Is Broken the New Sinful?

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The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject

Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty

God is hanging over our heads. They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed, and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended, and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the

Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us. Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Alright Tim, the question for today's episode is, is broken the new sinful?

Certainly in the minds of many people it seems to be that it is. Yeah, yeah, it definitely seems like it.

I don't know about you, but my personal experience has been, most Christians, regardless of where they lean in terms of do they lean left politically or right politically, or even how much of the

Bible do they actually believe, plenty of people who would agree with me on probably the majority of my theological views, maybe they might disagree on some tertiary things, but I've met people who largely agree with me who still use broken as a sort of replacement or like a synonym for sinful.

And so they'll talk about, hey, that person, they're just a broken person.

They just need Christ and then they'll be better. And really what they mean is that person is a sinful person who has not repented of their sin, but they're saying broken.

And so where is this coming from? Well, number one, is this actually a good way for us to talk?

Is it okay to replace sin with the word broken? And then follow -up question to that is, why are we seeing this so much?

Why is it so popular? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a poor substitute for sinfulness.

So part of this, I mean, I can give you my perspective on whether or not it's a good way to speak.

Based on just pragmatic considerations or something along those lines. But I mean, really, if you do believe that the

Bible is sufficient, if you believe the Bible is sufficient for life and godliness, then

I'm of the firm opinion that individuals would do well to try to be as intentionally biblical as they can in their language.

And that's just a logical implication of the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture.

If the Bible is sufficient for life and godliness, then I think if you can speak the way the Bible speaks, you're going to avoid a lot of the errors that come from not speaking the way the

Bible speaks. And I mean, just to give you a simple example of how that could work in another area, I mean, I think thinking about the difference between asking forgiveness and apologizing, for many apologies are like a substitute for asking forgiveness.

But there's a lot of things that are lost when you choose to apologize instead of asking forgiveness. And so there's a lot of value in just speaking the way the

Bible speaks and using the terms that the Bible use. And for many people, they think, well, you can just kind of change it up and use different terms and we all mean the same thing.

But then you may be really surprised at how many errors come from just simple change in language in that kind of way.

And I think the issue with brokenness as a substitution for sinfulness, which it seems that many people are using it that way, that there are a lot of things that are lost when you speak about people as if they're primarily broken, like that's their fundamental problem, is that they're broken instead of they're sinful.

There's a lot of things that are lost in that way. You can talk about some of those things, but then in terms of where is it coming from,

I think it's coming from basically, like the fundamental problem is that we're living in a victim society and the victim society we're living in is getting more and more of a victim society over the past few decades.

But then this is language that has really pervaded the music that we sing, and a lot of people, they get their theology more from the songs that they sing than from the

Bible that they are reading. And so there's a lot of things that are conspiring to produce this language as being the standard language that we're using.

I remember 20 years ago, secular songs started speaking in this way.

And that's just a natural consequence of living in a victim society, is that the language is going to reflect that.

But then even Christian music, like French Christian music songs started speaking that way when

I was in high school and early college. I remember that shift starting to happen.

And then right now, it seems like with Christian music, the state of the current Christian music right now, the go -to expression is broken and not sinful.

That's the go -to expression, and then that's the expression that you're going to find where you would expect sinful to be used, you're going to find broken to be used.

But then these two things, they don't mean the same exact thing, and they have entirely different connotations at times.

I think it's a very poor substitute for the word in general. Okay, so you're saying, hey, they don't mean the exact same thing.

Let's talk about that a little bit. So sinful—I mean, we all know what sinful means.

Hopefully, we all know what sinful means, right? Basically, we're transgressing against God.

We're failing to meet the standard that He's set for us, right? And then there's a specific consequence for that, which the

Bible says ultimately is eternal death and hell, right? So that's what sin is.

But then what's being communicated with broken? It's a vague word that can mean a lot of different things, and so it's very difficult to even know what people are saying at times.

I think the primary connotation that most people take away from this language is the victim language. So we're living in a victim society right now, and there's a lot of different comprehensive ways in which we are stuck in this victimization kind of mindset, and in terms of where we lean to find our fundamental identity.

So whether you're talking about the intersectional categories of quote -unquote race or gender or quote -unquote sexuality or the able -disabled discussion or the fat discussion, like fat's now a victim category too, but you have all the intersectional victim categories.

You have the psychological victim categories, which used to be kind of like your background, your upbringing. What is your problem?

Well, fundamentally your background, your upbringing, your education. Food you eat. Yeah, food you eat.

The new one is food. New is food. Everything's going to food now. That's the new materialistic answer for everything.

But then you have all the DSM labels. And then you add the Me Too hysteria to all of it too, and essentially you just have a pervasively victim society.

And in that way, when you're saying that you're broken, you're basically viewing God as the cosmic healer who's going to come and comfort you and fix your fundamental…

Make up all the pieces for you. Yeah, put them all together and give you a big hug and that kind of thing.

And then it's all packaged in the language of universal positive regard, meaning most people, they don't really want counsel from people.

What they want is they want people to come along and tell them that they're amazing and they're wonderful and they're special and they're unique and they're good -looking.

