Why anthropology of sinner falls short

One of the aspects of the Christian anthropology is that humans are sinners. And we are. We participate in sin both knowingly and unknowingly. We all have fallen short and are sinners.

And being defined as a sinner means that religion is constantly trying to get people to "stop" sinning. If humans would just stop sinning, then we would all be better off.

The Ten Commandments have a number of "stop" commandments. They are the "thou shall not" commandments.

Kill.
Steal.
Commit adultery.

These are the commandments that remind us that we would be better off if we stopped doing these behaviors. And we would.

But it is not enough to just stop sinning. The kingdom of God is not going to be realized if we just stopped sinning. As they say, peace is not the absence of violence.

The anthropology of human as sinner just falls short.

Which is why humans need to develop an anthropology of human as saint.

When we develop an anthropology of human as saint, we will discover that sainthood requires that we do something.

The Ten Commandments have a number of "do" commandments.

Remember who is God.
Honor parents.
Keep sabbath holy.

When we take seriously the development of human as saint in connection with human as sinner we will no only teach people what we should stop doing, but we will also teach people what we should be doing.

So, Church, let us admit that our anthropology of sinner has monopolized our time and we need to develop our anthropology of saint.

Pictonary, Theology and You - Contribute today

So I ran across this bit of art which the artist takes complex philosophical theories and displays them in basic shapes. Yes, it is very cool.

So I was wondering if the readers of this little blog were just as talented. So I am trying an experiment. 

Below is an open Google Doc which anyone can change and add to. It is a basic drawing pad which gives access to basic shapes. Can you take a theological idea and put it into a shape? Just click on the link and see if you can add to it. (Note it takes about 15 seconds for the changes to sync to this blog)

I attempted "Resurrection". Meh.

Also you will see I attempted to take the symbol for infinity and put a face on it - Incarnation?

 Bets are on that you can do better. I will leave this up for a few days to let the ideas stew.

 

54 sides to a story

Every night our son is like most kids, they stall going to sleep as long as they can. We read books, like many people do but that only takes fifteen minutes, which by kid standards is only a blink of an eye.  So recently, Jude has been asking for stories. 

Great. I have the story creating capacity of a wet towel. 

Then I met these little dice. 

In case you are new to this little blog, I have a bit of a nerd side to me that exhibits itself through games that involve dice.

Needless to say I am now in love with these dice. They allow me to roll dice (when Jude lets me) in order to tell a story while working my creative muscles.

This does not mean I have moved from wet towel to George Lucas, but there is nothing better then when your kids love and your love cross paths.