Posted on by Christina Adams

Attributes vs. Character Traits of God: And Why They Matter

Have you ever heard someone describe God? Chances are you’ve heard words like: Holy, All-Powerful, All-Knowing, Love, Omnipresent, Good, etc. If you’ve read Crazy Love by Francis Chan, or The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer, or heard lists of traits by A.W. Pink or Tony Evans, then you might be familiar with these words and more. But the problem then, is that you may have a mixed understanding of who God is.

Here’s why. When someone says they are going to tell us who God is, we need know if they are actually telling us who God is, or what God is. This is the difference between knowing if we are hearing attributes or character traits. God’s attributes are terms like: omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, Spirit, Triune, eternal, sovereign, and such. These words describe what kind of being God is, but they don’t tell us how God uses these traits. They don’t tell us His character. God is all powerful, but we don’t know, just from this attribute, whether God uses His power for good or for evil. God is everywhere, but we don’t know if He is cares about all He sees. God has all knowledge, but might He use that knowledge to manipulate. God exists eternally, but is He involved in the present.

It is the same as a friend telling us he found someone and then proceeds to say she’s a girl who lives 100 miles away, she’s tall, rich, and has a PhD. With just this information we have no idea if such a girl is good for our friend because we don’t know what she is like. We want to know if she is kind, does she lie, is she someone who can laugh at a good joke, or even has she gotten her money legally. The type of information we have, both about this girl and about God, describe what they are. And God’s attributes are impressive, but they don’t tell us what He is like because we need to know God’s character for that.

Now it would be good to get a specific overview of how God is often represented in some of the lists by Chan, Tozer, and Pink. I’ve included a graph below that compares the lists of traits these three have in their works. There are a few attributes and character traits that all three agree on and some that only two have included. Also, this graph does not mean that these men would not agree with each other on the words others have included that they don’t, and especially for Chan, as he is just giving an overview of Tozer. But many people tend to pull from a list like this to explain God. It is easy to assume with such lists that they are covering much of what needs to be covered but they are still missing some. The list includes character words like: Holy, Just, Loving, Good, Righteous, Wrathful, and Faithful. Such lists can be a little deceiving because you are getting both what God is and how God uses what He is without being told which one is which.

ChanTozerPink
All-KnowingOmniscientKnowledge & Foreknowledge
All-PowerfulOmnipotentPower of God
LoveLovingLoving
HolyHolyHoly
 ImmutableImmutable
 TranscendentSupremacy
 FaithfulFaithful
 GoodGood
 Merciful & GraciousMerciful & Gracious
 SovereignSovereign
EternalEternal & Infinite 
Fair & JustJust  
 Incomprehensible 
 Triune 
 Self-Existent & Self Sufficient 
 Omnipresent 
 Wise 
  Wrath of God
  Patient
  Solitary
  Decrees of God
Synonymous words are on the same line. The list includes attributes in Italics, but also includes certain character words in Bold.

However, rarely in these lists are the full character traits of God given. This is a problem, a big problem because when not all of God’s character traits are given at the same time, then God can seem unbalanced or lop-sided and it can be easy to magnify some traits while diminishing others.

In today’s culture we tend to reduce God’s character even more than it has been reduced in the graph above. There tend to be 3-4 traits that are intended to be the all-encompassing traits of God and they are often pitted against each other with some arguing that God is Holy, Wrathful, and Just/Righteous and others arguing that God is Love. The former tends to place Love under Just and the latter tends to erase everything but Love. Of course, not everyone who brings out these character traits does so with the intent to diminish others, yet while their desire is to be balanced it is hard to do that with just those traits. The complete picture of who God is has gaps. If God’s justice also contains God’s love, then God is primarily a distant judge we should fear who punishes us because that is what we most need. On the other hand, if God is purely love, then evil runs rampant without anyone who will stop it.

Now, it is true that God is Holy, has Wrath, is Just, and is Love, yet that is not all. The problem with this whole debate is not that one side or the other perverts God’s character because both paint an incomplete picture of who God is and both tend to go farther in magnifying their preferred trait than they should.

