This is from the section Thinking Biblically in Chapter IV God, page 99-100 (emphasis mine).
The biblical answer about why we have lost our center is rather straightforward. The center has not been lost. What has been lost is our ability to see it, to recognize it, to bow before it, to reorder our lives in the light of it, to do what we should do as people who live in the presence of this center, this Other, this triune, holy-loving God of the Bible.
And so we create our own center, we create our own rules, and we make our own meaning. All of this springs from an alternative center in the universe. It is ourselves.
Paul's statement is that, since the fall, we have "worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator" (Rom. 1:25). We will not reckon with our internal sense that God does exist. We also try to ignore our own sense of the moral fabric of life (Rom. 1:18-20, 2:14-15). And we have also made some substitutions. We have replaced the actual center of life with one of our own making, substituting our interests for God's, our perspective for his, our norms for his, our meaning for his, and our privatized truths for his absolute truth. All of this is the essence of sin.
The biblical answer about why we have lost our center is rather straightforward. The center has not been lost. What has been lost is our ability to see it, to recognize it, to bow before it, to reorder our lives in the light of it, to do what we should do as people who live in the presence of this center, this Other, this triune, holy-loving God of the Bible.
And so we create our own center, we create our own rules, and we make our own meaning. All of this springs from an alternative center in the universe. It is ourselves.
Paul's statement is that, since the fall, we have "worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator" (Rom. 1:25). We will not reckon with our internal sense that God does exist. We also try to ignore our own sense of the moral fabric of life (Rom. 1:18-20, 2:14-15). And we have also made some substitutions. We have replaced the actual center of life with one of our own making, substituting our interests for God's, our perspective for his, our norms for his, our meaning for his, and our privatized truths for his absolute truth. All of this is the essence of sin.
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