God is Relationship
October 10, 2007
I’m taking the “Church and Gospel” membership class at my my new church on Tuesday nights, and it has been such a breath of fresh air. It’s taught by Kevin, who also happens to be doing my premarital with Courtney, and one thing he keeps mentioning is that “God is relationship”. Last night in class, we watched this video. It’s such a poignant statement of how much of the church today makes everything about sin, rather than seeing things as being about relationship.
I’m in a place right now where a number of my friendships have been strained, especially one in particular. And as things are coming to a head and God is bringing us to a place of restoration, I can’t help but realize that in the old paradigm of how I looked at the world, I would have seen this as a “sin issue” — someone must have wronged someone and it’s our job to label the sin and repent. But I don’t think that’s it at all. It’s not about sin. Heck, if anything, it’s mostly about miscommunication. God’s desire isn’t just to eliminate sin: he wants to restore relationships.
Comments
Alyssa
10/11/07 @ 11:39
Great insight…
Looking at the world in that light instead is actually harder to do since “rooting out” sin turns out to be fairly easy and often just requires pointing the finger but relational restoration is harder and takes longer but in the end, is so fulfilling!
Richard
4/28/08 @ 12:12
Not that I disagree with the gist of what you said, but aren’t damaged relationships always the result of sin? Or, put another way, if there were no sin in the world, would there be damaged relationships?
Also, isn’t it our job to recognize sin, and repent of it?
I guess I don’t see how these two paradigms you’ve described are contradictory. Isn’t it both/and, not either/or?