Once upon a time, I was having a conversation with She Who Is More Learned Than I, and She made a comment about the prevalence of the language of “brokenness” these days–an abundance of use that has come at the expense of the language of “sin”.
More recently, I have been working in two areas at once. On the one hand, I have been teaching a class on the cross in the New Testament. Part of this course is working through various models of the atonement, studying how they conceive of the problem of sin and how Jesus’ death provides the solution.
On the other hand, I have been writing about sex and homosexuality for my book on Jesus and Paul. Doing this, I was struck by the way that much contemporary conversation about sexuality has distanced sexual practice from something that might be labeled “sinful” (except in cases of rape, pedophilia, etc.).
And so studying sexuality reaffirmed to me the importance of what I learned in talking to my colleagues and in studying atonement theories: In order to articulate a Christian position on any issue, including sex, we have to work with multiple metaphors.
When we look at atonement theories, these are some of the things we hear:
- The Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many. “Ransom” language imagines us as enslaved to a hostile power.
- By His stripes we are healed. “Healing” language imagines us as wounded or broken and in need of mending.
- Blood poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. “Forgiveness” language imagines us as guilty.
I think the point is this: we are doing well in evangelicalism these days spreading our wings and attempting to fly with a broader array of images about atonement. This opens the door for us to recognize more broadly the effects of sin and thereby celebrate more fully the redeeming work of Christ that delivers us from all sin’s effects. He frees us from our slavery. He heals us from our brokenness. He forgives us for our sins.
But once we’ve so expanded our vision of what living in a sinful world entails, we are confronted simultaneously with the various ways that we need all of Christ in every area of our lives.
If we have anger problems, that not only means we have guilt in our anger that needs to be forgiven, but likely some brokenness in our way of responding to the world and woundedness in our hearts that need to be healed before we can respond to our world with grace and patience. Moreover, if we have such a problem there is a power working to enslave us to this sinful passion from which we need to be freed.
And so I make the modest suggestion that when we deal with sex as a particular issue, we must anticipate that we will see evidence of sinful expressions that need to be forgiven, seemingly inescapable desires from which we need to be freed, and driving forces in broken and wounded hearts and bodies that need to be healed.
To claim that God is not concerned with what we do sexually is to revert to an insufficiently physical gnosticism. To cordon off sex from the realm of our humanity possibly marred by sin is to insufficiently recognize both the need for and extent of Christ’s atoning work.
Absolutely, Daniel, I love your balanced emphasis here. Many friends or theologically like-minded believers in my world tend to be suspicious of the “broken” or “victim” language, and often for a semi-legitimate reason–it can often be used to undermine personal responsibility, guilt and our culpable blame before God. Yet it is also true that, perhaps influenced by hyper-Western models of autonomy and libertarian freedom, many conservative Christians give too much due to the abilities of the human will, and need to be reminded that we are slaves and helpless apart from grace, and that Jesus has compassion on us for being lost, not just mercy for being guilty.
I also think this dual emphasis–victim and culprit–makes far more sense of our mysterious, endlessly complicated and contradictory human experience. Who can accurately hope to understand themselves or others while exluding one of these categories? The result will always be reductionistic.
Harvie Conn used to say that it’s important for preachers to emphasize how people have been sinned against in addition to how they have sinned. Sexual sin is particularly relevant to this point, I think, because most people who have problems in this area have themselves been wronged in the past.
Great post Daniel.
‘In order to articulate a Christian position on any issue, including sex, we have to work with multiple metaphors.’
Very good post, doc.
Perhaps this question is best addressed to a social psychologist but I’m interested in your thoughts on it: why are we so prone to allowing single, rather than multiple, metaphors to overdetermine our theological/ethical views? Why do we latch onto solitary images and thus flatten the complex symphonic witness of scripture to a matter like sex? I wonder if it has something to do with western desire for control (assuming eastern and/or emerging/developing cultures are more comfortable with disparate metaphorical testimony and don’t feel such a need to synthesize everything under one category or metaphor).
Not sure what the explanation is, except that we really can’t think of more than one thing at a time (well, most of us can’t). It’s so easy to run down one path, and takes a concerted sense of effort and will to balance several concerns at once.
I’m sure there’s more to it as well. For example, the one way we approach things tends to be tied to the identity of the certain groups to which we each belong. Conservatives need to trace everything back to the guilt of sin, liberals need to trace everything back to its power, etc. We have something that we think is the solution, and so working out multiple ways to articulate the problem cuts against the grain of our positive claim.
In the circles we used to share, this was clearly paraded around in those whose whole lives were defined by a particular discipleship course. The idea that they might have a chemo drug in hand that wouldn’t be appropriate for say, a broken bone, never occurred to many of those folks. Not out of malice, mind you, just out of sincere conviction that they had gotten hold of the panacea.
Nicely said, Daniel. This also brings attention to the need to have both broad and deep knowledge of the scriptures in order to draw on the rich varieties of language used for many sorts of things.
By using the language of brokenness, you can point out undesirability and discomfort to foster the desire for change, separate from asking for agreement on how the brokeness arose or how to address it. Often we don’t know *why* we wind up where we are, but we are willing to recognize it’s not where we want to be.
Personal culpability – even in the form of wrong adaptations to life – may take a while to recognize.