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Sin and shalom. What's the connection?
Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., describes sin as “culpable shalom-breaking.” What does that mean? In this episode of “Spiritual Life and Leadership,” Markus Watson discusses what sin is and what we should do about it.
THIS EPISODE’S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:
- To understand sin and shalom, we have to start at the beginning in Genesis.
- Shalom is a good word to describe the world as God created.
- Shalom refers to a comprehensive sense of well-being that touches every aspect of life.
- There is a four-fold nature to shalom (see Episode 3: The Fourfold Nature of Shalom)—shalom with God, with one another, within ourselves, and with the created order.
- Something happened that disrupted world’s shalom—namely, sin.
- We read about the disruption of shalom in Genesis 3.
- The fact that men tend to dominate over women is not a prescription of how God wants things to be. It is a description of how things are because sin has entered our story.
- Cornelius Plantinga, in Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin defines sin as “disruption of created harmony.” It is “culpable shalom-breaking.”
- Plantinga says, “God is for shalom and, therefore, against sin.”
- Sin is “culpable shalom-breaking” because we are responsible.
- We can participate with God in the restoration of shalom.
- I don’t believe human beings are inherently sinful, though we may have a tendency toward sin. We are originally creatures of shalom. We are creatures of both sin and shalom.
- The result of sin is that we have a broken world.
- How do we respond to sin? We surrender to the God who wants to restore shalom.
- We surrender in two ways: 1) confession and 2) living fully into our vocations.
- Confession restores the shalom between us and God. It also restores shalom within ourselves because it heals our shame.
- Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”
- We need to confess to one another. Confessing to a person makes God’s forgiveness tangible.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Life Together, talks about the need to confess to one another.
- Living fully into our vocations is about more than just our jobs. It has to do with all of our callings—as a parent, student, citizen, etc.
- When you live out your vocations you are participating with God to restore shalom in the world.
- God is moving us toward a world of beauty, goodness, healing, and relational health--out of sin and into shalom.
RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS:
- Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin, by Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.
- Life Together, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
- The Four-fold Nature of Shalom, Episode 3 of Spiritual Life and Leadership
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