On Sin, the Spiritual, the Supernatural, and the Demonic

To begin with, I have not done much inquiry into this subject; take everything that I will offer here with at least a lump of salt. Still, I feel that perhaps these brief observations will be useful.

I wonder what we often mean when we talk about the supernatural. Today, I was talking with a friend who lamented that theological answers to questions like "How can racism be so pervasive among rational people?" often take one-word form: sin. Of course, my friend offered, such an answer is entirely correct, but it doesn't go deep enough. However, I am not convinced that the problem with the answer is it's superfluence only. I think the answer begins on the wrong foot, so that even going deeper might partly miss the point.

The problem is with what we Christians usually mean when we mean sin. I could be wrong, but I think for a lot of us "sin" is an other-wordly concept; in my mind I often picture black globules which float in space, somehow blocking my connection to God, clogging the pipe, so to speak. I'm sure your picture might be different, or maybe you don't have a picture at all, although I suspect you do since many of us learn visually, ascribing concepts to different pictures in order to understand. This, clearly, is a very worldly/material/concrete undertaking; in attempting to understand what I deem as abstract I turn it into a picture, something more "real" which I can understand. However, I think this tactic betrays that our conceptions of the abstract are often flawed. In the case of sin, I picture a globule in space, something you might find in a black lava lamp. I never actually picture anything abstract, spiritual, or other-wordly. This observation is absolutely essential. When thinking about sin, my conception is never actually as spiritual as I think sin is.

So, what can be concluded from this realization? Is there no spiritual aspect to sin? I don't think this is the case and I am reminded of a passage in Ephesians which declares that "our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil..." (6:12). I have never been able to understand precisely what the author is getting at here, but my guess is that he is correcting our perspective--moving it away from the personal opposition we face every day to include the corporate (meaning collective) powers and authorities of the world and the "spiritual forces of evil." It seems this epistle was reminding the Ephesians not just to focus on their present struggles but also to remember and pray against the powers beyond their present struggles.

The irony here is that the Ephesians needed reminding about the spiritual forces, whereas we today need the exact opposite reminder. Modern Christianity is constantly talking about the spiritual, usually setting it over against the material in a form of Gnostic dualism, and forgetting the present and material. So, while we must remember that there is more to sin than simply the material, we must remember that sin is material and present!

This leads to my next point: While the ultimate source of evil/sin in the world are spiritual forces, the sin which we actually encounter is present and material. That is to say: sin has been incarnated in our flesh, and therefore we should expect to find physical manifestations of sin in the world. We must remember that alcoholism, a disease which seems to be linked to physical genetics, is nevertheless an addiction rooted in sin. We should not be surprised if we discover scientific bases for sinful behaviors because sin has been incarnated in our scientific, material bodies.

This new perspective should radically change the way we view our mission as Christians. We must stop thinking of sin as some otherwordly phenomenon, something which only Christ can fight and therefore something we don't have to worry too much about. Rather, sin is both spiritual and physical (although this definition affirms a body-spirit dualism which is likely not as concrete as we think it is, another realization with far-reaching effects, including more balanced understandings of the doctrine of election). As such, there exist spiritual forces which are the source of sin--forces which are likely beyond our power to battle except through prayer and reliance of Christ's power which has broken the stranglehold of this kind of sin. However, just as the serpent manifested sin into the Garden, spiritual sin is projected into our world in concrete, material ways, including genetics but also natural disasters as well as racism and consumerism. This material sin is the sin with which we must do combat, rooted in Christ and the Church and wielding the swords of the Spirit and the Word. This is the kind of combat we find in unleashed in the gospels in the miracle narratives. In this sense, Jesus' miracles were small, concrete defeats of sin which yielded physical ("Get up and walk.") as well as spiritual results ("Your sins are forgiven.") We must remember too that Jesus cast demons out of people, not out of some abstract void which hovered over people like a mist (sadly, I'm reminded of Frank Peretti's This Present Darkness, a book which I loved but which may present a mistaken duality about sin, etc.). Demonic activity in the Gospels, as far as I know, always had a physical manifestation. In the same way, what we often call the "supernatural" is still natural, in fact by definition it is "super" (above) natural, but being supernatural does not render the natural null and void (and no, that wouldn't make everything super). We often speak of the supernatural as if it were otherworldly or of a different kind of thing entirely than what we find on earth. I would posit that the supernatural makes no sense if it is not tied to the natural, if it is not a breaking of the rules of the natural which otherwise hold. The supernatural is the breaking in of a new dimension into the present, but the other 3 (or 4...I don't know how many there are anymore) dimensions still exist. The supernatural does not destroy the natural, but builds on it to construct something greater.

This post has gotten far longer than I would like, so I will draw it to a close. This whirlwind of ideas which has swept me up today will likely lead to further study in the future which I look forward to engaging and writing on. For the moment, however, I would like to offer this post as a call to a slight shift in our usual perspective on the world. We must stop thinking of sin in ambiguous, otherworldy terms, just as we must thinking of the supernatural as opposed to the natural and of the spiritual as apart from the physical and as the demonic as distinct from the material. This shift will feed a more robust sense of Christian mission, a mission which will look more like the ministry of Jesus, offering concrete, physical solutions to physical (sinful) problems while at the same time offering the spiritual aid that only Christ can give. Books have and will be written on how this mission fights against the personal and impersonal (i.e. corporate) evils that dominate our world today. But before those books can be opened, we need to reintroduce a relevant sense of sin which is frightening in its pervasiveness but conquerable by human hands weilding the sword of the Spirit.