This is a bit longer than the average book review on this site. It is also a little more "academic" (with page citations and such). This is because it was written for a class I took last Spring. If you want the short answer: read this book. It is written on a very accessible, popular level, but the theology contained therein is profound. This is in no way "ivory tower" theology. It is a boots on the ground, down and dirty discussion of a doctrine that we tend to ignore.
Sin is the constant companion that we all too often choose to ignore. Every person who lives or has lived on this earth has experienced the tragic effects of sin. It has ravaged our world and our interactions with each other. It has harmed everyone and all aspects of life, from the youngest person to the largest institutions, but, for the most part, we do not talk about it. In Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, Cornelius Plantinga seeks to remedy that situation. He is “Trying to retrieve an old awareness that has slipped and changed in recent decades. The awareness of sin…” (ix), because today “where sin is concerned, people mumble now” (x).
In Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, Plantinga tells a story. This world is supposed to be peaceful, just, and good (8). God created it that way, and He created humanity for relationship with Him. However, we don’t experience life this way. A problem was introduced, the problem of sin. Sin is not just a moral problem, it is a relational problem. “Sin is the smearing of a relationship, the grieving of one’s divine parent and benefactor, a betrayal of the partner to whom one is joined by a holy bond” (12).
Plantinga wants us to realize that sin has a history, a past. The world was not always this way. If we fail to see sin as part of a story, as something within the story and not transcendent over it, we cannot really understand sin. If we do not understand what the world was like before sin, and what it will be like after its removal, we will not properly understand the tragedy of sin.
This is one of several things that Plantinga does well in his book. Sin is never portrayed as normal. It is always something that distorts. Sin is “anti-creation” (29). “Nothing about sin is its own; all its power, persistence, and plausibility are stolen goods” (89). Sin is does not have its own existence. It is merely a corruptor of what is good, a “Parasite,” as Plantinga calls it. It is a spoiler of the good, but because its existence is not its own, it is ultimately powerless over the original creation or God’s re-creational intention (88). Yet, in our fallen state the scope of sin is pervasive. It touches everything. “Evil perverts religion as well as everything else that is vital and momentous” (108).
Evil disguises itself well. It often appears good (98). We see this in culture. Entire countries can be deceived into following an evil dictator’s scheme (107), but this is not a sin that is somewhere out there. This is a sin that we all participate in for we all deceive ourselves (112). We tell ourselves lies, and then start to believe them. We allow sin to corrupt our hearts. This deception that we take part in is attractive because we know that there is a better way than sin. As Plantinga says, “Remarkably, the phenomenon of self-deception testifies that we human beings…are incorrigibly sold on goodness” (112). We wish for our evil to appear good.
It is in places like this where Plantinga’s book is at its best. He skillfully convinces the reader of what he is arguing for, and then takes that truth and places it before us as a mirror into our own hearts. Just when we begin to think; “Yes, that is true of our culture and it is truly terrible” on the next page he places the sin that he has been discussing before the reader and causes us to realize that this is true of ourselves. No one slips through the cracks in Plantinga’s thorough and descriptive evaluation of sin.
Yet, he does this carefully and honestly. Plantinga writes well, and the reader never feels that he is being talked down to. Sin is taken seriously, and its grave effects are described with gravity and sorrow in some detail. Sin is always described as something evil and terrible, but the sinner, while not seen as a mere victim (105), is treated as a person who must deal with the evil in the world and in himself. Because of this, here is a book to be read by Christian and non-Christian alike. It is psychological, gritty, and real. It is a book that meets us where we are. It is a book that makes us feel in our conscience what we have lost in our consciousness. It recognizes that we are all in this together; we are all part of this story (161). There are many touchstones in this book. Whatever the religious persuasion of the reader, the examples from our culture, society, and selves will be easily recognizable and identified with.
Over the course of the book, Plantinga not only discusses various kinds of sin, but also various characteristics of sin. As mentioned, sin is parasitic in nature and tries to appear good. Sin is also foolishness. While wisdom is “the knowledge of God’s world and the knack of fitting oneself into it” sin is a corruption of that (115). Sin is “wrong,” “dumb,” and “futile” (121).
Plantinga sees sin appearing in two basic postures, attack or flight (153). Sometimes, we attack others (or God) in word or deed. At other times we flee from what we should do or from recognizing that we are doing is wrong. But again, Plantinga does not pretend that this is just something that others do. He does not place these actions only at the feet of non-Christians. In one of his more striking passages Plantinga says to those of us in the church; “Claiming allegiance to the Christ who speaks in active imperatives…, we Christians nonetheless prefer to keep the bread of life in our own cupboard and to speak of it only to those who already have it” (189). Once again, Plantinga is refreshingly and starkly frank.
Here is yet another strength of this book. Plantinga pulls no punches. He does not shrink away from asking the hard questions. He does not ignore critiques of the Christian doctrine of sin (cf. his excellent chapter on addiction), nor does he shy away from challenging our cultures treasured beliefs (cf. 100). He can do this because he is convinced that there is an existential disconnect between what should be and what we experience. We all know that things just are not as they should be.
Ultimately, the problem with sin is that it always fails to satisfy. “Why is it not only wrong but also foolish to offend God? God is our final good, our maker and savior, the one in whom alone our restless hearts come to rest. To rebel against God is to saw off the branch that supports us” (123). Human nature “with its vast and mysterious amalgam of capacities to think, feel, supervise, love, create, respond, and act virtuously—that is, with its capacities for imaging God—has become the main carrier and exhibit of corruption” (30-31).
This is the story. Humans, created to image God in the world, have failed to do this due to our rebellion against God. All that we do is tainted with this rebellion, and it affects everything. Yet there is good news. Because this is “not the way it’s supposed to be,” it is not the way that it will be. There is hope for Shalom in the resurrection of Jesus (199), but without a proper understanding of the problem, we will not cling to the solution.
This is not a book to be read quickly. It is a book that you must digest, must think about, must consider. If we take sin seriously, as Plantinga suggests we should, we should not plow through this book as if it were a dime store novel. Instead, the reader must carefully consider what he is saying and what the implications are. Here is a book that recognizes, above all else, that our main problem is our failure to relate to God as we should. Things are not right because we are not oriented properly towards God.
While this book is about sin, about the problem instead of the solution, in the epilogue the story surfaces once again. Plantinga brings the story back to bear with these words; “To speak of sin by itself, to speak of it apart from the realities of creation and grace, is to forget the resolve of God. God wants shalom and will pay any price to get it back” (199). That is the story. Sin is here, and it is real, but it has not always been and will not always be. In the end, God’s purpose will be accomplished and sin will be wiped away, but for now, it is something that is with us and that is gravely serious. Plantinga’s book is the best contemporary evaluation of the problem of sin that I have read. It is an excellent work and will benefit all who read it.
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