Unlearn the Demand for a Sin Free Life, Part 2

What if Everything You Thought You Knew About Sin Is Wrong?

This is part two of the chapter “Unlearn the Demand for a Sin Free Life; Learn the University of Our Fallenness” from my book in progress, The Art of Unlearning. I highly recommend you read part one first HERE before reading this. As always, I appreciate any and all comments.

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Reading the Christian classics reminds me that the sins I care about and focus on the most may be the sins God cares about the least. If we get too hung up on how our own day and age view sins, we can miss out on a deeper understanding of the root of sin. I can “manage” the sins that would get me fired from the ministry, so that’s what I’ll tend to focus on. Money, sex and power are the big three that seem to bring Christian workers down.

But Puritan Richard Baxter calls me to go deeper: “Bestow your first and chiefest labor to kill sin at the root.” To do this we must “know the master-roots; and bend your greatest care and industry to mortify those: and they are especially these that follow; 1. Ignorance. 2. Unbelief. 3. Inconsiderateness. 4. Selfishness and pride. 5. Fleshliness, in pleasing a brutish appetite, lust, or fantasy. 6. Senseless hardheartedness and sleepiness in sin.”[i]