Communication Breakdown Part 2

In Part 1, we began to think about the vocabulary we use when talking about Christian things, especially to people who don’t have a church background. Worship leaders, service leaders, and preachers alike, habitually speak an “insider language” of technical religious words and phrases that are understood only by long-term churchgoers who, even then, will have diverse understandings of what they actually mean. How well can the average congregant explain the meaning of words such as “saved,” “redemption,” “salvation,” “atonement,” “sin,” and “holiness”—words that pepper our church services week in, week out—in everyday, non-religious language? This matters, because unless we’re able to do that, our core Christian language will not be “signposting” anything meaningful.

The proliferation of these words and phrases week-to-week (with little if any translation or explanation) is, to my mind, down to a combination of three things. The first is that the “insiders” (the regular churchgoers who form the vast majority of the weekly audience) have gotten used to them. Which enables us to be—dare I say?—lazy about using them without a second thought. The occasional unchurched guest or visitor is really not on the radar. The second is that Christians are familiar with them in Bible passages, which means they’re “the Word of God,” and hence, presumed not to be tampered with. Evangelicals, especially, take comfort that we’re being “biblical” when we’re using them (and gets a bit worried if we’re not).  And finally—whisper it quietly—we may not be quite sure what some of these words and phrases mean ourselves, so we’d be risking embarrassment if we chose alternative language (that simply confirmed we didn’t understand them!).  

Even a cursory examination suggests that none of these is a good reason. The truths that these religious words and phrases are referencing are not intrinsic to particular words themselves (especially English words). The truths the words are pointing to lie beyond them; the words we use are merely “signposts.” And if they are not signposting anything meaningful anymore, then we need new ones. Truths do not change, but the words, phrases, metaphors and figures of speech that we use to communicate them must be continuously open to change, as language evolves.       

I said we would look at some examples this week, and where better to start, perhaps, than with the word “sin.” How often in church do we hear that word spoken? And yet, how often is it explained? How often is it “translated” into words and concepts that the unchurched guest or visitor (and for that matter, younger Christians) can readily grasp and relate to? Not least because sin is a word that no-one uses outside of church circles.    

So what does “sin” mean? If we consult the fount of all knowledge—Google—we find a range of ideas, invariably beginning with the religious dimension. The Oxford Dictionary says it’s “an immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law”; hence the phrase, “a sin in the eyes of God.” Merriam-Webster similarly characterizes it as “an offense against religious or moral law,” “transgression of the law of God,” and “a vitiated* state of human nature in which the self is estranged from God.”

*A “vitiated state” is one which is diminished, impaired, or corrupted.

Although the dictionary definitions of sin—and, I suspect, most Christians’ attempts to explain it—begin from the standpoint of “breaking God’s laws,” we run into an immediate problem when we’re asked (sincerely) whereabouts in the Bible God’s laws (that we’re in danger of breaking) are to be found. Offering examples is relatively easy—some of the famous Ten Commandments would no doubt spring to mind: don’t kill, don’t steal, and so on—but nowhere in the Bible are they all found together. To answer the question, we need to have fingers and thumbs throughout the Bible, quoting verses taken from here, there, and everywhere. When we’re focused on explaining sin as the violation of God’s laws, this presents something of a problem. Especially if we’re pairing it with ideas such as “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) and “If we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).   

Don’t mishear me—I’m not saying those verses are incorrect. I’m talking about our ability to explain what all that looks like to the average unchurched person who may have a very  limited personal sense of their own “sinfulness.” And good luck if you’re a Calvinist, trying to sell someone the idea of their “total depravity” as a human being.  

Once the unchurched person has reviewed their life and established that they have never stolen anything (aside perhaps from an occasional ballpoint pen from the office) and never knowingly murdered anyone, we may feel forced to up the ante by quoting Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:22: “Anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire in hell.” On the one hand this serves a purpose in establishing that even small sins are sins before God, but the danger is that it makes God seem petty and pernickety. Damning people to eternal conscious torment (which is the standard way that evangelicals present “hell”) for saying “You fool” seems OTT in the extreme (especially if the person to whom we were speaking clearly is a fool . . .). Borrowing a ballpoint pen seem to fall into the same category, unless it’s on an industrial scale.  

I think unchurched people can grasp that if there is a God, then being accountable to him for how we have lived this life (the actions we’ve taken, the decisions we’ve made, especially the ones that have harmed people) is a reasonable expectation—after all, that’s what all forms of justice are about: moral accountability before an objective third party who embodies justice.

But if we try to explain everyone’s guilty status as the result of something called “original sin”—in other words, that something Adam and Eve did is the reason we do things that are wrong—then explaining how our sin is still our fault may be hard work. Original sin sounds like it’s a tendency that’s programmed into human nature—in other words, that we’re all doomed to be sinners before we even start. I suggest we should put the doctrine of original sin on the back burner (with apologies to Augustine, who first came up with it, four centuries after Jesus).   

Another challenge in explaining sin is that it’s surely the case that not all sins are equal; all criminal justice systems are based on that principle. We no longer hang hungry children for stealing a loaf of bread. Is the implication that God still would? In God’s justice system, does even the tiniest sin (ballpoint pen-borrowing, “you fool” calling, or loaf of bread stealing) warrant a sentence of eternal conscious torment in the fires of hell for those who don’t believe in Jesus?       

You may think I’m being facetious. I’m not. I’m simply encouraging us to think through how we are going to communicate these religious words and concepts meaningfully—life-changingly—to audiences that are not steeped in them and do not automatically accept the self-evidently authoritative status of our favourite Bible verses that feature them. The onus has to be on us to make them make sense—to “sell them,” if you will—using everyday language.

Although dictionary definitions of sin invariably begin with “breaking God’s laws,” that probably isn’t the easiest place for us to start in communicating it to a non-religious audience. Here Wikipedia is helpful, when it adds that “any thought, word, or action considered immoral, selfish, shameful, harmful, or alienating might be termed ‘sinful’.” This frames sin in personal relational terms that everyone can relate to. Indeed, sin as “selfish behaviour, harmful behaviour, and alienating behaviour, which harms us and others,” is not a bad place to start—behaviour that leads and contributes to a world which is not as God would have it; that harms human life rather than enhancing it as God desires (see, for example, John 10:10).   

Wiki makes another interesting observation: “Each culture has its own interpretation of what it means to commit a sin.” This might sound like it’s saying that sin is subjective—determined by the culture we live in, rather than by what the Bible says—but that is to miss the point. Each culture has particular understandings of “thoughts, words, and actions that are immoral, selfish, shameful, harmful, or relationally alienating” that we can tap into to help people to “get it.” All cultures share common understandings of some sins—such as murder, violence, and theft—but the list and its relative weightings will shift over time. For example, in recent decades western culture has developed a greater awareness of sins like racism, sexism, exploitation, and discrimination.

But although contemporary examples can be helpful, for people to “get it,” the opposite can also be the case. To the extent the church wants to call things “sin” that society in general simply cannot conceive as wrong—the most obvious current example being same-sex partnerships, which conservative evangelicals want to make into a hill to die on, but the rest of society can’t see what all the fuss is about—it will have its work cut out. An interesting question from a missional perspective (introducing people into a relationship with Jesus) is how far adrift in perceptions of “right and wrong” the church can afford to be from the world in which it lives and ministers. Selling what society calls "homophobia” (which schools have long taught as being in the same category as racism and sexism) as a divine attribute that the potential convert should buy into may be a tall order.  

I envisaged this would be a two-part series, but since we’ve only managed to cover sin this week it will need to become three parts! Next week, we’ll take a stab at “saved” and “salvation.”