SIN > Unmasked: Broken Relationship

The Perils of Fencing out God

I am suggesting here that man lives in a four-fold relationship.  Ever, he is relating - poorly or properly - to God, the world, disciples of Jesus and non-disciples.  If he lives ‘according to the Spirit’ as apostle Paul puts it (that is, if He lives in Christ), then renewed relationships form the context of his daily life.  He is a “new creation: the old has passed away; the new has come.”  This is the redeemed, regenerated, rebooted status of humankind.

If, however, he chooses not to live in Christ, then the antithesis of those relationships is the context of his daily life.  This is the un-redeemed, un-regenerated, un-rebooted status of humankind.  And in that state, mankind continues to carry - to bear by himself - both the weight and the consequences of that four-fold relationship being out of whack.


Three key words describe and articulate that state of being in mankind’s life on earth: hostility; guilt; bondage.  Enmity; antagonism; friction; being an ‘enemy’; tend to dominate by nature and it is hard work to mollify God, other people, the environment.  The enmity is exacerbated by guilt: both real guilt (as in actual delinquency) and real feelings of guilt (as in a guilty conscience).  And hostility and guilt are exacerbated by bondage: both actually being unable to shake free and being burdened by a certain sense of helplessness or hopelessness – what some psychologists call the “generalisation of hopelessness”.

Combined (as in a venn diagram), to varying degrees, hostility guilt and bondage overlap producing a dysphoria – a state of unease or generalised dissatisfaction with life, with almost unlimited variability.  The extent to which all three overlap also varies from person to person and from time to time; but this overlap area is a definition of “sin” as a state of being – as comprising our ‘sin nature’.

Un-remediated and un-redeemed, we will always struggle to some extent; and this is, I believe, what very often leads us to conclude and to say ‘well, I’m only human’.  This dysphoria is the ‘natural state’ of human beings not redeemed, regenerated, rebooted.  Few cultures on earth have not recognised this and made varied attempts to both explain it and to remediate it.

Sadly, in our quest to stand by our conviction that “God is dead” and everything about Jesus is myth and legend, we explain all this with a vast array of philosophies, theories, beliefs and so-called scientific explanations.  Fencing out God in this way not only means we become (or manufacture) our own gods; it also means we often wander about lost, while making a lot of loud noise railing against both the ‘darkness’ and the alleged ‘light’ of others.

A few days ago, I happened upon a blog post from Phil Ressler [https://philressler.com/keeping-god-at-arms-length] – worth the read, not the least because it shines a light on a fundamental problem with our modern ‘scientific’ god-denial.

Few are prepared to suspend their unbelief and be even partially scientific enough to seek out evidence and interrogate it for ourselves.  We shut the gate on God and lock it and walk away – dressed in the smugness of our own right-ness.  And another word for our own right-ness is self-righteousness; which (the world over with few exceptions) is expressed in hubris.

A second venn diagram explains that hubris – which, as one dictionary puts it, is “actions of
over-bearing pride or presumption with an excess of ambition.”  And not only do we practise this, we actually affirm and encourage it and very often call it ‘success’ or ‘leadership’ without fully realising hubris is both corrosive and deadly.  It’s the battery acid of daily life and human relationships.

We scrabble around with “eyes wide shut” pretending that only those things we can ‘see’ (hence, ‘seeing is believing’) and scientifically prove are real.  And as we go, we call what we construct “the real world”.  But our ‘real world’ is largely made up of groping in the dark and (therefore) missing the mark and ‘falling short’, and crossing lines of demarcation, transgressing boundaries and limits.

‘Missing the mark’ is an idea borrowed from archery and javelin or spear throwing.  You ‘err’ if you miss your target – either by going wildly off course or by falling short.  In New Testament Greek, this is the word hamartia, one of the words for ‘sin’.

‘Crossing the line’ can be illustrated by reference to today’s car driving: “stay in your lane” will often be the instruction from driving instructors as you learn to drive.  Demarcation or setting perimeters is not uncommon; and going beyond one’s line of demarcation is a transgression (Latin: to go across).  In New Testament Greek, this word is parabasé.  We might hear somebody say ‘you crossed the line there’: you transgressed; you ‘sinned’.

'Living by sight’ goes to the heart of Paul’s teaching on faith.  When we ‘live according to the flesh’ (Romans 8), we prioritise ‘fixing our eyes on what is seen’ (2 Corinthians 4), which leads to our being sucked into the vortex of un-faith.  And ‘whatever does not proceed from faith is sin’ (Romans 14).  When we ‘live according to the Spirit (Romans 8), we prioritise ‘fixing our eyes on what is unseen’ (2 Corinthians 4) – which is Christ and the eternal.

To a greater or lesser degree, we are somewhat like this Russian bear.  And I not only like the picture itself for what it illustrates, I also like it because the barrel is blue – speaking to the ‘conservative’ nature of much of what we get our heads stuck in.

Sadly, we can live with our heads stuck in the blue barrel because a lot of us have a tendency to paint our worldview (our ‘real world’) on the inside of the barrel and don’t really need to have any interest beyond what is painted there.  Because such actions often do not ‘proceed from faith’, they constitute ‘sin’.

Perhaps some of us are more like this snake with its head stuck in an energy drink can: it’s a smaller, narrower world; the snake is venomous; and it’s in pursuit of a sweet artificial energy fix.

Or perhaps we’re like this spider hoping its sinister intent is hidden by digging itself into a hole from which it cannot see the rest of the world.  Not very convincing.

SIN is both nature and product; tree and fruit; spring and water.  And as apostle James, Jesus’ brother, noted in his letter (in the negative): fig trees cannot bear olives; grapevines cannot bear figs; and salt springs cannot produce fresh water.  In stating the obvious (negative) he intends to affirm the opposite (positive): fig trees bear figs; olive trees bear olives; grapevines bear grapes; ‘bad springs’ produce bad water; and ‘fresh springs’ produce good water.  Conversely, as Jesus himself noted, you can tell the nature of a tree by what fruit grows on it.


Both are intended as parable – a short story of a life illustration that teaches us something important for our lives.  Primarily, it is designed to teach us a) that if we want righteous behaviour, useful and productive for life, we have to start with a redeemed, regenerated, rebooted life (and that is God’s speciality).  Which means we need the antidote to ‘sin’; and b) that if unrighteous or self-righteous behaviour is present, ‘sin’ is still in charge and the antidote has not been administered.  Obvious and uncomplicated, one would think; but apparently not.  So many times, our hubris keeps us from exploring the possible and prevents the necessary humility from rising to the surface, thus blocking our redemption, regeneration and reboot.


The old Hebrew prophet Hosea vocalises God with all-too-familiar words: “When they had pasture, they became satisfied, their hearts became proud, and as a result, they forgot me.  So like a lion I will pounce on them.”  Giving up on God because we don’t get what we want doesn’t negate God or render His teaching redundant.  But, as Paul notes in Romans 1, deliberate acts of rejecting or shunning God do lead to the deterioration of our faculties to perceive God or be influenced by His Spirit.  The eternal principle holds true: you reap what you sow.

Next: preferring religion over relationship