While recognizing sin can rightfully be defined as "law-breaking", when it comes to evangelism among postmoderns, Keller uses a different tack, "I define sin as building your identity—your self-worth and happiness—on anything other than God."
He writes: "
I ordinarily begin speaking about sin to a young, urban, non-Christian like this:
Sin isn’t only doing bad things, it is more fundamentally making good things into ultimate things. Sin is building your life and meaning on anything, even a very good thing, more than on God. Whatever we build our life on will drive us and enslave us. Sin is primarily idolatry.
Why take this approach? Keller suggests two reasons. First, this definition convicts both the "prostitute and the pharisee", the ungodly and the self-righteous. It is the latter group that is more offensive to the postmodern. Second, this personalizes sin for the postmodern and they offer little resistance to it, while "law-breaking" assumes agreement on which laws.
2 comments:
When I approach Post-Christians, I usually take this approach... "Has there ever been a time in your live when you've felt God?" If you ask this question of Post-Christians, you get a fascinating range of responses.
Then, after listening, I ask, "Has there ever been a time in your life when you haven't felt God?" (and often quickly followed-up with "Do you feel God like that 24/7"? I get the response, "No" in 99% of the cases. From there, I ask, "Why do you think we don't experience God 24/7 in our lives? What gets in the way, for you?"
After a minute of shoulder shrugging, I normally hear things like 'I ignore God' or 'I'm not aware of him' or 'I'm usually focused on what I'm doing'.
And this begins the base level idea that sin is best defined as "whatever gets in the way of you experiencing God". (Which is get from Romans 14 that "whatever is not from faith is sin"; which is a definitional construction in the Greek as opposed to a "sin is..." descriptive construction).
Plus, it usually affords me (1) a good baseline on if they are spiritually-sensitive in life to experiencing God - and that experiencing God is a positive experience, and (2) it provides a mind-blowing realization that sin is connected to God as opposed to sin being connected to a list of do's and don'ts... which I normally acknowledge ("Hey we usually think of sin as a list of do's and don'ts, right?")
Great comment. While I have asked the "have you ever experienced God?" question, I have never explored why you don't 24/7. I hope I remember this next time I am in an appropriate conversation. Thanks.
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