Chapter 15

The Nature of Sin

Society’s denial of our spiritual needs has developed a defense system that is brilliant in its structure. It tells us first that God does not exist. If we get beyond that, it tells us that he’s undependable in personal relationships because we can’t know him individually. If we get past that and acknowledge that we’ve heard the voice of God as we’ve struggled with questioned identity, questioned worth, or insecurity, spiritual denial offers its final and most effective argument: living our lives according to God’s will is punitive, sacrificial, and restrictive. It requires that we attempt to avoid “sin!”

God wants us to love and to be loved in a personal relationship with him. To love him and to acknowledge him for who he is. To accept his love and allow him to nurture us and guide us according to his plan. To love the totality of his creation. To care for it. To nurture it. To protect it.

What is sin? Anything that prevents us or distracts us from doing that. Spiritual ignorance, apathy, and denial cause sin.

I grew up thinking that sin was behavior-oriented. It was as though there were two lists somewhere in a vault in heaven, one listing “Acts of Sin” and the other listing “Acts of Obedience.” My job was to find out the contents of each list. To be saved, of course, I would have to eliminate from my behavior those things on the sin list while simultaneously performing those tasks that appeared on the obedience list.

Sin is not an act, but a condition that is the inevitable consequence of less-than- perfect spiritual health. Unhealthy behavior, attitudes, and distractions are the symptoms. Sin is the illness.

Because of ignorance, apathy, and denial, each of us is born into a world and a society that are riddled with poor spiritual health. Are any of us personally responsible for that? We are taught society’s values and beliefs and we are taught to judge the worth of ourselves and others according to how well we or they relate to those values. Each of us is victimized by those teachings. We are fed misinformation, encouraged to be apathetic about the needs of God’s creation, and rebuked if we attempt to discuss those feelings and needs that others are denying.

Some have a tendency to want to catalogue acts of sin. By doing this, they can take pride in their avoidance of these acts. They can also admonish themselves when they succumb to them. This practice also enables them to judge others by the same standards they apply to themselves. What could be fairer? They can apply the same principle with respect to their acts of obedience list. The problem with that tendency is twofold. First, they may depend more on those lists for guidance than they do on a personal relationship with God. In doing that, the lists—instead of God—become their primary objects of dependency. Rather than being faithful to God, they’re faithful to the lists. That faithfulness can exist in the total absence of any personal relationship with God. If we teach others that faithfulness to the lists or that religious conformity are synonymous with faithfulness to God then we are actually discouraging people from having their spiritual needs met. In that event, we are teaching them to be more dependent on us or our lists than they are on a personal relationship with God. If they accept that teaching, they may not allow him to reveal to them what he wants them to know.

The second problem with the tendency to develop lists is that we tend to use them to judge both ourselves and others. If it wasn’t for this tendency to judge, why would we even want the lists? In acknowledging God for who he is, he must be acknowledged as the only qualified judge. If we try to proclaim his judgment for him, then we’re refusing to acknowledge him for who he is. The American Indians believed they shouldn’t judge a man until they’d walked in his moccasins. Which of us is capable of having lived another person’s life? Unless we have, how could we possibly presume to judge them? Each of us has been born into a world of sin. But no two of us has had completely identical encounters with it. None of us can possibly understand fully how events and teachings have affected another person. Only God can know that. If we judge others as unfaithful, unrepentant, unloving, or as having diminished worth, we are presuming to do what only God can do. As a society, we have a need to protect ourselves from those who are blatantly and persistently victimizing others. We have no need to judge their worth.

None of us is personally responsible for having been born into sin. None of us is personally responsible for having been taught the lessons of sin. We have been victimized by spiritual denial. And, to the extent we perpetuate it, we are victimizing others.

God is aware of our environment of spiritual denial. He knows that we are victims of it. He knows that we perpetuate it. But because he loves us, he wants us to overcome it. He wants us to depend on him to satisfy our needs more than we depend on anyone or anything else.

Because of the proliferation of “Sin Lists” and “Acts of Obedience” lists circulating in the various religious organizations and because of our tendency to judge others as well as ourselves, we fall into the trap of believing that faithfulness to God is a matter of behavior. It’s not. It’s a matter of acknowledging God for who he is. He wants us to be healthy. If we depend on him to lead us to health, our behavior will change as a matter of consequence. We’ll gradually learn what we really need. We’ll gradually try to place the needs of others ahead of our own wants. We’ll gradually try to place our own needs ahead of the wants of others. The wisdom of doing those things will become gradually more apparent.

As we gradually learn to allow God to show his dependability, we’ll learn to risk in ways we’d been afraid to risk before. We’ll learn to defend ourselves and others without becoming defensive. We’ll learn to nurture others instead of victimizing them. As his love for us becomes gradually more apparent and our security in him becomes gradually more sure, we can learn to live our lives with a freedom we’ve never known before. We’ll be more able to enter relationships with a willingness to share instead of wanting to control or be controlled.

The world of spiritual denial desires that we allow ourselves to be controlled, manipulated, and kept in our places by believing the false beliefs we’ve been taught by the unqualified teachers around us. God simply wants to set us free.

Every new relationship implies some risk. But no one who responds to God needs to fear rejection or harm. After all, didn’t he approach you first?