Sunday’s Sermon: Original sin, the wrath of God, and Jesus as the substitute payback.
February 19, 2008
On Sunday I expressed that if I only had the orthodox version of substitutionary atonement to believe in it would be hard for me to be a Christian. This doctrine states that since Adam and Eve we have all fallen from God. Since God is a God of justice and wrath and his honor has been assaulted, he demands payback. Since we are so sinful and cannot provide enough sacrifice to reconcile the books, God sends his Son, Jesus Christ, to die for us instead.
I hoped to refute this doctrine, claiming that God is not a God of wrath but a God of love and forgiveness as expressed in Jesus Christ, God’s Word made flesh. The attributes of God are no different than those of Jesus who said, “you’ve heard it said, and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say… forgive 7 times 70.
I also questioned the orthodox view that the Adam and Eve story is about a fall. While the orthodox Christian church claims it so, the Hebrews didn’t seem to see it as such and since they wrote the story maybe we ought to pay attention to them. I suggested that maybe the story was about the existential condition of all humans, who have been created with an insatiable appetite. Could it be that our insatiable soul is not a bad thing as it drives us to evolve and grow and mature. It becomes a bad thing when we devour every thing in our path in order to feed it, harming our planet, our neighbors our selves and disobeying God in the process, but the appetite is not the problem, our refusal to live with some hunger pains, and with uncertainty is the problem. Maybe the story of Adam and Eve and their exile from the garden is really a gift as it forces us to grow up and leave the perfect world of certainty and protection. Anyway this was the jist of the sermon. Any comments?
