The Athalie Read Group invites you to an Applebee's Flapjack breakfast
on February 27th, 8:00 am - 10:00 am.
Pancakes at Applebee’s Anyone?
Book Review: Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans
I do not make it a habit to review or recommend books, but reading this book by Rachel Held Evans has made me think that it might well be time to think of changing that policy.
Searching for Sunday is the story of one woman's journey from her beginnings in the American Evangelical Church tradition through doubt, crises of faith, rejection, despair and hope. It is a very contemporary story of Christian life that has many parallels in the lives of various people I have known. The subtitle of the book is, "Loving, leaving and finding the church," and I just find that there are so many of us who are living in the very difficult and challenging space between those three verbs.
While Evan's book ventures into a number of areas of doctrine, theology and especially sacramental practice, it is at it's heart the story of a personal journey of disruption of what was once taken for granted, the loss and despair that come with that, and an unrelenting faith that prompts her to hold onto what the church can be and not fall into despair. Evan's very personal journey will definitely find many parallels in the lives of Christians everywhere.
So here is my recommendation: You need to read this book if...
Perhaps you are completely happy with the church as it is. If that is who you are, you need to understand what many people in the church and on the margins of the church are struggling with these days. I'm not sure that there is anyone out there who can show it to you in as compelling and as interesting way as Rachel Held Evans does.
Maybe you are struggling with the church. Reading Searching for Sunday will reassure you that you are not alone. Evans may even help you to find words for some of the dissatisfaction that you are feeling. It is very helpful to follow in the path of someone who is struggling with the things that you are struggling with.
Continue reading »
Searching for Sunday is the story of one woman's journey from her beginnings in the American Evangelical Church tradition through doubt, crises of faith, rejection, despair and hope. It is a very contemporary story of Christian life that has many parallels in the lives of various people I have known. The subtitle of the book is, "Loving, leaving and finding the church," and I just find that there are so many of us who are living in the very difficult and challenging space between those three verbs.
While Evan's book ventures into a number of areas of doctrine, theology and especially sacramental practice, it is at it's heart the story of a personal journey of disruption of what was once taken for granted, the loss and despair that come with that, and an unrelenting faith that prompts her to hold onto what the church can be and not fall into despair. Evan's very personal journey will definitely find many parallels in the lives of Christians everywhere.
So here is my recommendation: You need to read this book if...
You are someone who is completely committed to the church as it is.
Perhaps you are completely happy with the church as it is. If that is who you are, you need to understand what many people in the church and on the margins of the church are struggling with these days. I'm not sure that there is anyone out there who can show it to you in as compelling and as interesting way as Rachel Held Evans does.
You are someone who is wavering
Maybe you are struggling with the church. Reading Searching for Sunday will reassure you that you are not alone. Evans may even help you to find words for some of the dissatisfaction that you are feeling. It is very helpful to follow in the path of someone who is struggling with the things that you are struggling with.
You are giving up
Maybe you've had it with the church. Maybe you just find that it is easier to stay away than it is to deal with the things that cause you frustration, pain or annoyance. I think that you will find this book especially meaningful. Evans can be brutally honest about the flaws of the church, but here is the amazing thing about her writing: the grace of God just continues to shine through. Even when the church had let her down completely, she just can't stop finding evidence of God's grace and love. She continues the conversation with the church despite disappointment. I find this very inspiring.
She may be brutally honest, but I've got to say that this is one book that gives me more hope for the future of the church than any that I have read in a while. That alone makes it worth the read.
It’s like these Christians have a different word for everything 3) Faith
Hespeler, 17 January, 2016 © Scott McAndless
Matthew 21:18-22, James 2:14-26, Romans 10:11-17
D |
o you remember the first time you read this morning’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew? I sure do. I don’t know how old I was, but I must have been fairly young when I came across it because I remember finding it pretty darn exciting.
When I read that Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt… if y ou say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done,” I was all ready to go. Jesus’ instructions couldn’t have been more clear. All I had to do was believe – I mean be really certain without even doubting a little tiny bit that I could do it – and I would have fig trees and mountains and pieces of chalk and blackboard erasers flying through the air in no time. Ha, ha! People couldn’t help but notice me then! (I was a bit of a shy and retiring child.)
Did I try? You bet I did! Come on, admit it, you tried it too, didn’t you? I remember sitting there and
staring at some random object and trying to convince myself that if I only really believed that I could do it and especially banished all doubt that I couldn’t, it would happen.
