Posts Tagged ‘relationship’

Sin: More about Social harm than Moral imperfection??

March 18th, 2008

Last night I had a dream. It was basically like a Tuesday at David and Tara’s but with some new faces. We were talking about sin and I made a comment in my dream about how maybe sin is more social then moral. Then I woke up. I started thinking about my dream… sin being more social then moral…

I’ve always thought that God hated sin because it was morally evil – that it was sort of this something other than God. God was perfect, sin was that which “fell short” of God’s perfection. Sin was something God couldn’t in his perfect nature do Himself – or allow or tolerate. Sin was evil and evil was this something outside of or other than God.

But this morning I started thinking maybe God doesn’t hate sin because it is just some moral evil in and of itself and can’t be done or tolerated by a perfect God… Maybe He hates sin because sin is something that hurts people, that damages relationships, that harms community, that injures society. As I started to think about it I couldn’t think of a single sin that didn’t damage relationships and hurt people (if you can I’d be curious to hear it).

The 10 Commandments are a good place to start – each of them could be argued to be about relationship – relationship with God, with family, with neighbor and with society at large. It’s like God is saying these things hurt you, they hurt others, they hurt society and they hurt your relationship with me – so why do I dislike them? I dislike them because they hurt my beloved creation. And that’s why you should dislike them too.

I think in some ways we have disconnected sin from its social consequences, from its relational focus and have instead made sin a very personal, very internal thing. We have made sin about ME falling short of God’s perfection, instead of about me harming and hurting God and others.

Maybe it’s just me, but I found this to be a really interesting train of thought and it made me look at sin in a really different way.

Rejoicing in the journey -
Beth Stedman

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Quotes on love and marriage for Valentine’s Day

February 14th, 2008

So, I’ve had a blog in some form or another for something like 6 years now and for most of those Valentine’s Day’s I have written an entry to share a number of quotes about love and marriage. I was going back and forth as to whether or not to do this quote collection this year and finally decided to go for it. I hope you all enjoy these quotes on love and marriage this Valentine’s Day J

“I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness…Christ did not teach and suffer that we might become, even in the natural loves, more careful of our own happiness…we shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armor. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it” – C.S. Lewis 

“All married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love. Good battle is objective and honest–never vicious or cruel. Good battle is healthy and constructive, and brings to a marriage the principle of equal partnership.” – Ann Landers 

“Every marriage moves either toward enhancing one another’s glory or toward degrading each other.” – Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III

“Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.” – Mark Twain

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.” – Friedrich Nietzsche 

“Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love, and they blossom when we love the ones we marry.” – Tom Mullen

“Allow your marriage relationship to stretch your love and to enlarge your capacity for love – to teach you to be a Christian. Use marriage as a practice court, where you learn to accept another person and serve him or her. And please don’t limit this ‘love’ to ‘spiritual’ things like praying, preaching and exhorting. Part of the experience of love is delighting each other in very ‘earthy’ ways. This, too, is a biblical truth.” – Gary Thomas

“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.” – Mignon McLaughlin

“Marriage is not a ritual or an end. It is a long, intricate, intimate dance together and nothing matters more than your own sense of balance and your choice of partner.” – Amy Bloom

“Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate.” – Barnett Brickner 

“A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.” – Ruth Bell Graham“

The goal in marriage is not to think alike, but to think together.” – Robert C. Dodds

“Once we enter the marriage relationship, we cannot love God without loving our spouse as well.” – Gary Thomas

Rejoicing in the journey -
Beth Stedman

 

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