The Sin Problem Problem

The Sin Problem Problem

Samantha Field shared some insightful, important, and powerful thoughts about the language that conservative Evangelicals use about racism and other social issues as being a โ€œsin issueโ€ and a โ€œproblem of the heart.โ€ Hereโ€™s a lengthy excerpt:

Maybe like me youโ€™ve noticed a pattern of influential Christian ministers referring to racism or sexism as a โ€œheart issue,โ€ and found it as frustrating as I do.

Framing racism or other systemic social problems as a โ€œheart issueโ€ accomplishes a few things. First, it centers Christianity in the conversation. If racism is a โ€œheart issue,โ€ then the solution is conversion or repentanceโ€“ all the individually racist person needs to do is repent and allow Jesus to change their heart. If a racist person accepts Jesus into their heart and once theyโ€™ve done so, follows the Spiritโ€™s guidance away from prejudice and towards acceptanceโ€“ then racism is solved with the Christian religion. Saying racism is a โ€œheart issueโ€ means that we donโ€™t need affirmative action, we need Evangelical Jesus.

Second, it allows people and their communities to escape any feeling of responsibility or guilt. If racism is truly a single personโ€™s heart issue, and the resolution is for that person to repent, then thereโ€™s nothing that Bob or Susie is responsible for when Jim is a racist turd. If Jim is a Christian, then Jesus and the Holy Spirit will handle it. If heโ€™s not, then thereโ€™s nothing more for Bob or Susie to doโ€“ they just have to continue being Jimโ€™s friend so they can be a โ€œgood witnessโ€ for Christ in his life. What good would it do to tell Jim that heโ€™s being racist, if itโ€™s a heart issue? No, we just need to โ€œlove on himโ€ more and โ€œbe the only Bible heโ€™ll ever see.โ€

Lastly, if racism is an individualโ€™s โ€œheart issue,โ€ then itโ€™s not systemic. An indiviudalโ€™s heart issue does not require a church, as an institution, to change. Heart issues do not ask the Church to examine itself or shift course; in fact, if racism is a heart issue than most Christian churches are doing the exactly right thing by harping on a โ€œpersonal relationship with Christโ€ and telling its members to repent of private, individual sin.

If we were to communally acknowledge that racism or sexism or ableism is systemic, then weโ€™d have to commit to a massive undertaking. Weโ€™d have to take a hard look at how our seminaries and ordinations and denominations and alliances and conventions operate and be honest with ourselves for the first time in history. Weโ€™d have to overhaul power structures, ordination tracks, and hiring processesโ€“ and everyone who currently enjoys all the cultural power, who wield all the political influence, would lose their access and prestige. The leadership would have to admit that itโ€™s not God who brought them to the position they hold, not their commitment to the faith, not their hard work, but systemic, structural practices that marginalize anyone who isnโ€™t a cis, white, heterosexual man.

Itโ€™s not coincidence that the people who stand to lose the most power, influence, and money are the ones claiming that sins like racism are an individual problem and the solution is to maintain the status quo.

On the topic of what Jessica Goldstein calls the โ€œFeel-Good, Feel-Badโ€ Story, which praises an individualโ€™s inventiveness or tenacity in a way that distracts from the systemic problem that necessitated their action, Libby Ann writes:

The problem with these stories is that the challenges they show individuals solvingโ€”on an individual level, or by coming together as individualsโ€”are systemic problems that shouldnโ€™t have existed in the first place. Furthermore, the solutions these stories tout as heartwarming leave those underlying systemic problems in place.

Daniel Camacho wrote along similar lines:

Itโ€™s time for Christian leaders and members to own up to the patriarchal crisis that churches are experiencing. When the book of Genesis describes the fallen, sinful nature of humanity, it names the specific curse of oppressive male domination.

To simply chalk these instances up to sin in the abstract misses the ways in which sin has become enfleshed in hierarchical church structures led by men with little accountability. It also lets men, and male religious leaders off the hook. If we can understand this, then perhaps we can think about steps for moving forward.

It is good to see so many people talking about systemic evil rather than merely individual sin!

Of related interest:

http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/08/17/pastor-evangelicals-must-stop-promoting-spiritually-disastrous-social-justice/

http://samanthapfield.com/2018/08/06/sin-is-not-just-a-heart-issue/


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