It never did. And, at the time, I just figured that it was because somewhere deep inside I had some little tiny grain of doubt and that is why I never succeeded. It was only in later years that I began to consider that maybe my problem was that I never really understood what Jesus was trying to say at all.
I have done a lot more reflection on what Jesus had to say on the topic of faith since those days and I have learned a few things. What we often don’t realize is that the meanings of the words, “believe” and “faith” have actually changed a great deal over the years.
Our modern English word, believe, comes to us from an Old English word “geleafa” which means to hold something or someone dear. The second syllable, “leafa” actually comes from the same Germanic root as the word love. So, in its origins, belief was much more about giving your heart to something than it was about being certain about it. It didn’t have anything to do with evidence or intellectual choice. It was about your heart’s commitment.
That is a far cry from how people use the word today. In fact, people often use “I believe” to explain the opinions that they hold or the facts that they hold to be true. It is primarily an intellectual activity, not really an action of the heart.
The other word that we use to talk about belief (and especially religious belief) in English is faith. That word didn’t come into English from German but rather from Latin via French. The original Latin word was fides the same Latin root that we find in words like fidelity and fiduciary. So faith, at least the original word for it, doesn’t mean the act of accepting certain opinions or ideas, it refers to the choice to trust in someone or in something like a bank or an institution.
So both the word believe and the word faith came to English with the sense of giving your heart to or placing your trust in someone. And in the language that Jesus spoke and the language of the New Testament, the same concept was in mind. But somehow today both words mean something quite different. Today we mostly use them to talk about intellectual opinions or convictions.
Even when we talk about religious faith, we generally talk about it in terms of the things that we believe about God, about Jesus, the Bible or other spiritual matters. But this kind of intellectual assent or conviction was not really what Jesus was talking about. For him, believing was about giving your heart and not merely your assent or opinion to God.
I have often spoken to people who are concerned that they can’t be Christians or that they aren’t good Christians because they can’t bring themselves to be completely certain about at least some of the things that people in churches believe. I mean, there are lots of reasons to doubt some of these teachings of the church. It is not as if anyone can offer you conclusive proof that Jesus was born to a virgin or rose bodily from the dead or stilled a mighty storm with a few words. So, yes, it is not uncommon for people to struggle with specific beliefs.
But someone who struggles with or even rejects some specific thing that the church has traditionally believed is not necessarily someone who does not or cannot have faith. Faith as Jesus understood it and proclaimed it was not a matter of believing or accepting certain things on an intellectual level. It was about giving your heart to someone – the old sense of believing in Old English. It was about being willing to trust someone as the origin of the word faith means.
So, while it may matter to a certain extent what you believe about God or about Jesus or about various points of doctrine, none of that matters anywhere near so much as the question of where you put your heart and in whom you place your trust. And, you know what? It is possible to love God even though you are not entirely sure of some of the things you believe about God. It is possible to trust Jesus without having everything that you believe about Jesus sorted out in your mind. Thank God it is. Otherwise, I’m convinced, a lot of us wouldn’t be here.
But don’t just take my word for it. Take the word of the Letter of James. James writes this to the church, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder.” Do you realize what James is saying here? He is taking what is for us, one of the key tests of faith, the question, “Do you believe that God exists,” or “Do you believe that there is one God,” and he is saying: “Big deal! Who cares if you believe that God exists? I can show you demons who believe that.”
So Jesus isn’t looking for you to hold certain opinions or to accept certain propositions. What is he looking for? He wants you to trust him. But that also implies one more thing. James writes this in his letter, “But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.” You see, trusting someone, really trusting someone implies that you will do something about your trust.
Let me give a simple example. Say that I have this chair here. It is a good chair, a solid chair. I can tell you all kinds of wonderful things about this chair. But here’s the thing: if I stand here saying wonderful things about this chair, even talking about how sure I am that it is sturdy and able to hold me up, does that mean that I have faith in the chair. Not really. The one thing that would demonstrate that I have faith in the chair would be that I actually do something about what I profess to believe about the chair. I need to actually sit in it.
Well, that is basically what James is saying about having faith in God. It doesn’t really matter what you say you believe about God. Professing to be certain of all kinds of things about God doesn’t prove you have faith. The only thing that would prove that would be if you took what you profess to believe about God and did something with it – if you chose to put the things that you profess to believe about God into practice by putting your trust in God and doing some good in the world. That is what James means when he says that faith without works is dead and amounts to nothing.
