FALLEN
One aspect of Christianity that we accept but don’t seem to really deal with is our fallenness. We are comfortable with the notion of fallenness as it pertains to the pre-Christian. A person who does not know Christ does not have what Christians have: they are called lost, unchurched, etc. They are living with the full impact of the fallenness of mankind, the wound sustained in the garden of Eden, to which healing is not possible until the precious blood of Christ is applied to it.
But what about on the other side of a salvific encounter with Christ? How much of what we do as Christians is, or can be, impacted by our fallenness, regardless of our attempts at Biblical fidelity? We have to come to grips first with the fact that because we are saved does not mean that we no longer have fallen tendencies. Any honest Christian – one who is seeking to walk with Christ daily – repents regularly of sins he or she is convicted of. Thus she or he is coming face to face with the fallenness that is part of the human condition and does not go away when Christ comes in. What Christ offers us is forgiveness for sin and a future inheritance in His kingdom. What Christ does not offer us (at least according to my reading of Scripture, and perhaps my theological biases, along with a healthy dose of 42 years of living) is the promise of never sinning again while we are in the flesh. Even the Apostle Paul admitted struggling with sin, he who was entrusted with communicating in large measure what Christ intended for the people who would confess His name and represent Him on earth.
But for the Christian can and does his fallenness impact his theological predispositions, church culture, and even his self-image? Is the Christian exempt from the impact of her fallenness as she deals with life in Christ? If she is what is she to do? If he is, to where does he turn?
Scripture of course, correct? But if one is reading Scripture through fallen glasses, how can he know that he is grasping what God intended? If one is thinking with a well-meaning yet still somewhat bent theological thinker, how can she achieve the understanding God intends?
For me the answer is community. Talking with our chronological contemporaries and reading our chronological predecessors, we must humbly take our issues before the Word and interact with others to see how we can move forward in this Christian life. This community has to be diverse, though. If it is not, then it will suffer the impact of group-fallenness. For the natural result of a group of people who are fallen but vibe on key cultural issues is a potentially fallen culture, a culture which can become a stagnant pool of dead religion than a life-filled river of faith in action.
The very fact that we seem to set up scenarios for ourselves in which we seek to avoid the impact of the collision of cultures so that the impact of our fallenness on our faith can be confronted, reveals our fallenness…
But what about on the other side of a salvific encounter with Christ? How much of what we do as Christians is, or can be, impacted by our fallenness, regardless of our attempts at Biblical fidelity? We have to come to grips first with the fact that because we are saved does not mean that we no longer have fallen tendencies. Any honest Christian – one who is seeking to walk with Christ daily – repents regularly of sins he or she is convicted of. Thus she or he is coming face to face with the fallenness that is part of the human condition and does not go away when Christ comes in. What Christ offers us is forgiveness for sin and a future inheritance in His kingdom. What Christ does not offer us (at least according to my reading of Scripture, and perhaps my theological biases, along with a healthy dose of 42 years of living) is the promise of never sinning again while we are in the flesh. Even the Apostle Paul admitted struggling with sin, he who was entrusted with communicating in large measure what Christ intended for the people who would confess His name and represent Him on earth.
But for the Christian can and does his fallenness impact his theological predispositions, church culture, and even his self-image? Is the Christian exempt from the impact of her fallenness as she deals with life in Christ? If she is what is she to do? If he is, to where does he turn?
Scripture of course, correct? But if one is reading Scripture through fallen glasses, how can he know that he is grasping what God intended? If one is thinking with a well-meaning yet still somewhat bent theological thinker, how can she achieve the understanding God intends?
For me the answer is community. Talking with our chronological contemporaries and reading our chronological predecessors, we must humbly take our issues before the Word and interact with others to see how we can move forward in this Christian life. This community has to be diverse, though. If it is not, then it will suffer the impact of group-fallenness. For the natural result of a group of people who are fallen but vibe on key cultural issues is a potentially fallen culture, a culture which can become a stagnant pool of dead religion than a life-filled river of faith in action.
The very fact that we seem to set up scenarios for ourselves in which we seek to avoid the impact of the collision of cultures so that the impact of our fallenness on our faith can be confronted, reveals our fallenness…
posted by Wayne H. Stapleton at 11:20 AM
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