Any occupation that is described as a "sin professional" should be something a lot more fun than a Lutheran minister.  LOL!

I never thought about it, though --- all these ministers and preachers, etc. are basically out of jobs if the notion of "sin" is repealed; they all have a very prosaic vested interested in making sure "sin" never goes away.  Weird.

Aug 30, 2009 -- 8:53AM, stardustpilgrim wrote:

Aug 29, 2009 -- 7:55PM, Blü wrote:

teilhard

You're a sin professional, of course.

Please give us your expert view: is sin objective? 

How does it work?

I'm not speaking for teilhard. He will probably disagree with me.

To sin means essentially to have a wrong relationship to reality, to have a misperception of how the universe is structured.

This is our own fault, and not the sense of Augustinian "original sin". He got that quite wrong and it has been a burden on the Western Church ever since.

Our Birthright is to have a relationship with God, you could say a correct relationship to reality, seeing the world aright.

But we all, like Esau, dispise our birthright and sell it for "a bowl of beans". That was his "sin". That is, we have an incorrect priority of values. (His brother Jacob bought the birthright for a bowl of beans, Jacob who eventually was given the new name Israel, but that's Part 2, the Blessing).

We are not born separated from God because of "Adam's" sin (Augustine's erronous idea, not accepted by The Eastern Orthodox Church or Celtic Christianity). We are all born with an intimate connection with God. However, that intimate connection gets severed because of our own individual choices (what the Bible actually teaches is that we die, spiritually, because we sin, not that we sin because we are spiritually dead because of Adam's sin).

So, to sin means to believe a lie, to believe what's good for us is bad and what's bad for us is good. It's just that simple. To believe a lie and then act upon that belief.

The fact that the Church has itself sinned on many counts (gotten a wrong conception of reality, and continues to act upon that wrong conception), doesn't absolve of us of our own distorted view of reality, our own sin.

We are each responsible for our own distorted view of how the universe is structured, and our actions based on those distortions.

The mission of Jesus was to restore our severed link to God, to give the capacity to see the world aright, again. Tombs of theology have been written on just exactly how he did that (yes, tombs was the word I was looking for). But essentially, Jesus was all about transformation, here, now. You don't have to have correct theology to begin that process. Theology probably gets in the way more than it helps, like choking on a gnat yet swallowing a camel.

So, IMhO, most of us here are on the road with the wish of "seeing the world aright". The next step in the right direction is all that matters.

And, that bears a direct relationship with the NT definition of sin, which means, to step in the wrong direction (to miss the mark).

[If you look at the life of Jesus, he was more concerned about getting people to take their next step in the right direction, not about correcting their theology, although he did do that too, on occasion, mostly with the Pharisees].

You don't even have to believe in God to take the next step in the right direction.

And, the greatest error of the Western Church is to give believers the false impression that they have completed the journey, when they have merely taken another step in the right direction. 

The only thing that stops possible movement on the road, is physical death.

sdpilgrim       

Actually,

I think that the above is a very GOOD

Discussion of The Problem called, "Sin" ...

stardust

We are each responsible for our own distorted view of how the universe is structured, and our actions based on those distortions.

Then it's important that we concentrate very hard on finding out what's true in reality.

A view teilhard has no interest in.

Aug 31, 2009 -- 6:02AM, Blü wrote:

stardust

We are each responsible for our own distorted view of how the universe is structured, and our actions based on those distortions.

Then it's important that we concentrate very hard on finding out what's true in reality.

A view teilhard has no interest in.

Actually,

I am DEEPLY Devoted to having as FULL an Orientation

 -- to ( REAL ) "Reality" -- as is Humanly possible,

hence my CONTINUAL Active Embrace

of The Natural Sciences

AND Religious Faith Traditions,

AND Literature and Arts,

and ALL "kinds" of Human Explorations

of Meanings and Truth ...

Aug 24, 2009 -- 10:42AM, Kwinters wrote:

I have just today learned of Hypatia of Alexandria, a female pagan mathematician who was murdered by a Christian mob.

'One day in March 415, during the season of Lent, her chariot was waylaid on her route home by a Christian mob, possibly Nitrian monks led by a man identified only as Peter, who is thought to be Peter the Reader, Cyril's assistant.

The Christian monks stripped her naked and dragged her through the streets to the newly Christianised Caesareum church, where she was brutally killed. Some reports suggest she was flayed with ostraca (potsherds) and set ablaze while still alive, though other accounts suggest those actions happened after her death...'

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia_of_Alexand...

 

There was a (foreign) film made about her in 2009, I think named Agora. It's stars Rachel Weisz. She was on Charlie Rose some weeks ago talking about a USA release. It looks awesome (except, of course, for the ending described above). I've been looking for it locally (where a couple of theaters show independent and foreign films).

sdp