In the church we have actually reduced and impoverished the meaning of the word faith. We have made it to mean only that you must accept certain propositions or ideas about God, Jesus and other things. What’s more, you are not really expected to do anything about those propositions – just believe them. That was never what Jesus was looking for when he was looking for faith in the people that he met.
So let’s return to that saying of Jesus that I started with this morning. What did Jesus mean when he said, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt… if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done”? He was saying that you need to have faith. But faith, as we have been saying, is not a matter of being certain about things as I thought in my youth. It is a matter of trust.
And it is not even a matter of how much you trust. This same saying of Jesus comes to us in the Gospel of Luke in a slightly different form. In Luke, Jesus says, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” That is kind of the lite version of the saying because it doesn’t just go from moving a mountain to a mulberry tree but also talks about the faith that does the moving as a very small thing – as a little, tiny mustard seed. So clearly the amount of faith that you have doesn’t matter.
So what does matter in faith? Only one thing really: where you choose to place your trust in action. I mean, you can see that in my example with the chair. If I find another chair that is all old and rickety and falling apart, that only has three legs left and I tell you that I have all kinds of faith in that chair – tons of faith – and so I plunk myself down on it, will that chair hold me up? Probably not. I end up sprawled on the floor.
But then I find another good and sturdy chair. I look at it and see that it is well-made but because, you know, last time I trusted a chair it let me down, I don’t have near as much faith in this chair. In fact, I am so lacking in faith that I am unwilling to sit on it. Will it hold me up? No, because I am not sitting on it. But if I have a little tiny bit of faith – faith, say, as small as a mustard seed – but enough trust to persuade me to actually do something and sit on the chair, will the chair hold me up? Of course it will, because it is a good chair! So we see what matters is not how much faith you have but that you actually choose to place your trust in a trustworthy thing.
That is the kind of faith that Jesus talked about all the time. And it is a kind of faith that can move mountains, but not by me being certain and sure and having lots of it. The only way that faith can move mountains is when it persuades you to place your trust in the one who made the mountains in the first place.
So that is faith as we must begin to understand it and as we must practice it. Your assignment this week is to actually use faith. I want you to move a mountain in your life. I’ll bet you’ve got one. I’ll bet you’ve got some great big problem or barrier in your life or in the life of someone that you love that you have been trying to move. Can you picture that mountain? You know what it is.
I’ll bet you have been trying to move it with your own strength or determination. But it hasn’t worked and it won’t move that way. Here’s what I want you to do this week: give up on moving that mountain in your life by your own determination, and chose instead to see it moved by faith.
How do you do that? By telling God that you don’t have it in you to move it but that you will trust God to move it instead. Now that can be a scary thing to say because you are leaving the biggest problem in your life in someone else’s hand. What if he doesn’t move it in the way that you think he should? What if he moves it to a place you don’t want it to go?
Well, that it how you know we’re talking about real faith because it means that you have to trust God for all of that – give up control of it and trust God. It means giving your heart to God not just your understanding. And I’m not saying that God will move your mountain in the way that you think it needs to be moved. You may be surprised at what he does with your mountain.
But I promise you this, if you choose to trust God for one of the biggest mountains in your life, you won’t regret it because you will be choosing to place your confidence in the one who will never let you down.
Sermon Video:
Some reflections on a first session working on “Body, Mind and Soul”
Last night we held our first session at St. Andrew's Hespeler to start to work through the document, "Body, Mind and Soul: Thinking together about human sexuality and sexual orientation in The Presbyterian Church in Canada." I must say that I found the session a little bit hard to prepare for and that I didn't know what to expect going in.
The discussions that we held together were held in an intentional atmosphere of openness and confidentiality so that people could be able to speak freely and not fear that their words or views would be shared. So I am not at liberty to share any particular words or views expressed. But I know that a lot of people who are leading these discussions are having a hard time figuring out how to do them well. So I would like to at least share a few observations and insights that might be helpful to others who are planning or preparing.