Just like everyone else. Yeah, and smart and so attractive and all this stuff. But they just want to be told that they're just…

They want to be agreed with. Everything that they say, they want it to be agreed with and they want to be told that nothing's their fault.

Yeah, people don't want to hear, you are the problem. Yeah, not you are the problem. Everything is not your fault.

It's everyone else, right? And if everyone else is to blame, you're fine, and you just need to be encouraged and agreed with and affirmed for what you think and what you feel and who you perceive yourself to be.

And so in that kind of world, broken really is… Fundamentally, I think most people, when they're using it, they're using it in this language of you're oppressed, right?

You're oppressed in certain ways and God has come to fix you, to help you, to cope with life and to deal with all of that.

Now, in its strongest use, it may be that some people are also using it to suggest that they're like a program that has a glitch in it or something like that, right?

And God's come to fix you. So it's common in your classic

CCM songs or your typical traditional CCM songs to talk about God's come essentially to help you have victory, right?

And help you to overcome and to put you together again and fix you and all that.

But in that language… Snuggle you close. Yeah, in the worst cases. But with all that, essentially you can be broken in the sense of flawed, right?

But then it still feels very victim -y. It feels like it's not your fault.

It's not your fault that you're messed up. It's someone else's fault. You're messed up, yeah. Maybe sin has caused you to be messed up.

So it's almost like it's pushing the problem back a degree, right? So sin has caused the entire world to be messed up, you included, and God's come to give you purpose, fix you up.

Fix your programming glitch. But even that's very impersonal, right? Whereas if you're sinful, there's a strong sense of personal responsibility there.

You are the problem. You're the villain in your story, right? You're not the victim in your story that God's come to heal.

You're the villain that God's come to forgive. That's what most people are fighting, essentially.

You know, it's funny that you mention that because I can recall many, many times talking to Christians and non -Christians and Christians alike, basically saying, hey, you know, sometimes people will ask, for example, hey, how can a

God send people to hell? If he really loves people, how could he send them to hell?

And my response is always what you're saying right now. You know, basically, you're looking, you know, let's assume we're all on a sinking ship, right?

And God has the ability to save everyone, get everyone off the ship, but he doesn't.

He doesn't get everyone off the ship. Well, you can look at that and say, well, he must be evil because no good

God would purposefully not save someone. But the flaw with that analogy is you're thinking of it as if every single person on that ship were totally blameless, right?

That they have not done anything wrong in the scenario. They're simply on a ship that is sinking through no fault of their own.

Really, the way that you should be thinking about it is like, let's pretend it's not a cruise ship. It's like a prison ship taking prisoners to some island or something.

Well, those people have done something wrong, right? Yeah, the question is not like how can a loving

God send good people to hell. The question is how can just God forgive evil people, essentially, right?

Right, yeah. When we're asking how can God send people to hell, we're asking the wrong question.

Really, what we should be asking is how can God let people into heaven, right? And you have those kind of conversations, even with Christians, and they still look at you like dumbfounded sometimes.

Yeah, particularly with children, yeah. Where they're just like, what? Like, what do you mean, what?

I thought you knew this. You should know this. How did you even become a Christian if you don't even know that we are all sinful?

None of us have a right to tell God who to let into heaven.

And so to even have that conversation is, at this point, I think one of the obvious negative side effects to using language like broken so much is it has trained people to think, you know,

I'm not a bad person. Sure, I do bad things sometimes, but I'm not a bad person.

And maybe even I still need forgiveness for some of those bad things I do, but generally

I'm a pretty good person. Because you're right, I'm not sinful.

I'm broken. I'm just messed up. It's a euphemism, yeah. It feels nice and polite. It's a way of avoiding the fundamental problem.

Yeah, and it's a lot less ugly to think about yourself as broken, possibly through no fault of your own, right?

You're implying that as opposed to just saying, like, I guess it was the tax collector that Jesus was talking about that refused to even look up to heaven as he was begging

God to have mercy on a sinner, even as him. And so it really does seem like one of the negative side effects to all this is we've just completely lost the idea that we are inherently all evil.

So when you think of Hitler, that's what you think of as the purest form of...

Paragon of wickedness, yeah. Yeah, but then we really do need to get to a place where we all view ourselves like Hitler in terms of how

God views us, right? So obviously there's a difference between...

There's a worldly difference between telling a lie and murdering six million

Jews, right? But from a spiritual perspective, we're all in the same boat. Right.

Yep, that seems to be one of the major consequences of this language in general is it's a way of softening the blow for people and keeping them from realizing that they do need a

Savior, right? As the Bible says, those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick, right?

I mean, you could change it to, I didn't come to call victims but villains to repentance.

I didn't come to call the broken, I came to call sinners. Yeah, I mean, that's really true.

Most people, once you adopt that victim identity and victim labels, you really, in our culture, in our society, you're putting yourself beyond the need for repentance, essentially.

Because the rules of the game are obvious. You don't shame the victim, you don't blame the victim. You believe the victim, you validate them, you affirm them.

So the more that we use this kind of victim language, the more that you're preventing people from being able to repent, for sure.

Okay, fair enough. This has been another episode of Bible Bashed. We hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion.

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