I heard a preacher recently who claimed that babies crying for food and not being satisfied unless they got what they demanded was evidence of their inherent selfishness and thus sinfulness.
At one point in the past I might actually have nodded in agreement, or at least not objected.
This time I was quite horrified. I wrote a draft blog post and then set it aside. But then my Sunday school class turned its attention to the creation stories in Genesis and the topic of human nature came up, and I found myself mentioning this again. That led me to return to the blog post. But again I set it aside. I have kept coming back to the draft, wanting to finish it yet troubled by the fact that it should be necessary at all.
The notion that the need to eat or discomfort at being dirty or wet is “sinful” encapsulates quite nicely what is fundamentally wrong with conservative Evangelical Christianity. There is no room for the information from biology which tells us these things are natural and essential to survival. Sin is selfishness and there is no room for shades of grey between the black and white of moral righteousness and wrongdoing. As a result, the notion that a human being is born genuinely unable to manage our instinctive response to hunger and other discomforts, and that this is something that we need to cultivate so that we eat to survive but can tolerate short periods of hunger, are all things that involve nuance and process, things that blur too many lines for the comfort of conservatives.
My advice? Ditch the theology that would lead you to hear your tiny baby’s cry and ponder its sinful nature rather than hurrying to provide what your baby needs. You are the parent, and the crying is not a statement about a theology of sin but a plea to you for your assistance as the only one who can and should come to the rescue. Feed your baby. And as you contemplate the joyous presence of this newborn in the world, and the developmental process that will characterize the coming years, please find ways to view your child as a human being created as God intended rather than a sinful rebel against the Creator. If you do this, I am confident that both you and your child will thank me later.
Also relevant to this topic:
‘Christ died for us’: reflections on sacrifice and atonement
Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example (1 Peter 2; Easter 4A)
“Speaking Their Truth”? How conservative Christians make false claims to defend truth
On the other hand see:
See also R. L. Stollar on how Jesus talked about children
Evangelicals on human worthlessness and the superficiality of some deconstruction
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