So, how can we know who God is? The answer to knowing God’s character does not reside in which words are used more in the Bible, or which ones are repeated three times in a row (holy), or are most important to explaining atonement and salvation, or are nouns or adjectives, rather, the answer to God’s character comes from God Himself. How does God want Himself to be known? Who does God say He is?

When God revealed who He is to Moses (Ex. 34:6 & 7), God gave a list of character traits that reveal to us an idea of who He is. He did this so that Israel would know who He is, how He acts, and what He can be relied upon to do. God did not give us a list of His attributes of all the things He has the ability to do, rather He gave a list of character trait. Attributes cannot be chosen. They are the descriptions of us and what we are. Character traits are chosen. They are the boundaries that we have chosen for ourselves to act from on such a habitual, consistent basis that we can be said to embody the traits. This is what God said He chooses to act like. God is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin, and He does not leave the guilty unpunished but punishes them to the third and fourth generations, that is, God is just.

Consider what kind of God these character traits paint. The first trait mentioned is God’s compassion. Com means ‘with’ and passion originally meant ‘to suffer’. This defines God as a God who suffers with others. Compassion is also a trait that is connected to sight or hearing. It is only when Jesus sees the crowd that He has compassion on them. God has compassion on humanity when He sees their plight. So, He watches and suffers with the human pain He sees.

The second is that God is gracious. Often God’s graciousness is mentioned with His mercy and both words are close enough in definition that they can apply to similar situations with similar results with grace giving what is undeserved and mercy not giving what is deserved. The result of both is a freedom that was not there before. But both also assume a generosity by God because He doesn’t just see needs, He gives blessings when they are not required by duty.

The third is that God is slow to anger. Yes, it is true that God does have anger, Psalm 7:11 says that God is a righteous judge who expresses His wrath every day, but the overwhelming majority of the references to God’s wrath say that God becomes angry slowly. And if the times when God’s wrath against a wayward nation is expressed, it is important to realize how long that nation had been acting that way before they were punished. This third trait ultimately is a trait of patience which is also a word used to describe God. God’s patience is His means of seeking to save us. It means there are opportunities. One failure, or even several, does not make us unredeemable forever cast into His anger. His wrath comes slowly with repeated offenses, repeated hardening of hearts, repeated rebellion, and an increase in the championing of wickedness.

The fourth and fifth is that God is abounding in love and He is abounding in faithfulness. He overflows with both. He loves and remains faithful to such degrees that He is able to maintain love for thousands. There is also no mention of the end of His love because His faithfulness preserves His love in equal measures. In the Hebrew, the word used for love here, could more accurately be described as a loving-kindness, a caring. God’s love is not ridged or only a means of His justice, because His love means that He is kind, gentle, and caring with humanity.

The sixth is that God is forgiving. He forgives wickedness, that is the evil things we do. He forgives rebellion, that is the things we know we shouldn’t do, the things He warns us in our spirits not to do, but we decide to do them anyway. And he forgives sin, the things we do that hurt others and separates us from God. All these things God has and will forgive, because that is who He is. He wants there to be relationship and is willing to let our offenses go so that we can return to Him and change our ways.

However, to show also that God is not going to forgive blindly, cheaply without any concern about repentance or the effects of wickedness, rebellion, and sin, God gives this seventh trait that those who are guilty will be punished. No one can say they can hurt others with impunity. There will be consequences for such actions, even more so when younger generations are encouraged in the ways of wickedness, rebellion and sin by their fathers. God justice here is defined and His righteousness too. He always does what is right and just for each situation because He knows what is really going on in our hearts.

God’s character is in every way designed to bring God close to mankind, and to show that He is already and has always been close, involved. Ultimately, all of these traits can be defined by the word ‘good.’ God is good. His goodness is seen by how He is willing to suffer with us, to reach out to us, to wait for us, to care for us, to always be there for us, to correct us, to protect us.

And God’s character traits listed here are repeated over and over, sometimes in part or by reference to God’s revelation to Moses. Whenever Israel interacted with God, these traits were what they relied upon. David, Nehemiah, and Jonah specifically all knew and listed these traits about God using them to direct their own actions and expectations. There are at least 22 passages in the Old Testament that mention three or more of these traits and another 19 that mention two traits, often in the same or similar order as Ex. 34:6 & 7, not counting individual references of one trait. They are all well worth studying.

