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       %CHRISTIAN CONFLICT NON-CONFORMITY SINS EVIL 970414

     Often  people  who call themselves Christians are  in
conflict with each other about the nature of evil, sin and
sins.

     Often  people who call themselves Christians are  not
seeking    to   be  peacemakers,   not  seeking   personal
integrity, and not seeking communal integrity.

     Often  the  conflicts among Christians regarding  the
nature  of evil,  sin and sins are conflicts which have to
do with conformity, non-conformity and issues of control.

     Some law-oriented Christians contend that the  nature
of  evil, sin and sins has to do with refusing to  conform
in  proper  ways;  i.e.,  with disobedience.    Such  law-
oriented Christians tend to contend that  what  is good is
conformity to good laws; i.e.,  what  is  good  is to obey
good commandments which prescribe proper forms of behavior
and proscribe improper forms of behavior.

     Some  Love-oriented  Christians  proclaim  that   the
nature of evil,  sin and  sins  has  to do with alienative
relationships and behaviors; i.e.,  with the break down of
open and honest human dialogue and intimacy---with God and
within  human communities.   Such Love-oriented Christians
protest  that  it  is alienative to  be  preoccupied  with
conformity  which is prescribed/proscribed and the  result
of  coercive  manipulations.    Love-oriented   Christians
protest    that   law-oriented   Christianity    engenders
alienative  relationships  ---  because   they  themselves
perceive that alienative relationships  are  what  lead to
most of what is called evil.

     Here the word "protest"  is uses in the sense of  the
Protestant  Reformation,  where the word points to  people
who are engaging in positive testimony.   To "protest"  is
to give positive testimony to  one's  own  experiences and
perceptions of what is true,   honest  and  integrative in
human lives and relationships.

     Love-oriented   Christians   protest   that   it   is
alienative RELATIONSHIPS  which  are properly called evil;
and that loving non-conformists of integrity are  involved
in evil RELATIONSHIPS  only  to  the  extent that coercive
people refuse  to  be  engaged in open and honest dialogue
with  them.    They protest that  evil  RELATIONSHIPS  are
engendered  by excommunications of loving  non-conformists
of integrity whose only "sin" is to fail to conform to the
demands of law-oriented Christians;  i.e.,   in regards to
prescriptions   and   proscriptions   which   law-oriented
Christians claim define "proper"  and "improper"  forms of
Christian behaviors.

     Love-oriented  Christians  seek to witness  to  their
experiences of God's Love as the liberating power in their
lives  and RELATIONSHIPS.   They witness to the  power  of
God's  Love  to  lead them into open and  honest  dialogue
within   intimate  RELATIONSHIPS  where  they  know   true
security  as the freedom to be safely  vulnerable.    They
protest  that   law-oriented   Christians'    assumptions,
attitudes,    beliefs   and   behaviors   block   people's
experiences of God's Love as the liberating power which it
is.

     Law-oriented Christians who refuse to  engage in open
and honest  dialogue  about  other people's experiences of
God's  Love  as the liberating and healing power in  their
lives and RELATIONSHIPS---thereby alienate themselves from
the Power of Love to reconcile people and bring  them into
integrative  communities  of  Love.     Such  law-oriented
Christians exclude themselves from integrative communities
of Love,  disintegrate themselves,   and  so  threaten the
personal  and  communal integrity of those humans  nearest
and dearest  to them.      Some of them live all  of their
painful lives  within blinding,   deafening  and sickening
alienative relationships of conflict, contention,  tension
and violence.
                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
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