The Magical thinking of the Hamster.

Reblogged from a comment at Dalrock’s place. With one caveat: I don’t think this is religious addiction and abuse. I think it is rationalization. Some people talk rationalization being akin to a Hamster running faster and faster in a wheel, around and around in circles, spending more and more energy justifying the current situation and going nowhere.

I love this conversation.
It addresses one of the fundamental signs of religious addiction and abuse, namely, “Magical Thinking.”

Magical thinking that, if I stick my hand in flames, and ask God to forgive me, somehow the scars, the charring, the smell, the burnt flesh, and the possible disfigurement and total loss of the hand isn’t supposed to happen to me because I repented and/or asked for forgiveness.

Jesus’ blood was shed to pay the eternal debt of our sin. That act does not wipe out the temporal consequences of our choices, or, we could plant tomatoes in the ground, cry out to God that we meant to plant corn, and reap a harvest of corn, conveniently bypassing the seed-reproduces-after-its-own-kind mandate established by God from the beginning of the world.

Also. This whole idea of “going to Heaven” is wrong. Once we are born again, we are IN the Kingdom of Heaven, meaning we are citizens, we’re in, we’re family, we don’t have to earn it, it’s done. If that’s all God wanted, we’d get saved and die. God rather wants a relationship where we get to know Him, and grow and develop and work in the Kingdom and build up eternal rewards for our eternal life state. There are levels in Heaven, some Christians will spend Eternity in Heaven’s basement(which is still admittedly better than going to Hell) and some will reign and rule with Christ because they were obedient to God’s plan for them in this life.

It is an abuse of our faith, and a clear abuse of scripture to teach people that they don’t have to eat the fruit of their choices; the Bible says(Romans 8:1) that there is no condemnation in Christ. It doesn’t say that there are no consequences in Christ.

So it is beyond foolish to think that the life you’ve lived prior to marriage is somehow wiped out in terms of its impact on your body, psyche, and reputation, just because God has forgiven you for your sins/sinful choices. God certainly forgave David, because the Bible states clearly “The Lord hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.” Then Nathan goes on to outline the consequences that David was going to suffer because of what he did.

David did suffer: his sons were sexually perverse (one raped a sister) and fought among themselves: one attempted a coup d’etat against him and died. There were consequences.

The job of the church is to warn, to confront, to strip us of our justifications. The word of God is living and active, dividing at the joints, and confronts us: there is a reason I blog the lectionary daily and it is not about the blog as much as it makes me accountable for what I did that was flawed yesterday. What I need to reform from: what I need to repent from.

We need to preach such things. But do we?

My church treats single mothers well because being a single parent is not a sin. It is evidence of past sin, not evidence of current unrepented sin. Single mothers should be treated as well as anyone else in church.

How do single mothers even know to repent when the topic is never broached from pulpits anymore? What is being lamented and criticized here – and rightfully so – is that there is no truth being presented in the culture at large or in the one place that should be stemming the tide: the church. It is not just single mothers. It is virtually everything the Bible condemns – the church is silent on most or all of it because it is offensive and we must – above all else – not offend. Because love. It simply wouldn’t be positive and encouraging K-love, and we certainly can’t have that. Only truth can create the shame that should lead to repentence, but becaus only love is preached, how can there really be any repentence at all?

So your church treats single mothers well. I take that to mean they don’t offend single mothers. What are they doing to actually ensure those well-treated single mothers cannot sit comfortably in the pew if unrepentant? What are they doing to discourage the one-child single mother from becoming a three-child single mother? From dissuading the unhappily married mom from becoming a single mom? From warning the teen with a boyfriend that won’t come to church who never hears in the strongest possible terms that simply being unequally yoked is a sin, nevermind the sex that is soon to follow?

I’m probably going to get some grief over this, but justifying sin is itself sin. Sin needs to be confessed and repented from. We all fail, true. We all sin, true. We are all members of the kingdom of God if we are of Christ, true. But the consequences of our actions live on this this life. For good and for ill.

And it is our influence on others that is the true measure of our worth. Not the speed of our circular reasoning.