From a Different Angle

Delwin Brown is dean emeritus of Pacific School of Religion and former professor of Christian Theology at Iliff School of Theology. A Methodist layperson and the author of many books and articles, Brown published What Does a Progressive Christian Believe? just last year. In a chapter that deals with evil and suffering that he titles "Sin: Failing and Hiding" Brown summarizes the discussion with these bullet points:

• Modern discussions of sin have not been very useful. Sin-talk has been anti-world, anti-sex, anti-female, anti-pleasure, and opposed to equality and self-affirmation, just to mention a few of its drawbacks.

• In classical Christian theology, sin takes two forms, pride and sensuality. Already our hackles are raised! We are all very supportive of pride, and why should anyone think sensuality is a sin?

• By "pride" the tradition meant excessive self-regard in relation to others, assuming for oneself more than that which one is entitled. ""Sensuality" meant the opposite failure, thinking of oneself less highly than one ought to think.

• Viewed in terms of the two great commandments, sin is loving too much or loving too little any part of the inter-connected web of life, from God to all of those whom God loves and in whom God is incarnate.

• The more insightful Christian traditions ask, "Why is our failure to love as we ought so persistent and pervasive?" The answer it gives has to do with self-deceptions, hiding the truth from ourselves.

• Sin is not simply the failure to love properly. It is that failure, accompanied by the pretense that we have loved as we should. We hide our failure, even from ourselves!

• The doctrine of "original sin" is not a denial of human goodness, and it is not about sex. It is about layers of evil -- racism, sexism, consumerism, egotism, etc. --structured into our existence. We begin our lives in the midst of these.

• Christian tradition "suspects" that we rather happily acquiesce to the evil structures in which we find ourselves. Our failings build into unjust and self-serving structures....and we find them to be quite comfortable!

from Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe? A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious (New York: Seabury Books, 2008).