Debts or Trespasses? The Great Debate

In our household, there is a theological debate raging.

The question at hand: When saying the Lord's Prayer, should we say "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors," as Daddy's church does it...or should we say "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," like they say at the Lutheran preschool? 

This is actually a question that many people wonder about.  And the Catechism offers some help in answering.  Q&A 14 defines sin as "any want of comformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God."

Transgression is what we typically think of when we sin--actively doing something you should not do.  Trespassing a boundary.  Violating a command.  These are easy to notice (particularly in the lives of others, perhaps easy to overlook in our own lives.)

But what about this phrase "want of conformity?"  It means anytime we fail to do something we ought to do, that too is sin.  As James puts it, "whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin." (James 4:17)  This is something the languages of "debts/debtors" captures that the language of "trespasses" doesn't: we need to confess not only the things we have done, but all the things we have failed to do.  "Debts" is a more expansive term that encompasses more: Every good act we owe to our Creator and Redeemer that we overlooked.  Every neighbor in need that we turn from.  Every trespass we should have confessed.  Every encouraging word we didn't say. 

This gets me thinking: if you were to put all your transgressions on one side of a scale, and all your "want of conformity" on the other side, which side would be heavier?  I'm pretty sure that for all the innumerable trespasses I do each day--all the ways I actively do wrongly, I probably miss just as many opportunities to do rightly, to please my Father, to glorify the Son, to heed the Spirit.  In fact, my hunch is that my debt to God is even greater than my trespasses, since each trespass also increases the debt!

All this to say, sin is a bigger deal than just the naughty things we do.  It also includes all the good things we don't do.  And for that reason, I'll keep asking God to forgive my debts, not just my trespasses.  (Take that, Lutherans!)

5 Things Prescientific Theologians Can Teach Us About Creation

You might think that Westminster's teaching on creation is something for the dustbin.  After all, in 1642, when the Westminster Assembly was being convened, Galileo died and Isaac Newton was born.  The great revolution of scientific knowledge that would soon emerge had not taken hold.  So what could these prescientific rubes know about creation?  Wouldn't their thoughts on this subject be hopelessly out of date since they didn't have any access to the great scientific discoveries of later centuries?

It turns out that precisely because this document was written in a context in which the science/religion (false) dichotomy had not yet taken hold, they had access to insights that we could completely miss.  Surely we have great scientific knowledge that is beyond the wildest imaginations of the Westminster Divines.  But they have insight that is easily to overlook in our day of overblown rhetoric about "science versus religion." 

Here are five things that  can profitably learn from the Westminster Shorter Catechism about creation:

1. Creation is not only about what happened there and then, but about what happens here and now.   Our impoverished imaginations can only think of this as a debate between science and religion, Genesis vs. Darwin.  But the Catechism reminds us in Question 8 that creation and providence are intimately linked in the decrees of God.  In other words, creation isn't just an academic debate about the past, but a vital reality in which we live and move and work.  It's not just about God's activity there and then (creation) but about his activity here and now (providence).

2.Creation calls us to value gender differences.  Following Genesis 1:27, the catechism affirms that God created both male and female "after his own image."  The implication here is that all those gender-specific, Mars and Venus characteristics that make up the stand-up routines of comedians and make spouses crazy, those are part of God's good design and intention.  Men and women aren't just different--they are supposed to be different, because men and women more fully reflect the image of God together than they do apart.  This means that a proper understanding of creation helps us to be understand, value, and seek God's wisdom in the different ways men and women operate.  Gender difference is a feature of the software, not a bug.
 
3. Creation calls us to ecological stewardship.  Sticking close to Genesis again, question 10 reminds us that human beings are given "dominion over the creatures."  Rightly understood, this is connected to Adam's charge to cultivate the garden--to help God's world flourish and thrive.  True, we have done a terrible job of this, but it's not because we have believed too much that this world is fashioned by God.  It's probably because we've forgotten that it's not ours to do with as we like.  The most robust environmentalism is that which embraces the divine affirmation of the created order.

4. Creation speaks to our daily jobs.  "Dominion" isn't just an ecological work, and it's not just related to animals.  It speaks also to whatever it is we do in the created world in which God has placed us.  What would it mean for an urban planner to remember that God created the world?  What would it mean for a lawyer or politician to operate from the conviction that men and women are image-bearers of God?  What would it mean for a parent to remember that God pursue not only the "knowledge" but also the "righteousness and holiness" of their children?  If God made the world and all that is in it, every day when we get to the office we are involved in dominion, in excercising the image of God in our lives.  Imago dei is not a static "thing" in us, we bear God's image in our work in work we do in the world as well.

5. Creation secures human rights.  If human beings bear the image of God, then each person you come in contact with is of inestimable value.  As CS Lewis has put it, "the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship."  And so the immigrant, the developmentally disabled, the elderly, the poor, the unborn, the victimized, the abused...justice and human rights are due to them simply because they have been created in the image of God.  Period.

All of this flows naturally from the doctrine of creation.  It's about a lot more than a debate between Genesis and Charles Darwin.