Hopefully you are persuaded that sin has nothing to do with the 10 commandments or sex . But you might ask what is it do with? There is a debate about whether there is such a thing as institutional sin. How can institutions be sinful, it is people who are sinful? Well, actually no. The truth is all sin is institutional. But of course this needs to be unpacked.
We need to understand human institutions have a temporal and a spiritual dimension. The temporal are those aspects you bump into, shake hands with or bow down to. So, an easy illustrative example would be a king. A king has a kingdom, a throne, castle with banqueting halls and dungeons. The problem is none of these or anything else the king possesses will earn him the obedience of his subjects.
However, if the subjects believe the king, or better still the kingdom, is good and so ordained by God, they will generally do as they are told. This is broadly the spiritual aspect of the kingdom. Notice, it happens because the kingdom takes up residency in the heads of the people who live in it. This applies to the king, his subjects and in fact their enemies too. This is what Paul means by powers and principalities. There is in the view of Christians one ruler who is not divinely ordained but is in essence divine. Our calling is to know God and this means repeatedly unseating an unending procession of powers that seek our allegiance, often in very subtle ways.
The reason we do this is because we have a natural instinct to put our own survival first. Whatever is out there that promises to earn our allegiance, will be placed at the centre of our lives.
This is known as idolatry and I intend to write a series on this theme during advent (for reasons which will become apparent). Even something which seemingly has nothing to do with the powers is filtered through our distorted vision of what is right. I fall in love, the way I express that love is through my sinful nature. I learn from the media. I buy valentine cards. I buy loads of things. Today we live in a consumer society, so our lives are expressed in terms of consumerism.
That's enough for now but it gets much more difficult as I will explain next time. For now, remember it is the sin that is the problem, not the sinner. God loves sinners because he can see the person captured by all the crap.
I've always been fascinated by the character Crown in Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess. He is one of the villains (I'll tell you about the other next time). Crown is a brutal man and a bully. This song A Red Headed Woman makes the Choo Choo Jump its Tracks is an example of his style. He sings this in the middle of a prayer meeting during a storm. He boasts that he and God like to fight. But he is the one who is prepared to go out in the storm to rescue the men in the boats. He is lost but on his return he is murdered by Porgy because of the power he has over Bess. He is a man who is impossible to love and yet you can see he might be loved by God. Not so the other villain. (Click on the picture to hear the song.)
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