Summing up the Situation

In a number of posts now I have tried to establish some sense of the situation our culture is in now and how the traditional Christian doctrines of creation, the Image of God, Sin, Original sin and demons can be help in interpreting this situation. I admit that my analysis is very superficial, of course, but this is not a summa, it’s a blog, and these are more notes of a thinking in progress than a finished study.

What has emerged is an image where we have developed a culture that has become demonic and that we no longer have control over. As the image of God it is in the deepest identity of humans to be creative. This is who we are. When we instead take part in the destruction of the world, be it by emitting green-house gasses with our cars or by buying products produced in sweatshops, we let our identities be distorted and we end up being something we are not. This is sin.

Our civilisation contain structures and institutions that de-humanizes us and turns us into something else than we really are, both as individuals and as a culture. These structures make it possible for people to make choices that are completely at odds with our deepest identity as images of God: Instead of being creative we have become destructive. In this culture it is not possible to live without sinning, we are not free enough to make choices that are not, in one way or another, destructive. This means that we are all taking part in the destruction of our culture and the world, and that we are all guilty.

This means that our culture, as it is today is standing sharply against God the Creator. And there is no escape from this, we cannot believe that God is siding with us in our quest to destroy the creation: God stands with the creation against our culture.

As I said, this blog, and more importantly, the theology that I present in it is a work in progress. While many of the ideas so far have been things I’ve been thinking about for years, I myself was surprised to reach the conclusion that God is against our culture. This “no” from God is so radical that one should almost write it in German. ;) But unless we want to close our eyes to the fact that humanity really have grown strong enough to destroy creation (by use of nuclear weapons if nothing else) this is the only way I can understand the situation.

Of course this is not where I will end. What I have been trying to do so far is to describe the situation in which it makes sense to talk of salvation. God’s “no” to our culture does not imply that his love for his creation does not encompass us too. I will now, in my upcoming posts try to form an understanding of how a true freedom would look like in this situation. In other words, I will try to formulate what it would mean to be “saved”. Only after that I will try to address exactly where Jesus Christ comes into all this.

I have no idea at the moment where this will all land. We will just have to see what comes out of it!