Original Sin

Introduction

This past week, they set a date for my ordination ceremony… for the fourth time. I was supposed to be ordained in June 2020, but that was canceled because of Covid. Then they said it would take place at a special event to be held in June 2021. However, after further thought, they decided to cancel that event and hold an ordination service in October of 2021 during annual conference per the usual custom. Now with the increase in Covid cases, Annual Conference has be moved to a virtual only event, and my ordination has been postponed yet again. This week, I received a message that my ordination service would be held on November 6 at 4pm. I feel pretty confident I will be ordained on November 6th, but I’m not going to hold my breath, and I’m not going to consider anything “in the bag” until the bishop actually lays hands on me.

As many of you know and are likely tired of hearing about by now, this has been a very long, very trying process for me that has included a number of delays. Part of this process involved attending these retreats that were supposed to give us some practical training that we likely didn’t get in seminary. That may have been the goal, but that was not what happened, and I often found myself frustrated at those events. I can remember a particularly frustrating moment for me that took place in Denver in the fall of 2018. We were having a devotional time, and a video was played that featured a Catholic Priest by the name of Father Gregory Boyle, who has a remarkable ministry to former gang members in the city of Los Angeles.

Let me give you a little background on Father Boyle. In 1986 Father Boyle became the pastor of Dolores Mission Church, the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles with one of the highest concentrations of gang activity in the city. In response to the issues that plagued this community he was serving, Father Boyle opened the doors of Homeboy Industries in 1988, which would become the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. Father Boyle welcomes over ten thousand former gang members through the doors of Homeboy Industries each year to participate in an 18-month employment and re-entry program and to receive services ranging from tattoo removal to anger management to parenting classes. I have a great deal of admiration for the work he does.

Part of Father Boyle’s ministry includes sharing a “Thought for the Day,” which gets posted on Youtube. It was one of these videos that we watched during our retreat that got me so frustrated. The brief message he shared was titled, “Remember Who You Really Are.”

Father Boyle began his message by stating that a number of Buddhist texts begin with the following statement, “Oh nobly born, remember who you really are.” Quoting something from a Buddhist text was the first thing that bothered me. Often when I went to these events, the leaders spent more time talking about Buddhist texts than Scripture, and at a training for Christian clergy, I expected to hear more from the Scriptures than from Buddhist philosophy. I thought, “Oh boy, here we go again.”

Father Boyle went on to say that when people come through the doors of Homeboy Industries, their need is not to become a good person or even a better person but to discover who they really are.

Hmmmm. Ok. Where is he going with this?

Quoting an unnamed poet, Father Gregory said, “Sometimes it’s necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness.” He then told the story of a large, eight-hundred-year-old statue of the Buddha that resides in Thailand.

Great, back to Buddhism again.

The statue was gray and dull. As it aged, the clay began to crack. When restorers were summoned to repair the statue, they climbed up on it and looked through the cracks that had become fissures. As they peered into the cracks they saw gold, literally. It turns out that the statue is actually made of pure gold, but it was overlaid with clay to disguise its value so that it wouldn’t be stolen by marauders. Father Boyle concluded that we human beings are like that statue: while we might have a gray, drab exterior, on the inside, we’re pure gold. “You’re golden,” he told us.

Sometimes it’s necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness. On the inside we’re golden.

I was shocked to hear a Catholic priest describe human nature this way. His anthropology seemed to completely ignore the very issue that required the existence of a place like Homeboy Industries in the first place: sin. Everyone in the room was nodding their heads in agreement with his positive view of human nature while I was there shaking my head wanting to scream, “What about sin?!!!!”

I’m as guilty as the next person of arguing over theology, but there is one theological argument we have that, quite frankly, has puzzled me that we cannot agree on it: the argument over the doctrine of original sin. Of all the doctrines we have, this is the one doctrine for which we have the most evidence. We might not agree on anything else, but I would think we would all agree about the problem of sin. When we look inside our hearts and what’s taking place in our world, this doctrine seems to have the most evidence. Now you may disagree with my assessment here, but , at a minimum, I would think we would all be on the same page there is something deeply wrong and deeply broken about our world.

