Social Justice Statement - Why I can't sign it, and you shouldn't Part 5 - The Self Own.

So, on to part 5, sin:

Sin

WE AFFIRM that all people are connected to Adam both naturally and federally. Therefore, because of original sin everyone is born under the curse of God’s law and all break his commandments through sin. There is no difference in the condition of sinners due to age, ethnicity, or sex. All are depraved in all their faculties and all stand condemned before God’s law. All human relationships, systems, and institutions have been affected by sin.

WE DENY that, other than the previously stated connection to Adam, any person is morally culpable for another person’s sin. Although families, groups, and nations can sin collectively, and cultures can be predisposed to particular sins, subsequent generations share the collective guilt of their ancestors only if they approve and embrace (or attempt to justify) those sins. Before God each person must repent and confess his or her own sins in order to receive forgiveness. We further deny that one’s ethnicity establishes any necessary connection to any particular sin.

Well, we do understand the reformed view of total depravity, and there is not much to object to here -  except to note that total depravity doesn't mean we are "as bad as we possibly could be", merely that sin affects and afflicts every part of man.

What is interesting here, is how they self-own. So often, the rhetoric from this side is, "well Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfeild were but men of their time". Well, that's an excuse. You've just justified sin and racism. No person who signs this statement can legitimately use this excuse ever again. It's gone.

Not only that they sound like they're trying to have inherited guilt both ways. "WE DENY that, other than the previously stated connection to Adam, any person is morally culpable for another person’s sin." Well, that's convenient isn't it. You have guilt for Adam's sin, but not your great grandfather, the slave owners sin.

The hilarity of that is most reasonable people don't hold them responsible for their great grandfather's sin. No, they look at the benefits reaped from the sin, and then their own poverty, and they say, "Hang on, there's a problem here. When you renounced the sin, you conveniently didn't renounce it's benefits." We'll get into this idea more later. It isn't as complicated as it sounds.

So, yeah, I'm calling this the affirmation of the self-own.

Don't @ me.

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