick when an audience is waiting for you. And, besides, it’s worth it.
I think several had breakthroughs today. It’s a gift when you see fruit.
I had several conversations that could lead to future opportunities.
I returned home at 3:30pm for a nap. Then grocery shopping and dinner and cleaning and then an early bed for Mom and Finn.
Tomorrow will be more restful. We’ll need it to nurse the colds we’re all getting from wearing ourselves out.
Since this final week has been one of reflection, another thing I’ve learned and re-considered with having Finn is the old doctrine of “original sin.”
Living with an infant, just like all experiences, should give us pause to see whether our “doctrines” line up with life or if we have misread the traditions and need to re-read them. At the start, I imagined I brought another sinner into the world. But I’m not as certain now.
What I am certain of is that Finn, sadly, will be a sinner. Everyone is. That’s the first mystery of original sin. The Judeo-Christian view, of all views, seems closest to describing humanities ill. We willfully do what is wrong sometimes without illusion. All of us.
But the part I’ve shifted is attributing guilt to a child before that child is guilty. Some Christian groups claim a baby is born guilty, a universal condemnation. I do not agree and have found, through research, that a growing number scholars also do not agree. I’m in good company.
And that’s the shift in reconsidering this old view of the human condition. We’re all born broken but we’re not all born guilty. We’re all born under the wrong king in this world, but the right one is available to us. And Finn will have to come to terms with his own guilt some day. And he will have to ponder why he was born broken, why he has hang-ups. He will stand with the rest of us asking the same question: why does it seem our condition is lodged in our DNA? No doubt parenting can nurture a child in the wrong direction. If parents are willfully poor decision makers from time to time or refuse to see their own blind-spots, the kid will get caught in the cross-hairs. Yet, despite the conditioning, there is a real evil we must contend with that we sometimes desire in the wrong way.
We could say God is culpable of this, leaving humans to their own demise, these humans with a certainty to fail. But is God culpable? Has he left us?
Yet the rightful King has not left us and therein lies the larger story. Our frailty is but a foreshadowing. With the First Adam is the promise of a Last Adam. God would be guilty had he abandoned us beyond abandoning Adam. But he hasn’t.
And so Finn must seek him as we all must. We are culpable for our good choices as well as for our bad. But Love has broken in. And sin, original or not, is no match for it.
Dad
King David spoke of how the child he lost would be with God. Of course doctrine tells us sinners must be saved to be with God when they die, but King David was referring to the age of innocence, a time before a child understands their need for God’s forgiveness – that they sin and can’t wash that sin away themselves and need a spiritual daddy to make it better. (King David has always been interesting because he murdered a man to have his wife but God called him a man after His own heart, meanwhile told David he couldn’t build the temple because he is a man of war. Lots to learn about God reading the chain of events and understanding what God was saying, but that’s another subject.)
Mandy, are you sure David said the child went to be with God? David says, “I will go to him, but he will not return to me.” (2 Sam 12:23). He was simply saying the child could not return. He may have been saying “the child has gone to death, just as I will,” or, “the child sleeps with his fathers, just as I will.” There is no indication here that the child went to be with God. Jewish thought, on my understanding, think of a soul flying to God at death. That was developed later. So I want to be careful not to import too much later theology into the meaning of David.
My own view is that anyone not culpable of sin is not punished as a sinner. That’s consistent with God’s character and seems a proper reconciliation of the texts on our inheritance in Adam.
Hm, timely that you wrote about original sin, re-visiting this very concept is something I’ve only started to do in the past couple of days… and I’m definitely open to where you’ve arrived. We’ll see where I end-up. I’ve been reading this long blog series about it: http://faithandfood.morizot.net/category/faith/original-sin/page/3/
I’ve found since being a parent that many Christians are quite obsessed with finding the sin in their children, just waiting for anything to burst to the surface that they can point a finger at and say, “Look! There it is, he’s a sinner!” I think it’s often a reason/excuse for having a punitive mindset toward babies and toddlers (often starting at 9-12 months or so) rather than understanding child development and things that are simply age-appropriate and not sinful rebellion. (Like a crawling baby touching off-limits objects) As I’ve learned more about their development, I’ve come to realize that so much of their behavior is just normal and childish, not necessarily sinful. Sure there’s probably some sin mixed-up in there somewhere, and when my two year-old is throwing a tantrum, there’s going to be the influence of sin to some degree, but most of it is probably just being two. And it’s not really my job to figure it out at this stage.
Are there any references you could pass along for more reading on the original sin perspectives that you’re talking about?
I’m sad that your blog is almost over, will you be writing another blog somewhere else?
Emily, I’m with you. I think it was Augustine that imprinted the Christian imagination that a crying baby is a sinful one. Carry that over to the Calvinists today who damn everyone conceived and you have quite a mix of hot opinion in the church and child-rearing.
So much of what Finn does I cannot say is sinful, though I’m saying “no.” Sometimes he even giggles at me. And I interpret his giggling at being tickled that we’re having a dialog more than that he’s having his own way. To be on the lookout for sin and point it out in our children does seem a weird practice, bordering on the sadistic perhaps. We’re helping them grow into maturity and the wrong choices will come out soon enough.
In your reading, make sure you check out this paper of philosopical theology. Paul Copan, a friend of mine who is a philosophy professor and apologist, lays out the issue very well and shows some important distinctions on the developing theology of original sin. Mind you, it is long and deep. But it is worth it. You’ll be able to articulate the doctrine and differences better than your peers after reading it. Just don’t intimidate people at “church.” They tend to not like that!