As many of you know by now, I’m about to transition to being a chaplain at a substance abuse facility that focuses on the twelve steps. The first step is about admitting that one has a problem and his or her life has become unmanageable. The underlying issue here is one of denial. People struggle to come to grips with the reality that addiction is a serious problem in their lives. And let us not make the mistake of thinking denial is the sole possession of those in the throes of addiction, it permeates the cultural waters in which we swim. Most of us simply do not want to face the fact that humanity has a deadly struggle with sin and that it has made our lives unmanageable, and despite what we might think, this type of denial is not a new cultural dynamic. John Wesley preached on original sin back in the 1700’s and noted,

“It is now quite unfashionable to talk otherwise, to say any thing to the disparagement of human nature; which is generally allowed, notwithstanding a few infirmities, to be very innocent, and wise, and virtuous.”

This tendency to ignore the hideous reality of sin is nothing new, and today, I’d like to face this issue head on because it is a key doctrine. Yet, to do so requires some nuance.

Some of you may remember that I recently preached on story of Mary and Martha, and I noted that a close reading of the text revealed that there was texture and nuance to Martha’s character. While she is often villainized in interpretations of that story, we saw that there was more to Martha than being a resentful, grumbling woman. She was a woman of virtue who passionately desired to lavish service on Jesus. We acknowledged that without Marthas in this world, nothing would get done and that if Mary listened to Jesus long enough and really heard his message, she would realize she could no longer remain stationary if she were going to be faithful to the teaching she was hearing from Jesus. Thus, to truly understand Martha required nuance, and I suggested that we invite nuance and texture into our thinking about people and issues.

Today, I want to suggest that such a textured understanding of human nature (and indeed a Wesleyan understanding of human nature) requires that we bring both the doctrine of original sin and the truth that we are made in the image of God into conversation with one another. I believe Scripture and the tradition of the church demand this for a properly Christian understanding of human nature. We must embrace the tension and nuance these notions bring to our understanding of human nature: yes, we are made in the image of God, but we are also deeply broken creatures who have defaced that image in us.

Last week, Bob discussed how we are made in the image of God. This week, I’d like to look at how that image has been marred by sin and then come back to the notion that we are made in the image of God.

Wesley was deeply concerned over theological movements in his day that sought to deny the doctrine of original sin. Wesley wrote an entire treatise defending the doctrine and later preached a sermon entitled “Original Sin” that was as summary of his longer treatise.

Wesley took Genesis 6.5 as his main text.

Genesis 6:5 NRSV

5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.

In this sermon, Wesley looks at what he calls the “natural” state of human beings. According to Scripture and especially supported by Genesis 6.5, Wesley proclaimed,

“But no man has naturally any delight in God. In our natural sate we cannot conceive how any one should delight in him. We take no pleasure in him at all; he is utterly tasteless to us. To love God! It is far above us, out of our sight. We cannot, naturally, attain to it.”

Last week Bob taught us that Wesley argued there were three aspects of the image of God: the natural, the political, and the moral. According to Wesley, remnants of the natural and political elements of the image of God remained present in us however hidden and disguised they might be. However, Wesley thought that Scripture was crystal clear that the moral image of God had been completely erased within us. Wesley traced this theme of utter moral corruption throughout the entire Scriptures looking to verses like Psalm 14.2-3 (which is taken up and quoted by Paul in Romans 3) to make his case that humanity’s plight with sin was not relegated to the times of Noah in Genesis 6. As Psalm 14.2-3 says,

Psalm 14:2–3 NRSV

2 The Lord looks down from heaven on humankind to see if there are any who are wise, who seek after God. 3 They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one.

Paul quotes these very verses from the Psalms in his assessment of humanity in Romans 3. Thus, for Wesley, the Scriptural case is closed. After the fall, humanity, if left to its own devices is totally depraved.

But, Wesley anticipates the following objections:

“But was there not good mingled with the evil? Was not there light intermixed with the darkness? No; none at all.”

No, none at all is his answer. However, it’s easy to miss the following statement in his sermon and think Wesley has a view of humanity that is untethered to reality and our everyday experience. After all, we do see people doing good in the world. Wesley writes,

“We are not here to consider what the grace of God might occasionally work in his soul.”