Continue reading »
The discussions that we held together were held in an intentional atmosphere of openness and confidentiality so that people could be able to speak freely and not fear that their words or views would be shared. So I am not at liberty to share any particular words or views expressed. But I know that a lot of people who are leading these discussions are having a hard time figuring out how to do them well. So I would like to at least share a few observations and insights that might be helpful to others who are planning or preparing.1) Questions of why we are doing this
I thought that I had a pretty good understanding going in of why we were going through this exercise. The General Assembly is going through a process of discerning where the Holy Spirit might be leading us to change (or not change) our approach to issues around human sexuality and needs congregations like our own to participate in that discernment. In order to help we need to go through a process like this. But a discussion of that sense of purpose was important. Perceptions of what we were doing were not necessarily shared.
There was suspicion expressed by some. There were feelings that the study had been written with a bias towards certain conclusions. There were feelings expressed that the decision had already been made and that this process was simply designed to get us to that foregone conclusion. These views did come out of one particular perspective on the issues, but I can well imagine that, in some other context, people coming from the opposite point of view might well feel the same thing.
A discussion of bias and expectations was therefore necessary. I appreciate all of the work that went into this document and how well it is done given the time constraints on it. I also don't think that it is possible to create such a document without some bias seeping through from time to time. Given that there are multiple authors, I expect that different biases will come through at different points. I think we can acknowledge that without getting hung up on it.
As to being able to come up with something coherent to feed back to the national church committees, I must say that I cannot see at this time how we may come up with a consensus response. Pray for us!
2) People prepared and engaged!
I planned to start by dealing with the section on Scripture. I made pages 14 to 37 available to people on the previous Sunday to read in preparation and also directed them to the downloadable document. I also had pages 89 - 97 printed up for our first session as a handout.
I had my doubts and questions about whether people would read that pages in preparation. None of it was necessarily very easy reading, but they all did it. Some acknowledged that they had to read it in small bites but they were all committed enough to do it. Always a good sign.
I started by going through the listening circles group guidelines (pp. 87,88). A very good place to start. In retrospect, I likely should have printed that up too, or put it up in a poster format.
It took some time to get people engaged, but once we got going, engagement was good, respectful, truthful and positive. Some did not speak up. I may need to check in with a few to see if they are looking for someone to help them to find those openings to speak or if they just need us to respect their silence.
3) My role as a leader
I struggled and expect I will continue to struggle in my role as a leader. My issue is that I do have opinions and, even more important, convictions around these issue. I also feel that I have a right and a duty to share those convictions that have come out of thoughtful reflection and scriptural study. But I am also aware that, whenever I speak, there is this danger that it will be received as the authoritative and definitive answer or opinion which may cause others to feel that their opinions or approaches are being squelched. Because of that, I felt that I maintained a light touch on moderation and leadership. I do not regret that and feel that it was the most helpful approach at least this time.
4) Our progress
We specifically discussed Leviticus 18:22 and Genesis 19:4-8. We discussed related issues like the Holiness Code, cultural assumptions around homosexual activity in the ancient Mediterranean world, the dimensions of hospitality and the larger Biblical context of the Sodom story.
We branched off (necessarily, I think) into discussions about the assumptions that people were bringing to the table. There was certainly diversity in the approaches.
I used only one of the supplied discussion questions. Other prompts to continuing discussion were not a big problem.
We ended after about and hour and a half (but before running out of steam) by deciding that next week we would try to deal with the passages from the New Testament Letters and the whole Normal vs. Normative discussion. (p. 92). I feel that I have a bit of a better handle on how to prepare for that.
5) This will not change anyone's mind.
I went into this saying that I don't expect that, ultimately, we will all agree about what to do and that it is okay that we don't agree. This was certainly confirmed. Even more important, I think that this idea was embraced by everyone. There were attempts, of course, to get other people to appreciate someone's point of view. There were critical discussions about where certain approaches would lead us and what the consequences might be. But everyone could respect where people were coming from.
One thing that is clear coming out of this discussion is how very segmented everyone is around these issues. Everyone -- conservatives, traditionalists, progressives or whatever you want to call people -- tends to read and follow only those sources of thought and learning that confirm the point of view that they already have. This can lead to one person stating something that is, in their mind, an established fact while someone also cites a totally contradictory datum as an established fact. This is a big issue in all kinds of ways for the church -- perhaps an inescapable effect of our segmented information age.
Nevertheless, none of that means that this exercise is fruitless. The dialog is important, engaging and worthwhile. It was also uplifting and I am very thankful for that.
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I heard it through the grape vine
I heard it through the grape vine....
