Elliot Ritzema

Tag: Sin

  • Book Review: Our Favorite Sins

    There is a paradox at work in modern Christianity. On the one hand, it is popular to think that the gospel has primarily to do with how to handle sin (what Dallas Willard calls “the gospel of sin management”). On the other, we’re terrible at actually dealing with sin. All too often, the response to persistent sin is “try harder,” but this technique often leads to short-term results and long-term failure.

    Todd D. Hunter (author of The Accidental Anglican) has written a book about how to deal with temptations to sin that doesn’t begin and end with “try harder.” He begins by saying that at the root of persistent sins is disordered desire—the “tyranny of what we want.” Desires are good to have, but we are tempted to pursue them destructively. Overcoming temptation starts with recognizing those desires and learning how they can be directed in more positive ways.

    Hunter uses research from the Barna Group that indicates the top five temptations Americans deal with are anxiety, procrastination, overeating, overuse of media, and laziness. He spends a chapter each looking closely at these temptations, but these chapters are helpful even for people who do not struggle with those particular temptations. He spends each one talking about how to defeat temptation by reordering desires and becoming people who, “having feasted on God, his desires and purposes for us, would not entertain temptation” (63–4).

    In the latter part of the book, Hunter focuses on “ancient and fruitful” ways that the Church has historically dealt wit temptation by reordering desires. These include silence, solitude, liturgical prayers, sacraments, and the lectionary.

    This is a book on sin and temptation that I would recommend, for two reasons: First, since its goal is getting at the root of temptation rather than the symptoms. Second, it relies on the collected wisdom of the historic Christian Church to give guidance on reordering those desires that enslave us.

    Note: Thanks to Thomas Nelson for a review copy of this book. I was not asked to give a positive review.

    Second note: Two of my fellow Regent alumni are thanked in the acknowledgements, so that is another point in the book’s favor!

  • The Nature of the Cure Tells the Nature of the Disease

    Recently I’ve been listening to Victor Shepherd‘s lectures from a class called “Theology of the Human Person.” I’ve never taken a class from Shepherd, who teaches at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, but Regent College sells some of his lectures through Regent Audio. I’ve listened to a series of his lectures on historical theology, and another lecture on Calvin and predestination, and have enjoyed them a great deal.

    Here is a quote from Theology of the Human Person, on how people gain knowledge of sin:

    A knowledge of redemption alone generates a knowledge of sin. An apprehension of the cure acquaints you with the nature and scope of the disease. The cure defines the ailment. Reconciliation highlights the nature and the fact of alienation….

    Can sinners, of themselves, know themselves to be sinners? No. Only the grace of redemption acquaints us with the fact that we are sinners. Sinners of themselves can know themselves to be guilty, self-alienated, fed up, frustrated, lethal—but sin by definition is a defective relationship with God. Who is the God with whom we are defectively related? And how do we know that we are defectively related to him? All of this has to be revealed to us. This is not naturally knowable….

    If the cure discloses the nature of the disease, we ought never to preach on sin without preaching of sin forgiven. We ought never to preach on estrangement without preaching on estrangement overcome in Christ. Because only the overcoming of estrangement acquaints us with the nature of the estrangement. I think that in church, we have preached many times on sin, and very lamely, and too lately, gotten around to sin forgiven. We left people in a worse condition than ever, and we made them bigger and better moralists.

    If you preach on sin without preaching on sin forgiven you’re going to fall into the moralistic trap.If you think that the moral person is any closer to the kingdom than the immoral person, then you think that the Pharisee is going to go into the kingdom ahead of the [tax collector]. Jesus says the harlots and the tax collectors go into the kingdom first because the one thing they have is no illusion about the fact that they’re moral. Moral people always manage to convince themselves that they’re not sinners.