Confessions of a Liberal

I figured that the Fundies have taken their fair share of potshots, and it's now time to give the Liberals their 15 seconds of fame. LOL. What's funny to me about this is that I've never considered myself a Lib, and despite what most Fundies would say about me, I still don't. I think of myself as a conservative with liberal leanings. But I guess labels aren't that important.

I was doing some thinking while lying in bed this morning and trying to go back to sleep. Over the last year I've come to really love and value the liberal Christ followers in the world. It wasn't all that long ago that I joined my Fundy brothers and sisters in eyeing them askance and privately wondering if they were really even saved. They've since become my refuge.

I think this is because Libs are so much more open and forgiving when it comes to weakness and failings, because they are patient and understanding about the fact that spirituality is a journey, and because they recognize that being a Christ follower is as much about befriending the sinner as it is about becoming ever more pure and holy.

But for all the things I think the Libs have right, there's a weakness in us that troubles me: we tend to see sin as something that isn't that big a deal. In some ways this is good, because it enables us to do all the wonderful things I just mentioned, but on the other hand this is not good, because while God forgives our failings, He really does hate sin. Most Fundies will harp on this point until you want to beat them until they are black and blue. They emphasize God's holiness as the reason for this hatred of sin. They're partially right, but I'm coming to wonder if God's hatred for sin is motivated primarily because of what it does to His creations, not because He simply arbitrarily hates it. Or put another way, it's not sin because it's inherently evil and insidious (in most cases); it's sin and God hates it because it separates us from Him and causes harm or pain to come into our lives.

I don't know how accurate that is, or even how clear I've managed to make it, but I do know that once you begin exploring the idea, you realize it's very different from the Fundy concept of sin. The Fundy concept says that sin is evil and God hates it; therefore, when we sin it separates us from God. But what if the evilness of sin isn't arbitrary? What if it's only evil because it hurts us and makes it hard for us to connect with God? I'm not saying this is the case; I'm just saying "what if." You might think of it like a drug. The drug isn't arbitrarily bad in and of itself. What makes it bad is the harm it does.

I realize there are some holes in that perspective, which is why I haven't embraced it, but I think it's worth exploring nonetheless. However, I've strayed from my original point, which is that Libs have a tendency not to take sin as seriously as they should. I've been having some discussions in recent weeks and months with some liberal friends regarding some of the things the Bible specifically points to as sin. We aren't discussing matters that are gray areas or issues that deal with "Christian liberties"; we're talking about behaviors that are unequivocally labeled as sinful. Despite this, we each have to admit that to us some of these behaviors don't seem sinful. We know this is what the Bible says, and we may even have some understanding of why God declares that behavior sinful, but to our hearts and minds it doesn't seem sinful.

It was this that I was thinking on this morning, and I couldn't help but think of the scripture verse that forms one of the major themes in the book of Judges. It says that in those days every man did what was right in his own eyes. And if you ever read the book of Judges, you'll discover that there was some pretty heinous shit going on. People were completely disregarding God's commands, and the result was chaos and pain. I think this is something that we Libs need to be mindful of. We may not like or agree with everything God says; we may not understand everything God says, but when we choose to do what's right in our own eyes when that contradicts what God says is right, we're bound to make a mess of things.