OK 2016 is just starting and we have many adventures before us:
Coming up in just a week or two Saint Andrews will launch an exciting and innovative event that has a chance to remove the debt accumulated in 2016. No we are not asking you to open your purse or wallet. This opportunity allows you to have a spectacular time with family and friends and still help out with our missions. This event is called the "Amazing Shrinking Tea Party" and is being perfected right now! You will see the details shortly.
Stewardship has advised me that equally fun events like:
- Food trucks pulling into our parking lot and encouraging you to sample their wares could very well be seen in 2016.
- Antique cars and or even a car rally could be in the offing
- Silent auctions or the hugely popular Time and Talent Auction might return
- Even eating in the dark could appear (OK I made that up)
Watch the bulletin or this site for the skinny!
Refugee sponsorship and the 106 group
Updates and News
Refugee Sponsorship
The Presbyterian Church in Canada is an official Sponsorship Agreement Holder with Citizenship and Immigration Canada. This enables Presbyterian congregations to sponsor refugees to resettle in Canada. PWS&D advocates for refugees through a number of Canadian refugee advocacy groups, including the Canadian Council for Refugees. For more information or if your church is interested in sponsoring a refugee, contact Rob Shropshire by e-mail or phone (416-441-1111 or 800-619-7301 x249)
Session has discussed the involvement of Cambridge becoming part of the solution to the needs of millions of displaced people. It is a crisis unlike any the world has seen. In response the Presbyterian Church of Canada has posted the announcement above. The need is great; the mission is obvious; let's start a dialogue on how we can help. Is it possible a coalition of Cambridge churches could sponsor a family or more? There is help provided by the PCC all we need is someone to start the ball rolling. Step forward and make a difference today.
The "160 group"
There is a group of individuals that are organizing the celebrations surrounding the 160th year of Saint Andrews in Hespeler. Coincidentally the 2016 Hespeler Reunion is also taking place with St. Andrews as part of the focus. The 160 group is encouraging anyone who has an interest in helping both our individual celebration and the 2016 Reunion to contact Rev. McAndless or Joni Smith to volunteer time and talents.
There is a group of individuals that are organizing the celebrations surrounding the 160th year of Saint Andrews in Hespeler. Coincidentally the 2016 Hespeler Reunion is also taking place with St. Andrews as part of the focus. The 160 group is encouraging anyone who has an interest in helping both our individual celebration and the 2016 Reunion to contact Rev. McAndless or Joni Smith to volunteer time and talents.
Body, Mind and Soul 2016
Introduction: Body, Mind and Soul http://presbyterian.ca/sexuality/
Thinking together about human sexuality and sexual orientation in The Presbyterian Church in Canada
People throughout our denomination are wondering if there is a conflict between loving and affirming LGBTQ persons and being faithful to the Bible. Numerous commissioners at the 141st General Assembly expressed this struggle. Many have friends, neighbours, children or grandchildren who are gay or lesbian whom they love. They also believe that the Bible is “the standard of all doctrine,” the foundation of our ethics and the Word of God. Some faithful Christians aren’t even sure exactly what the Bible says or how to understand it.
Saint Andrews Presbyterian Church Hespeler "Body, Mind & Soul" study When: Wed, January 20, 7:30pm – 8:30pm Description: We are holding a special study based on the document "Body, Mind and Soul: Thinking together about human sexual orientation in the Presbyterian Church in Canada." We are holding this study to help us to understand the issues in order to feed back to the General Assembly as they try and formulate a path forward. The study will begin this week and continue on from there based on participation and how quickly we are able to work through the materials. |
It’s like those Christians have a different word for everything! 2) Sin
Hespeler, 10 January, 2016 © Scott McAndless
Romans 7:7-25, Psalm 14, Luke 7:36-47
"H |
ello, my name is Scott and I am a sinner." Of all the lessons that the Christian church could learn from the world around us, I suspect that the greatest one would be to borrow that phrase from organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous and adapt them to the challenges that we face living as Christians in the world.
Think for a moment about how that phrase functions within an AA meeting. The most important part of any meeting is when the various members stand up and share from their own experience – stories about their personal struggles with addiction and the problems that have come out of that struggle for themselv es and the people that they love.