They are worth studying because God’s character is worth knowing. What God is, His attributes, are important because they show us how big and great God is. But His character is even more important because we know that we can trust Him, trust His goodness, and we can draw near to Him and relate to Him as He has always been there for us. God’s attributes give us awe and appropriate fear. God’s character gives us rest and peace.

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Posted on by Christina Adams

James Clear’s Atomic Habits Review

I was able to read this book on habit creation with a friend. If you want to find ways to create better habits, this would be a great book to check out. And if you want to learn more about it, you can also check out my review!

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Posted on by Christina Adams

On Human Createdness

What does it mean to have been created by someone else? The best way I know how to describe it is to pull from my own experiences as a writer. When I sit down to write a story everything that is in that story comes from inside my mind and heart. I imagine characters, settings, plots, events, villains, struggles, successes. I feel the emotions I want my characters to be described as feeling.

In a crude form, I am the sole source of all that happens in my story. This is primarily true because I am the one making decisions and writing it out. No matter how influenced I may feel from my own inspirations or outside help, I am the one writing it out, often in the way I think best.

As readers, we all know this because when we find a book that is an overwhelming joy to read, we automatically also decide we love the author. Conversely, when we are bored, frustrated, or horrified by what we read, we blame the author as well. Now, there is a small place for things that authors thought they said but didn’t, or accidentally put in their book, like mistakes, and things authors were not actively aware of, like hidden themes, or personal experiences that a reader had the book brings up that would cause them to dislike an author, but in general we all know a good book comes from a thoughtful author.

As the author I have a plan. I create with a purpose. I include rules into my story that can only be broken by my design. I hand-craft my characters to be who I want them to be to make the story work. I am in control.

My characters are a means to an end. They have no choice, they have no desires except what I tell them, and fortunately for them, they are not actually real to feel what happens. Now they are real in the sense that the descriptions or their ‘experiences’ are a reflection of the reality you and I exist in, but they are not real in the sense that in most other respects they are fictional.

That being said, not all authors would describe it that way because some authors would want their characters to be real. They have written these stories that have sparked deep feelings in the authors themselves and so the characters can feel real. Authors will often talk about their characters surprising them as they are writing out the story. They have said things like ‘I don’t know what will happen because my character will just do things that are true to him/her.’ This can seem nice, but it is not really true. What is really happening is that the author is thinking through a situation and limiting the responses to a situation through a lens of their character’s strengths and weaknesses.

To think that my characters, no matter how real they seem to me, are in fact actually real, is to deceive myself.

Now, I have been surprised by ‘a character’ or ‘scene.’ I will be writing and suddenly I’m struck by a plot point or character aspect I had not seen before that moment. It’s part of what makes writing fun. But that surprise did not come from a sentient fictional character speaking to me. It came from my own engagement with the story, characters, and plot. Along with whatever triggers creative ideas to come in the first place.

That is what it means to create, in a very small way, a story world, characters, and a plot. But what does it mean to be created?

For me this is where talking about creative writing begins to blend with theology. If our world was a world where God exerted the kind of control that I can exert over my story, it would not be the world we have and experience now. We would never wonder if we were free or destined. Those thoughts would not exist unless the whole point of God’s story for humanity was for us to wonder about things we would never experientially know.

None of my characters ever wonder if I, the author, exists. Nor do they wonder if they can act outside of the script I have written for them. Why? Because my characters have no free will. They live if I want them to live and they die if I decide they should die. I have no intention of becoming their friend or of them worshipping me for giving them a happy ending. This could probably sound cruel, and if my characters actually were real, yes, it would be cruel.

But I point this out to show how we are not characters in such a story. We are characters in a much better story with a much greater and better Author. God actually cares about His creation and He made us to feel, to live, to love, to act, to wonder, and to freely choose. All so that we would choose to draw closer to Him. I’m not here suggesting that we save ourselves. God draws near to us through Christ, our choice to draw near to Him is our response to His gift. If we never make a decision to draw near to God, then we can never be given a decision because we might realize the first decision was not really what we wanted to do. But if we decide we want God and we want to love God, that decision keeps us from questioning how we got where we are with God in the first place. The more we decide to be with God, the stronger and more secure our connection with Him becomes.

