BLJ: Miller's Understanding of Sin (Part 2)

Chapter Two: Problems: What I Learned on Television

In typical postmodern fashion, Miller teleports the reader somewhere into in his past without warning. Tthe reader finds himself in the middle of a conversation between Miller and his friend Tony the Beat Poet. The conversation centers around a news story which Miller saw on ABC's Nightline about the atrocities in the Congo of Africa where more then 2.5 million people have been killed in acts of genocide over a three-year period.

After pondering the fact that how such evil could exist in any part of the world, evil where women had been raped numerous times, Miller remarks:

"I keep wondering how people could do things like that." Tony then asks Miller several times why he doesn't think that he is capable of doing any of those acts. Tony says, "I just want to know what makes those guys over there any different from you and me. They are human. We are human. Why are we any better then them, you know?" (16)

It is at this point that Miller realizes, correctly, that there is no difference between himslef and a man from the Congo.

"You believe we're capable of those things, don't you Tony?" asked Miller. "What you're really saying is that we have a sin nature, like the fundamentalist Christians say."
"I think so, Don. I don't know how else to answer the question," responds Tony.

First, I give Miller credit for using simple reason to figure out that mankind has a sin problem. Most of mankind can point to sin across the world, to places like the Congo, but are completely blind to the fact that we are all humans, and as Jesus said, murder does indeed start in the heart and not in act. (Matt. 5:21-22).

Also, after reading just two chapters of this book, I'm already starting to see a theme and that is the theme of spirituality as opposed to Christianity. Many postmoderns seem to divorce spirituality from organized Christianity. However, as David Wells states so eloquently in Above All Earthly Pow'rs spirituality is a self-started reaching up to God while organized Christianity is a God-initiated graceful bending down to his creation in need of a Savior.

This 'seeking' which many do is sinful in nature because what they are seeking is self-gratification because Scripture never states that man seeks God. In fact, man is in rebellion against God and God seek him first and draws him to Himself. Therefore, what and who are we seeking when we seek God? If God has not initiated the act, we seek ourselves.