But before they get into any of that, every single one of them introduces himself or herself as an alcoholic or an addict. They all say it and that includes both the person who has not had a single drink in fifteen years and the person who was out binge drinking a few nights ago. It is a question, not p
rimarily at least, of what they have done so much as a question of who they are. I suspect that the church would be much farther ahead if we would learn to think of what we call our basic problem, sin, along the same lines as how Alcoholics Anonymous thinks about addiction.
But that isn’t going to be so easy. One of the big problems we have is our whole language about sin. In fact, I would suggest that our understanding of this word that is an essential part of our Christian faith is sorely lacking.
What is sin? Sinis a part of the vocabulary of the world around us. Think about the last time you heard someone use the word outside of the context of the church. They probably said something like, “This cake is sinful,” or “Chocolate is my favourite sin.” And, when it is used like that, what does the word mean? It is usually a way of speaking about something that is extremely desirable, that you probably should not have or do, but that you fully intend to indulge in anyway. If you want to sell a product, sinful is actually a very good way to describe that product.
So that is how the world around us uses the word. I’m sure that you all understand that such a meaning is pretty far from what the Bible means when it uses the world. But, I would argue, when we use the word inthe church, we don’t do all that much better.
In the church, we mostly talk about sin in the plural, and refer to all of the little things that we do wrong. (Though, of course, we are usually much happier to talk about the little things that other people do wrong.) For many Christians, that is all that a concern for sin is about: counting up all the little things (or sometimes big things) that mostly other people do wrong.
The problem with that is not that such things don’t matter; they do. We all regularly get things wrong and we all have to deal with the fallout from that: the people we hurt, the damage we do to ourselves and to the world around us. But that, as far as the Bible is concerned, is only the smallest part of our problem with sin.
The Apostle Paul explains what the real problem with sin is in his letter to the Romans: “I do not do the good I want,” Paul starts, “but the evil I do not want is what I do.” He is simply saying that he has problems with the bad things that he does and his failure to do good things. So, at this point, he is taking about what we usually talk about when we discuss sin.
But note where he goes from there: “Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.” He just took this whole concept in a very different direction. Though he has acknowledged that there are problems with his actions, he is actually saying that his actions are not really where the problem lies. There is something else – something within him – that is the real source of his misery and failure. And Paul wants us to focus, not on those individual actions, but on the internal thing that is causing them.
That is what the Bible is actually talking about when it talks about sin: an attitude, something that we carry around within us that gets in the way of us being who we want to be and that stops us from doing what we really want to do. The basic attitude that causes us so much trouble is sometimes called pride, but that is not necessarily the best word to use. Pride, after all, can be a good thing. There is nothing wrong with having pride in your worthwhile achievements or in being proud of your friends and the people you love.
No, the attitude that gets us in trouble is more than just your everyday pride. It is what the Greeks called hubris, an attitude that puts yourself and your own needs and desires ahead of everything else – both what is human and what is divine. It is an attitude, above all, where you try and build yourself up by taking others down.
In our relationship with God, hubris means that we try to put ourselves in the place of God because we think we know best. That is the sin that is described in the garden at the beginning of the Bible. Adam and Eve’s sin was not that they disobeyed an order and ate the fruit anyways, it was that they sought to take the place of God by becoming masters of good and evil.
But it is in our relationships with other people that we see the destructive power of hubris most often. This comes out of a basic human assumption (a false assumption by the way) that honour and self-worth are a zero sum game.
That might take a bit of explaining. A zero sum game is a system that is closed with no additional value coming into it. A good example of a zero sum game is the actual game of Poker. There is only so much money in a poker game – all of the money that all of the players combined bring to the table. That means that the only way that you can win at poker is by taking other people’s money. In other words, you can only win if other people lose. That’s all a zero sum game is.
We all understand zero sum games because they are simple and straightforward. I win, you lose is a pretty simple concept. That’s why we often assume that everything in life works like a zero sum game, even though it is clearly not true. For example, we assume that things like budgets (government budgets, family budgets and church budgets) work like that. We assume that there is only a fixed amount of money coming in and so we make cuts and assume that that is what will balance the budget.
It usually doesn’t work because there are some things that you cut and it means that you have less money coming in. (For example, a church might say that it would be cheaper to have services every other week without realizing that such a move would probably also reduce givings in half or even more.) And then, of course, there are also things that, if you spend more on them, it may actually increase revenues and you actually end up ahead of the game. Budgeting is so hard precisely because it is not a zero sum game.