This is what God wants. He wants us to want Him and to want Him for all eternity. God does not need us to want Him, He desires it. And we know this is His desire because we are all characters in His book. We live in a story where we want something bigger, better, and deeper than ourselves. We live in a story where our greatest needs and hurts are provided for and healed in Christ. We live in a story where the greatest peace and truest rest is found only in Him. We live in a world where we desire justice, righteousness, love, compassion, patience, gentleness, and faithfulness simply because of the seeming absence of those traits. The very same things that God is Himself and the very way that Christ rules and will rule over all. So, we long for God whether we know it or not because we are in a story where our Author is also a Character who shows us who the Author is and why we can trust Him.

But what this also means is that we did not make ourselves. Life and existence are given to us by God for a purpose. God also created us to be responsible for ourselves, for others, for the earth. We were created to become mature, not just physically, but spiritually too. This is a process that requires trial and error, perseverance, and patience. But it is all practice for when we will live and reign with Him. We work on our character now, so that God can trust us with greater responsibilities later. Our stories are all just beginning, but like all great stories we get to decide to start the adventure and to face our foes head on. We have to fight against our weaknesses and build up our strengths so that we can withstand the challenges to come. But we always do so with the Author’s aid. It is through Him that all such stories become great.

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Posted on by Christina Adams

How to Respond to Mask/Vaccine Arguments as a Christian

In the last year we have gone from the kind of culture and society we have always known to a life of concern for loved ones, masks, vaccines and an at-risk economy. Not to mention the political debates and frustrations that have only highlighted the split existing in our nation for decades. It has come to the point where things like mask wearing and getting a vaccine are highly political with each side presenting arguments. But how should we respond to these arguments? What can we do to keep our relationships from fraying apart?

Assume both sides have valid arguments (or at least have arguments that should also be considered).

This can be hard, especially if you have read scientific articles or watched clips on the effectiveness/ineffectiveness of masks or vaccines. But part of the problem we have in society right now is that both sides refuse to see the valid arguments of the other side. Often neither side is actually arguing about the same thing. One side might be arguing about one side of science and the other side is arguing about a different part of science. One side is arguing about a fear of the loss of loved ones from sickness and the other side is talking about a fear of the loss of freedom that will lead to the pain and hurt of loved ones.

Trust that your family, friends and neighbors are smart, rational people who can think for themselves and make their own decisions that are best for them.

This is hard too. Especially when it is the norm to call anyone who thinks differently from you ‘dumb,’ ‘an idiot,’ or worse. But the fact is that not everyone is in the same situation. For some people it will make more sense to take precautions, but for others it doesn’t. There is no one-size-fits-all solution when not everyone is impacted in the same way. If we think we are smart enough to know what is best for us and for our families, then we ought to assume the same is true of our family, friends, and neighbors who are making different choices. If we respect their choices, then they have a greater reason to respect our choice. 

Trust God, Be Loving and Gentle, and Speak Truth.

Ultimately, all of our days are in God’s hands and we can trust Him no matter what is going on in the world around us. Trusting Him means that we are not contributing to the fear that is going around, because to do so is to encourage others not to trust God. We should not contribute to the fearfulness that others have, but we should also be wise to the realities behind the fears. If there is truth to be spoken in this debate, it should be spoken. This is especially true if lies are being spread thoughtlessly. Yet, we cannot just crush people with truth, we have to consider our relationship with them first. Should we comment publicly or send a private message? Should we jump into conversations that do not include us? Should we provide evidence to the contrary or just ask questions that will make others think? Every situation will require its own thoughtful response. But one thing is clear. If we wash our hands of the debate, those who are promoting fear will win and will take down innocent lives with them.

While it is easy to want to hide from all the controversy, it is important that to some degree, those of us who want truth, who want to be rational, who trust in God ought to engage with this debate. We should do what research we can to give informed decisions that would be right for us. This is not to say that we have to become outspoken, but just that we ought to know what is going on so that we can give wise, thoughtful responses to those around us. And we ought to remain open to learning something new. After all, we changed so much since the last year, who knows what changes this year might hold.

