Fun With Hamartiology

My friend Wes and I have remained good friends for so many years because we disagree about so many things.

We enjoy playfully butting heads over life, prayer, politics, practice, and theology. And on some level we regard each other with great love, respect and admiration — even though he’s always wrong.

Yesterday he came over early and treated me to breakfast at Dave’s Dinner (I ought to own stock in that place) where our conversation ranged from personal issues to global corporate corruption.

We returned to my house where we puffed our pipes and talked for another three hours.

I’m trying to convince Wes, who is a Greek geek, to translate the Bible into modern English; he resists saying the King James Bible is clear enough to be understood by anyone who wants to.

But mainly our conversation focused on sin.

Wes pointed out a phrase often found in Ezekiel and Jeremiah about how mankind sins to provoke God to wrath. If I understand him correctly, Wes feels sin is deliberate, active, and intentional. Hatred of God and rebellion against Him.

I think Wes gives mankind too much credit for thought beforehand.

I think we blunder into sin without thought more than as a result of deliberate action. We live in an atmosphere so sin-laden that we seldom realize that things are sin. We just see them as the way things are and the normal way things are done. We live no more aware of sin than a fish is aware of water.

Wes pointed out the Scripture in Ezekiel where God says to the prophet:

Hast thou seen this, O son of man?
Is it a light thing to the house of Judah
that they commit abominations which they commit here?
For they have filled the land with violence,
and have returned to provoke Me to anger;
and lo, they put the branch to their nose.

At this point I veered away from the doctrine of sin to question the phrase “they put the branch to their nose”. I have no idea what that means. On one hand, I think of the phrase, “Wake up and smell the roses” and on the other hand, I envision a dog sniffing out a bush to pee on. I’m not sure which way Ezekiel meant it when he said sinners put the branch to their nose.

After Wes and I discussed corporate sin (gas companies, mortgage lenders and CEO profits) we moved on to political sins.

This week New York governor Eliot Spitzer got caught paying $5,500 to a prostitute. That’s one wicked price to pay! Now many, including Wes, feel Spitzer should be put out of office for moral turpitude.

I contend that the man’s sex life, while wrong as a sin against God and his wife, has no bearing on his ability to govern and he should remain in office. After King David screwed Bath-Sheba, Uriah’s wife, God still allowed him to govern and blessed him.

“Spoken like a true Clinton defender,” Wes said.

Wes teases me about being a Democrat while he remains unenlightened.

After we disagreed about sin on global, corporate, and political levels, we talked about personal sin and personal temptations.

No reason to reveal the stuff Wes said, but we got a hardy laugh about a sin I’m struggling with at the moment — I want to steal an ashtray.

Yes, the lure of petty theft tempts me continually. Has all my life.

And even though I have a cabinet full of ashtrays, since I saw a unique one at a neighbor’s home last week, I’ve been obsessed with ways I can steal it.

“But you haven’t given in to that temptation,” Wes said.

“Yes, but I still may. I’m trying to figure out how to steal it,” I said.

Isn’t that pathetic?

I don’t need that ashtray. I have plenty of my own ashtrays. But I’m still lured by that one. I’d bet that if I were to ask, my neighbor would even give the thing to me, but I want to steal it without her knowing that I took it!

Isn’t that pathetic?

Rebellion against God or unthinking stupidity. Either way sin makes little sense.

But soon our conversation turned to happier things; we left off talking about the nature of sin and began talking about personal redemption.

We talked about the magnificence of Christ in dying for the two of us personally and for people in general.

We talked about the wonderment we each feel at God’s love.

We talked about how we often question the love of God as we see bitter life circumstances all around us daily.

Yes, God’s love is not always evident, in fact it is often obscure or downright invisible, which makes His love all the more an object of splendor and wonder at those rare times we are aware of it.

This morning I came across a quote from the 19^th Century British preacher Charles Spurgeon where he said, “We were mingled with the mire: we were as when some precious piece of gold falls into the sewer, and men gather out and carefully inspect a mass of abominable filth, and continue to stir and rake, and search among the heap until the treasure is found”.

I think Wes and I agreed that the love of Christ resembles the Spurgeon quote. That for us the Lord God came down into the worst filthy mire of sin. He came of His own accord. We nailed Him down like a bug on a card and let Him wiggle there on naked display till He died. But the Lord of Life, by His resurrection, raises us up too.

No sin, even that one, is greater than God’s love.

Whether we drifted thoughtlessly into sin or whether we deliberately provoked God, makes for an interesting conversation about hamartiology, but the greatness and splendor of God Almighty remains beyond words.

Beyond wonder.

Well, enough about Christian fellowship!

This week I’ve done nothing but enjoy food and conversations with Ginny, Donald, Helen, Maggie, Marlin, Jennifer, neighborhood watch folks, Officer Grant, Barbara, and Wes.

It’s time for me to finish painting our house.

It would be a sin not to.