Neither is self-worth. There is no limit to the value of a human being because we are all loved by God and God’s love has no limit. So it is quite possible to enhance your self worth without taking any from anyone else. Indeed, the very idea of the church is that when we come together we can build each other up and all gain in value together.
But still we seem to behave all the time as if it is a zero sum game. In social interactions what that means is that we behave all the time as if the only way for me to gain self worth is by devaluing someone else. So that is how hubris works in our relationships – it leads us to unnecessarily tear other people down in a vain attempt at building ourselves up.
That is why the attitude behind our sinfulness is so much more of a problem than the collection of particular things that we do wrong or fail to do right. In fact, it is because of hubris that we actually prefer to think of sin in terms of all the various things that we do wrong. That makes the business of morality seem more like a zero sum game. It makes it seem like all I have to do is count up all of the faults and errors of other people and compare them to my own. If I have fewer faults than other people (and, of course, we are always far more likely to see other people’s faults than we are to see our own) then it seems like I win and other people lose.
But morality is not a zero sum game. As far as I can see, the God that we worship – the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ – is not interested in our games of who wins and who loses and will never be impressed if you manage to make yourself look better by putting somebody else down. That is why our focus on sins – on mistakes and errors and missteps will never get us to the place where God wants us to be.
That brings me back to where I started – with the phrase, “Hello, my name is Scott and I am a sinner.” I really do think that that is where we ought to start in our worship as the community of the church together. But you need to understand what I don’t mean by that. I don’t mean that I have messed up in my life, that I have made mistakes and have regrets. I mean, yes, have done all of that, but that is not what I mean when I call myself a sinner.
What I mean is that I struggle with my own sense of self-worth. I am afraid that I am not good enough – not good enough for God and not good enough for other people. I am afraid of being rejected. And so I try to cover up all of that and create worth for myself and sometimes try and do that by putting down other people or exploiting things or people. And that struggle is my problem. It is a problem I should not have because I am valuable and so are you. We are valuable and important (if for no other reason) because God made us and God loves us. But we seem to have a hard time believing that and so we think we have to build our self-worth in other ways.
That is our problem and that is what leads us to do things like put down other people in an effort to feel better about ourselves. That is what leads to things like greed when we think that we will have more value when we have more stuff. It really is the root of all our other problems.
Paul tells of his own struggle with this insidious force in his life. It leads him, he says, to do the very things that he doesn’t want to do because the pull is that strong. Even laws and rules don’t help. In fact, they make it all worse because when we inevitably break them or see other people break them they just give us another excuse to think worse of ourselves or look down on somebody else.
And so the cycle continues and we feel like we will never be able to break out of it and so Paul cries out in despair, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” But there is hope because Paul goes on from there to say, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
And so, yes, we need to talk about sin in the life of the church. We need desperately to come to terms with this force in our lives that leads us so far away from the path that we need to follow. But we really need to come to terms with what we actually mean when we talk about sin.
Jesus does set you free from the power of sin. Not simply by offering you forgiveness for all of your regrets and failures and mistakes (though he does offer you that when that is what you need). More important though, Jesus sets you free from the power of sin by letting you know just how much you really matter.
I’m going to close with a very explicit application of all of this. Here is what I want you to do with it. Stop putting down other people to feel better about yourself. Stop holding someone else back because you think it gets you farther ahead. Don’t tell me that you don’t do that because we all do. See the part in the Bible where it says we are all sinners. It’s just that some of us are more subtle about it than others. Examine yourself this week and, when you catch yourself doing it, tell yourself that you don’t need to. You are beloved by God.
Sermon Video:
Body, Mind and Soul – Study Guide on Human Sexuality
It is our hope that, as a result of this study, we may be able to respond back to the national church as they seek to find the best ways to relate to various groups in our society who may have diverse views on sexuality and sexual morality.
It is understood, going into this discussion, that we will likely not all agree about what the positions of the church ought to be in all such matters. This is okay and may even be a good thing. Diversity of opinion is an indication, after all, that people feel passionately about things that are very important.
So everyone is certainly invited to attend and participate. Materials will be provided, but if you would like to prepare for the discussions ahead of time, I would like to suggest that you download the document (using the link above) and read it. To prepare for the first discussion, I would suggest you read pages 14-37. Some copies of these pages will be available at St. Andrew's on this coming Sunday morning.
Hope we can see you there.