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Posted on by Christina Adams

Why It’s Good Human Value Comes From God

Is it good for human value to come from God? Here’s some reasons why I’d say yes. Check this video out!

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Posted on by Christina Adams

Jesus Our King

I am not always affected by worship music. Not all worship is musical in nature, although it can feel like that because we tend to not be as careful with the use of our terms as we probably should. That being said, I was quite affected by the worship songs used this Sunday. The last one right before the sermon really hit me as it talked about Jesus our King and just described how high and unmatched He is.

I was reminded of reading Athanasius’ On the Incarnation and his description of Jesus in life as a gladiator, virile and strong[1], who had absolutely no fear. According to Athanasius, Jesus then allowed His enemies to pick whatever opponent (death) they might choose so that He could defeat the worst and show himself to be the greater champion.

And Jesus did defeat death, rising to life and to reign. There is no opponent who could fight Him and win. There is no army that could take His crown or throne. Jesus is King and His reign cannot be ended. He is not silent, or inactive. The fact that He is seated on His throne is proof that He is involved in ruling justly and rightly.

I’d once heard someone say that if Jesus fought the devil it would be a two-hit fight. Jesus would hit the devil and the devil would hit the ground. Perhaps it was that we like the close fights between heroes and villains that much of my early life I considered there to be a more equal match-up between the good and evil in the universe. (Or perhaps it is the infiltration of yin and yang into the Church.)

But it really is not that way at all. Just as when light is turned on in a room darkness is gone, so there is no even remotely comparable match-up between Jesus and the devil. The devil is not even in the same galaxy as Jesus is.

And the beauty and strength of our Savior is that He has all power, all authority, all dominion and yet He whispers to our hearts and calls us to join with Him. He is ever gentle and kind. He cares for the hurting and has compassion on the destitute. And He will right all wrongs and reward all rights.

Jesus Christ is the ruler we have all longed for and He is worthy of our awe, our obedience, our devotion, and our worship.

[1] Athanasius of Alexander, On the Incarnation, Pantianos Classics, England, 1944, trans. Sister Penelope Lawson, 42.

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Posted on by Christina Adams

God Runs a Nursery

A few years ago, I was watching a nineteen-month-old girl who was trying to throw her stuffed dog onto the top of a six-foot-high cabinet. She would jump and throw, jump and throw, throw and jump. Sometimes the dog would hit the cabinet straight on, most often it would fly two feet above her head (a little more than half the size of the cabinet), and occasionally it would hit the cabinet at the five-foot mark.

No matter how many times she threw, she could not throw high enough to reach six feet, but she tried over and over for a good ten minutes. I remember just watching her persistence. Would she always be doomed to miss the mark? No. She just needs to grow a little and to continue to strengthen her muscles. But she so desperately wanted to do something her body was not ready for yet.

It struck me that Christians are often not as old spiritually as they are physically and they do not age spiritually like they do physically. Spiritual maturity takes time, effort, and intention. We can remain immature spiritually all our lives until death even if we lived to be 102, simply by refusing to act or learn.

There is much that can be learned from watching a baby mature. What if babies tried to walk for five days and then gave up because they haven’t even learned how to balance on two feet without holding on to something? It takes them a solid two years to go from not knowing their feet exist to realizing they can use those feet to crawl, stand, walk, run, climb up and down stairs, walk backwards, jump, and kick with relative ease. And yet, if they stayed at that level, they would miss out on all the more things that can be done with feet into realms of dance, sport, style, and speed.

Spiritual maturity comes when we practice using spiritual muscles. We first learn to do the basics and gradually move on into deeper habits of prayer, study, reflection, and relating to God. Yet how many times do we try to do a spiritual discipline and give up after five tries? It can seem so hard to start habits of prayer or reading the Bible or fasting, yet those are the very things that will strengthen our spirit and draw us closer to God.

What would happen if we placed a two year deadline on our practices of a spiritual discipline? And if we did actually set aside that kind of time to it, how often would we find that we have succeeded, at least in some regards, in doing that discipline to the point where we do not struggle at all like we once did?

Have you ever seen Pixar’s Wall-E? We are perhaps more like the people in that movie than we’d like to admit. The people on the ship did not know how to walk because they have lived their whole lives having robots do everything for them. Like those adults who have never stood, when we first become a follower of Christ we now have access to a spiritual body that is brand new even when our physical body is older.

