Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin

by Cornelius Plantinga Jr.

Book Overview

This timely book retrieves an old awareness that has slipped and changed in recent decades. The awareness of sin used to be our shadow. Christians hated sin, feared it, fled from it--and grieved over it. But the shadow of sin has now dimmed in our consciousness. Even preachers, who once got visibly angry over a congregation's sin, now speak of sin in a mumble.

Cornelius Plantinga pulls the ancient doctrine of sin out of mothballs and presents...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802842186
• ISBN13: 9780802842183
• Release Date: February 1996
• Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Bringing Sin Back into Serious Conversation

I appreciate this book. Plantinga is an engaging writer and does well covering the essentials of a difficult subject. He gives a helpful working definition of sin and makes valuable distinctions between different categories of sin; he talks about the relationship (and the difference) between sin and folly and handles the tricky 'sin for me' (but not necessarily for you) aspect of sin. You'd think a book all about sin would be heavy and depressing, but Plantinga is positive and honest, not naive, but gracious. Something I really benefited from while reading Not the Way was the way reading about sin helped me refocus on my sin. And Plantinga mentions in his introduction that this is one of his objectives: to reintroduce the subject once again for serious contemplation. He's right. Partially in reaction against the extremism exhibited by the generations before us, and partially because it's much more comfortable, the generations of the Baby Boomers and beyond focus on the Image-bearing goodness of human kind at the expense of the sin-bearing seed we also carry. We look the other way or gloss it over; we joke and shrug it off. It doesn't grieve or anger us. Dessert is sinful; I just make mistakes. As you can tell, I recommend this book. Pick it up, and rejoin the loving yet serious conversation of sin.

Renewing a vision for how it IS supposed be

Dr. Cornelius Plantinga provides a theology of sin that is insightful, delightful and provoking, at the same time. I think not many readers will be able to complete this book without awakening both a desire and a renewed acuteness in their conscience. Plantinga starts off painting a (very attractive!) picture of what life might look like apart from sin; the point of the book is for us not to simply avoid sinning, but to move to positively create that life. He uses a couple vocabula with special significance, "shalom" to mean a general rightness in the world and society, and "spiritual hygiene" to a rightness in an individual. It may be distracting to get into Hebrew etymology and be concerned with that vocabulary itself -- it seems to have been adopted by the Christian community that specialises in such things, so I'll adapt. The majority of the book addresses various dimensions in which this sinless state isn't what we observe in the current state of our universe. Representatives of the dimensions Plantinga addresses include: * The traditional "deadly sins" -- things like envy and immorality -- and the modernly perceived absolute evils such as sexism, racism, and lack of tolerance. While I don't necessarily agree on all of the details of what's really wrong in the modern evils, the bigger point is that a right society would be free of contamination by both sorts of evil, the ones that "the good old days" would have objected to and the ones to which it would have been oblivious. * Religiosity. He urges believers to make sure it's the God who is there that we worship when we're being religious, rather creating a different god the way we want him to be and then attacking anyone who questions our religiosity. Generally, he looks at how we err or fail to take responsibility. It is written within the context of God's grace being the solution to this problem, but doesn't spend much space on grace; part of the reason the book was written to offset the imbalance of how much is being spoken and written on grace without materially addressing sin - why grace matters. Some of the focus of this book fits especially well in a post-modern western context, but the work is clearly applicable to the whole of human experience. When appalled by some of the examples, those of us who don't belong in the setting whence they were drawn will do well to think of our own parallels rather than to set about casting stones at "the west" / neoliberals / the US / New Yorkers / etc. There is much in this work to remind each of us, to make each of us conscious, of our guilt and responsibility -- not only for things of which we have always felt secretly guilty, but for things that likely never crossed our minds. Certainly my conscience has been piqued! Plantinga points out how we live in a world where the evil people do may be 'caused' be evil they have suffered. He lightly broaches the subject of non-exclusivity between being cause and result -- how sin can be a

sin as vandalism

"Not the Way It's Supposed to Be" is an insightful, thoughtful, and engaging book. I, and no doubt millions of other Christians love Jesus because of his grace and never-ending love. How easy it would be to so focus on these aspects of God and to lose sight of why He is truly so great. Plantinga's book reminds us of the monumental problem that Jesus has saved us from--Sin. Sin is a loaded word. Many people have and still abuse it. Plantinga does not. Plantinga eloquently terms it "Vandalism of God's Shalom"--God's perfect created order. This metaphor shocked me at first, but then opened my eyes. This is a book that will challenge any reader. It is a classic.

Much wisdom brings misery

One of my favorites of all time. Very engaging and insightful although I have been more critical of behavoirs, motives, thoughts since reading it. I took a long time to read it and made extensive notes. Even years later I refer to them regaining important insight into my particular situation. Excellent book!!!