Wednesday 23 April 2014

SIN

'Churches that silence the biblical message of sin and grace simply aren't anywhere near where people actually live their lives, including the kids in the congregation. Kids who read Harry Potter know all about good and evil. Maybe they wouldn't use the word "sin" to describe the evil in the books. Fine. Bracket the word "sin" and talk about what Voldermort does, what the Dementors do. Hollywood screenwriters are so conscious of good and evil that if a character cheats on a good woman or kills an innocent person, something will happen to him. He won't simply get away with it. The formula today is the same as it always has been: let dramatically portrayed evil entertain us, and then punish it satisfyingly by the end of the show. Do this because, of course, the guilty deserve to be punished. Hollywood writers are old fashioned people. They mostly don't go to church so they have never learned that personal guilt for wrongdoing has become passe.' 
Cornelius Plantinga Jr, Reading for Preaching, p.115.