Doctrine Challenge: Original Sin 2

I fell off the band wagon. (This means I didn't post yesterday.) Last night was apologetics meeting; before I was reading whatever traces remained online of Shane Claiborne's scurrilous book Jesus For President... and also mining newspaper editors' email addresses for sending out the Come What May press release. I was kicking myself for not checking the deadlines weeks ago. Then after apologetics, I zonked out on the floor in front of the fire... and then woke up and went to bed at 12:30. No lesson, except that making excuses is as old as the original sin. "This woman you gave me..."

This morning I unknowingly slept in till 7 something. I came down at the call to "take care of email x for person y"... and found Dad making soup for breakfast. It was my job, but he bailed me out.

Today I sent out press releases to 13+ newspapers in the Portland area. Not bad once you get into a routine. Made arrangements for this, that, and the other thing related to the CWM event. Went to choir practice in the evening. Did some more editing, since we need to get an email blast out for an organization tomorrow morning.

And I made orange peel granola. It's in the oven right now. Laura and Teresa will be proud of me.

Lesson: Adam sinned and we suffer the consequences. He slept on his watch, and we all wake up dead in sin. Even while we were oblivious, though, Christ died for us. His life-sustaining power enables us to sustain others.

Doctrine Challenge: Original Sin 1

This morning I got a surprise IM from Jon Winslow, with a challenge to meditate on and live out just one doctrine for one week. He badgered me so, that after thinking it over, I remembered signing up to teach about Original Sin at next week's apologetics meeting. That gives me eight days to learn it and apply it.

My first thoughts on original sin:
"To remain in Adam all die, so in Christ, eternal life is nigh." If Adam didn't represent us all in bringing sin into the world by his disobedience, then how could Jesus represent us all in bringing salvation by his perfect obedience? Why would he need to bring it to us all, if our inherent badness wasn't so universally inherent?

My sister Teresa recommended I read Shane Claiborne's book Jesus for President. I ordered it from the library, so I should be reading it in a few days. In the meantime, though, I read his four appendices off of http://jesusforpresident.org. Eventually I found an excellent response/review/critique to that book and Claiborne's previous book The Irresistible Revolution by Tim Ragsdale.

Ok, the guy's a nut. He's a hippy, a liberal, near-Marxist peace-and-love radical non-resistant Christian. I suppose his stuff is related to Original Sin because he thinks true disciples have to fight poverty on systemic levels and individual levels, as an evil. What's really missing, though, is personal responsibility. Everybody has to find out that they are spiritually bankrupt before they enter the kingdom of heaven. Until that happens, you can tear down the rich all you want and it will still be a zero-sum game.

Yesterday I needed to find out the legality of drawing chalk art on public sidewalks in Portland. According to the Portland Porcupine site, it's usually ok because it's not permanent. It can be a great tool for education or protest when used against abortion. I did hours of research, compiling laws upon regulations upon guidelines upon news articles. It has been done before, but technically it could fall under the definition of graffiti. I called the official in charge; her name was Marcia. She confirmed that the city considers sidewalk chalk to be graffiti unless one has authorization from the property-owner adjacent. They're not so strict about kids drawing in front of their own houses. When I asked for further clarification, she suddenly got suspicious. "What do you want to know for? What are you planning to do?" I told her I was writing a story. "For what?" Uhh, my blog. Which is pretty much why I'm writing this now. "And you said your name was David who?" Nathan... Straub….

From this I gather that knowledge of Original Sin, and experience with its universal effects, makes people quite suspicious of others. Marcia just didn't want me to cost her extra time cleaning up graffiti because of the information I got from her. Well… outlines of infants on the sidewalks of an abortuary will at least give you something cute to look at as you scrub them away.

In review:
1. Adam's Original Sin established all of humanity in a state of spiritual and moral destitution.
2. In the same way, Christ's obedience established all (redeemed) humanity as beneficiaries of grace and righteousness.
3. Original Sin means your problems are inside you, not in the system. You could have the perfect conditioning, and still be a fool, just because of inherited sin nature.
4. Experiencing the universal effects of Original Sin makes us mistrust others.

I just broke out some books that might help on this topic:

Jonathan Edwards, The Doctrine of Original Sin... in Works V.1
John Piper, When I don't Desire God
John Piper, The Justification of God

Hopefully, I'll get some answers from these.