However, we are not used to having to start from scratch. Our physical bodies have outgrown our spirits, and unlike a baby or young child who does not mind the struggle (mostly because everything is equally a struggle) we now see struggle as an issue we shouldn’t have anymore.

We have forgotten that we once struggled for years to learn how to pronounce words with a ‘th’, a matter only made worse because about the time that we got a handle on it our front teeth fell out. We don’t remember how hard it was to write our letters or read an easy book. We are frustrated by struggle, by our inability to focus, by our lack of desire, by how hard it is. What we can learn about a child is that they don’t really care about that. They just try again the next time. And this is how they succeed.

God’s goal with us on earth is to take us through, not only physical maturity, but spiritual maturity, which can take much longer. But He is ever patient and willing to wait through our seeming failures because He knows the skills and muscles we are building up underneath. Everything we do is an opportunity for growth.

It was only a few months later that the same girl I was watching could toss her toy onto the top of the cabinet, with relative ease. Her determination and practice paid off. She never cried at not being able to do it, nor did she become so frustrated by failure that she gave up. She just ignored her failures and tried again all the while her body was growing and her muscles were strengthening until she had the ability to do what she wanted to do. All it took was practice, patience, and time.

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Posted on by Christina Adams

What is a Worldview? Video

Check out this video where I define ‘worldview’.

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Posted on by Christina Adams

On Perception

“You are ever seeing but not perceiving.”

I’ve often found the phrase Isaiah and Jesus used of seeing but not perceiving to be an interesting phrase. The idea that people can see things right in front of them but not know or understand what they are seeing seemed strange. But I kept thinking about it.

Then I had the opportunity to watch a two-year-old girl. We would take walks in the neighborhood and play in her backyard. I was always pointing things out to her, a white flower, a cardinal, a squirrel, a pretty leaf, all sorts of things. I remembered my mom doing the same for me. She was always pointing out a tree, a bird, or a cloud sometimes for the name and other times for the beauty of it. All of those memories then brought to mind riding in the car with my grandfather. He could spot a hawk almost every trip we made it seemed like. All the while I would have my face pressed to the glass saying, “Where?” It took me a while, but now when I’m driving, I’ll see a hawk in a tree or the top of a street light and I’ll say, “Look, there’s a hawk!” just like my grandfather. Depending on who I’m with some of my passengers will see it too and others won’t.

All of that got me to thinking. I had to be taught how to see hawks. I had to be told where to look for them and what the difference was between a hawk and a vulture. I could be looking at the same woods as my grandfather, but I would not see the hawk because I wasn’t looking for it the right way.

Then on one walk with the girl I was watching, I was marveling at some moss and lichen that cover a tree. I realized that even though I could see the moss and lichen, I did not understand what I was seeing. Was it good for a tree to be covered like that? What would a tree doctor see if they looked at the same tree? Would the tree doctor spot things I did not? Absolutely, he would. He had been trained to understand what he saw, to know the causes and effects, and to know the remedies. I might be able to see, but I needed to be trained to perceive.

Just as I had to help the girl I was watching understand what things were, to help her start to spot birds and animals around her, so I needed help to understand the things that were around me, not just see them. I needed knowledge to understand and knowledge to see otherwise I could look at the same things others were and not see what was right in front of me.  

Both perception and knowledge are important for us to mature. However, both also have to be taught. And this is true also of spiritual things. We have to be taught how to know God, taught how God speaks, taught how He answers prayers, taught how to see what God sees. And we have to see these things in action so that we can look out the window and naturally have our eyes travel to the best places to look. But if we know how God works, then we can see Him everywhere. Even better, we can then point God’s works out to others, so they can see Him too.

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Posted on by Christina Adams

Dark Views in the Church

In my last post I discussed how art was often focused on the hurt and pain in the world. But the world of Art is not the only sphere that focuses on the darker side of life. The Church does as well when it focuses on sin. Sin is a struggle all Christians know. We are taught when we evangelize the need to point it out the evil of sin to those we would want to come to Christ. Then once a new Christian is born, we bring them to church and remind them of the evil of sin the rest of their lives. It is not unfair to ask, does the Church’s worldview center around sin? Of course, we would automatically say no, because we are only using sin as a means of remembering God, but is that really what we’re doing? Do we have to keep sin in our minds to appreciate God’s goodness?

