Dastardliness

 

The word sin means nothing to most people. If you are a born again Christian it may be part of your everyday worldview but for the rest of society it is a word to be associated in a "nudge nudge" sort of way with sex or with cream cakes - naughty but nice... As a word describing the tendancy to doing things that are not good or pure evil it has lost its power. Indeed in teenage slang the phrase "Sinful" and "wicked" may be used to describe an experience that is really good!

The  tendency towards wickedness is still very evident in  our world. Only this week we will all have been struck by the immoral actions of the very highly paid traders at Barclays Bank who manipulated the interest rates of others for their own benefit. 

Against this background I read a chapter in Ann Morisy's book "Borrowing from the future". She has a novel and to me meaningful way of describing sin and sinfulness... I quote (page 7)...

"Jesus claims to provide an adequate respose to human dastardliness - that sneaky wickedness that is corporate and individual, conscious and unconscious, seen and unseen.

There is something alluring about the word dastardly. I use the word dastardly instead of the much simpler word sin. I do this because the word sin has little resonance in a secular society, but the failure to recognise sin does not mean that it has no impact. As we puzzle how to pivot, to turn ourselves around and turn the issue of intergenerational fairness* around we are confronted by sin - dastardliness, our own, other peoples and the dastardliness that runs adeep and furtively through our world. Jesus provides a path through this dastardliness. For those who are Christians this way through is secured through Jesus' death and resurrection, but Christians and non Christains alike will be interested in how, by showing us how to live, Jesus also provides a path through dastardliness."

* or turn around any other issue of moral concern..

quote from Ann Morisy "Borrowing from the future: a faith based approach to intergenerational equity"  Continuum  2011  ISBN978-1441-12536-1

Cartoon is of Dick Dastardly - a villain in th cartoon series "Wacky Races"!