Speaking of Sin

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Finally, someone gives voice to the contradiction and confusion within us between faith and works, grace and righteousness. I have read most of the author’s written works and it’s so very hard to say this one or that one is best. But, this book shows her bravery, her wisdom, and her steadfast digging for truth (and her love toward the rest of us to share what she has discovered). You DO want to buy and read this book, and you’ll likely want to share it.

When a"liberal" argues for the recovery of the language of "sin" and "salvation", you notice. And when she titles a chapter, "Sin: Our Only Hope," you want to read further if only to find out what her counter-intuitive, contrarian angle is. It turns out that her perspective is a very insightful one. Taylor acknowledges that the popular notion of sin needs to be jettisoned -- it is itself sinful, you might say -- but not the fundamental concept of something being seriously wrong that needs to be righted and that the righting of it involves not just gradual improvement but a transformation of the human spirit that happens when we are in touch with the transcendent in a way that enables us to acknowledge that we've been out of touch with reality in a serious way. As long as we deny that there's anything wrong (recall John Cleese's "It's only a flesh wound"), then we will never seek or be open to a transformation of our fundamental life orientation (hence "Sin is our only hope"). When "sin" disappears from our vocabulary, then what is wrong gets explained in medical therapeutic terms (a "no fault" approach in which we are victims of external forces) or legal terms (an "all fault" approach in which we freely choose to make harmful decisions). Taylor argues that only a depth understanding of "sin" allows for the paradoxical nature of what we're talking about, for the complicity of ego and will in our refusal to acknowledge that anything is wrong, and for the hope of transformation -- not in any neat and simple sense, but in a deep and real sense nonetheless. If there's nothing wrong with you or your life or people who think like you do -- if it's everyone else in the world who's wrong -- then you can skip this book. But if you are among those who are not satisfied with overly simple medical and/or legal explanations of bad acting in our disjointed world and are willing to entertain the notion that in totally rejecting "the language of sin and salvation", we threw the baby out with the bathwater, you might find this a stimulating read.

As I have come to expect from Brown Taylor, this slim little book is packed full of concepts that require me to slow down and think about what she is saying. I really enjoy the way she approaches a thought from several different angles."People hear the guilt coming and they leave the room. They are tired of being judged and threatened by Christians who say"love" and do fear."Also, after years of liberal-arts education, she gave me the most useful definition of "post-modern" I've ever seen:"My own working definition of it is that the modern age is over-the age in which we believed in the power of the state, or the academy, or the church to bring out the best in us. In the age just past, nationalism has brought us Hitler, science has brought us the atom bomb, and religion has brought us some really awful television programming, not to mention apartheid or the civil war in Northern Ireland. Humanity has turned out to he hard to perfect, and the old structures we relied on to do so have let us down.""The threat of sin and the promise of salvation sound too much like part of the old control mechanism for keeping people in line, which has failed even at the highest echelons of church leadership."Read if: You are interested in chewy and humane theological writing. You have a lot of patience for thinking.Skip if: You are uninterested in theology.Also read: The Amber Spyglass: His Dark Materials  for a mirror-universe vision of sin which involves all the post-modern thinking Brown Taylor is talking about.

Barbara Brown Taylor is a theologian for everyday people. Her voice on paper is as it is in person, soft, sure, and comforting. Taylor draws you in--toward the end of preaching God's Word, the Gospel of Christ. She does not pull any punches, nor does she shy away from the hard work of telling her own story, whether it is about "Leaving Church" (her memoir of ministry) or here, when she is "Speaking of Sin." BBT appeals to those of us who are searching, but who want to hear about the Good News in our own language.This book is her explanation of why we as Christians in today's society should re-claim the language of sin and salvation. She acknowledges that we would rather not speak of sin--we do not necessarily wish to pass an eternal judgement on others OR on ourselves. We have, she explains, appropriated the languages of medicine and law to speak of our "illnesses" or "transgressions." Her point is that by discarding the language of sin, we deny our access to the language of salvation, wherein lies our hope as humanity. In other words, we can be "healed" from sickness and "pay" for a crime, but neither of those words capture the magnificence of what awaits us for the repentance of sin. And that, she points, is a crying shame.

being a paperback. Is being used for a church Bible Study.

I am a big fan of authors who have the ability to express great ideas succinctly, and BBT once again proves herself to be masterful in this regard. This short read gets to the heart of one of the greatest problems with the church today, and I am going to be reccomending it to friends of all faith traditions.It only took a few hours to read, but I predict that I will be wrestling with the contents for the next few years, if not the rest of my life. Do yourself a favor and read it!

One of the best books I've read in a long time. Don't hear the word "sin" used a lot these days. This little book - based on a series of lectures on the topic - tells us what we've lost. Fascinating! Definitely a book I'd buy a second copy of, to share.