I want to be careful here because it could be easy to misunderstand what I hope to say. Sin does exist. Sin is evil and causes devastation. We need to know about sin, we need to know we have sinned, we need to recognize the sin of others as sin and not blow those sins off because of who the other person is. I am not negating any of those things.

However, I am questioning whether the worldview of the Church aims more at sins than it does at Christ. Are a people’s sins the center of our reality as Christians? And I’m not really talking about the sins of those outside the Church at all. I have listened to many sermons or small groups that called for the personal repentance of Christian sins and failures, where confession to God was encouraged to be a daily occurrence, where those present were exhorted to consider the effects of their sin on Jesus and His sacrifice, where we all ought to always keep our sins before us to remind us of how unworthy we are. I’ve been present for conversations between Christians where there was a constant sense of failing Christ because they weren’t living up to or weren’t doing what they believed a Christian should be or do.

As Christians we all know sin is evil, wrong, and should be resisted and avoided. We also know that we have all failed to live up to the standard of Christ. Yet, we have been told that we should think about our sin so that we will realize how great a debt we owe to Christ. I have seen a list of sins Christians should repent of that included making too much noise (clamor), debate, having the ambition to excel, being discouraged or anxious, and talking to make others laugh. Lists like these are intended to help us realize we did not even know how sinful we were when we first came to Christ, because now the bar is set so much higher. Many of us have also been told that we cannot be truly free from our sins until we are with Christ in heaven at last. Consider how burdened Christians are by their sin and how many Christians long to be free, but believe they just have to wait until death.

This message is ultimately not a life-giving message. It is the same as a doctor telling the patient that the test results show a serious stage 4 cancer, but the good news is that once the patient has died the cancer will not be a problem anymore. If we think that the life Jesus came to bring us was a life we could not have until after death or that the salvation from sin that Christ has given us through His death is a future salvation, this does not match the actual testimony of the Bible. God’s salvation in the Old Testament was tangible. The Israelites could only win when God was with them. David had seen God’s salvation time and time again as God preserved David’s life. Paul, Peter, and John don’t just speak of a future salvation, but of one now. John the Baptist and Jesus both started their ministries by proclaiming that the kingdom of God was now here. When Jesus speaks of His burden being easy and light with rest for our souls, that is meant for us now not after death.

The same is true of our sins. Jesus came not just to cleanse our consciousness from the guilt of the past, but to teach us how to live free from our sins and inclinations to sin. Not that we don’t ever sin anymore, but that we learn how Jesus frees us from our guilt in the past and our habits to sin now. We can live a life relatively free from sin, not because we are constantly thinking about our sins, but because we are constantly thinking about Christ.

On a side note: most of the battle in temptation is to not think about it. The more we focus on something we know we shouldn’t do the harder it is to resist. But if we don’t think about it, we’re not tempted to do it. Thus, the more we think about Christ, the more He will fill our mind and the less time we will be thinking about possible sins.

What should we dwell our thoughts on? This is the question that we must ask. We can think about sin, but if that is all we are meditating on we will only see darkness because that is what we are looking at. Christ is the light and life of our souls. He ought to be the center of our attention. Ultimately, when we look at our sins it is a man-centered focus on moral failure. We might be inspired to then think of Christ or reach out to Him in despair, but not always. Yet if we change our focus to Christ, we will still be aware of our sin, it is just that so much of Christ exists outside of the world and mentality of sin. We are told to think on what is pure, good, true, excellent, praiseworthy. Sin does not fall into any of those categories, but Christ fills them all to overflowing.

We need to stop focusing on sin, stop beating ourselves up, stop finding additional burdens to carry. Instead, let us think on Christ who has the power to free us, who is Lord over all, who is able to make us stand, whose burden is easy and light. If we love Him and focus on Him, we will find our spirits lifted and we will live in the light of life. Then, when He is in the center, our journey in Christianity will be properly focused around Him and not our own failings of Him. Christ is, and ought to be, our way of viewing the world.

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