Thus, Wesley is looking at humanity completely apart from any notion of the grace of God at all. Next week, we’ll talk about grace, but I need to mention the importance of Wesley’s notion of prevenient grace. In his sermon, “On Working Out Our Own Salvation,” Wesley acknowledges that there is no man in “mere nature.” “Every man has some measure of light.”

That is, no person actually lives in their natural state completely void of the grace of God. Wesley calls the grace that goes before us prevenient grace. This is a powerful grace that restores enough of the moral image of God in each person to choose to do good and to believe in Christ. Prevenient grace gives us “Response-ability.” Prevenient grace affords us the opportunity to respond to the movement and promptings of the Spirit. For Wesley, if we are left to our own, we can do no good whatsoever, but the prevenient grace of God saves us from a miserable existence of such evil. But for the grace of God we are left in a miserable state.

This reality must be held in tension with the fact that we are made in the image of God. As Wesley put it, that image was defaced but not erased. Because we are made in God’s image and because of prevenient grace, we still bear that image to some degree, human beings are not worthless creatures as we might assume because of our “natural” condition. Indeed, God desires to restore that image fully within us through his incarnate Son who was fully God and fully human.

St. Athanasius, in his treatise, On the incarnation, puts it this way.

You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and the the likeness is redrawn on the same material. Even so so was it with the All-holy Son of God. He, the Image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind made after Himself.” Athanasius OTI 41-42

The eternal Word became human so that God might restore his beautiful image on the canvas of human beings. The question is, in light of original sin and our fallen nature, will we say yes?

Conclusion

I want to come back to Father Boyle’s message. Whenever we teach the new member class for people to join our church, we cover basic Christian doctrine with a focus on our unique Wesleyan theological perspective. In the very first class, we discuss the doctrine of original sin, and I love to introduce the topic with this question: “Are human beings fundamentally good or fundamentally bad?” In Father Boyle’s language, are we golden inside or are we clay?

Rarely does anyone blurt out an answer right away. There is usually a sustained silence, as the participants ponder this question. In the silence, you can see the wheels turning in each person’s head; they have a pensive look on their faces. At a certain point, the pressure to end the awkward silence becomes so great that someone is courageous enough to venture an answer. Whichever way that person answers the question, another person responds inevitably responds with the opposite perspective, and so the fun begins as we have some substantive conversation about sin and the nature of human beings.

I’m no longer convinced there is an easy answer to that question. I used to be the one who would quickly blurt out, “Human beings are fundamentally bad.” I am all too aware of my own brokenness to deny the reality of sin in me. However, a mistake I have made is allowing my sinfulness to almost completely negate the fact that human beings are made in the image of God. Thus, we must be aware of the ditch on both sides of this road. On one side of the ditch we deny the severity of sinfulness in human beings and on the other we disregard the fact that we bear the image of God. I’m now convinced that a faithful response to this question on the nature of human beings requires nuance. It requires more than simply taking one side or the other but holding these two realities together as we embrace a biblical understanding of human nature.

As I prepared this sermon, there were two groups of people the Lord put on my heart.

The first group of people is those who are in denial about the severity of the problem of sin in our lives and in our world. Wesley ends his sermon on original sin with the declaration,

“Know your disease! Know your cure!”

My guess is that there are some of us in here who need to come out of denial and acknowledge our disease and welcome the cure of a relationship with Christ that renews the image of God in us.

There was another group of people on my heart as I prepared this message. There are some of us in here who are so aware of our sin that we have lost sight of the fact that we are made in the image of God and embraced the lie that we are worthless because of the things we’ve done, thought, or said. For those in this category, I find myself in agreement with Father Boyle when he quoted that poet. Sometimes it’s necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness. Indeed that’s what Christ was and is doing in by becoming incarnate. He is reteaching us about our loveliness. To be sure, that loveliness is a derived loveliness. It’s not that we are golden and possess loveliness; it’s that we are graciously made in the image of God and our loveliness is a gift bestowed upon us by our Creator, and God wants to reteach us and renew in us his original intention for human beings.

Reflection Questions

Have I been in denial about the reality of sin?

Have I believed that lie that I am worthless because of sin?