I opened this up to write about something that’s been on my heart and developing for several months now. Possibly since last November. I'm sure I've complained about it before in person, on social media, that I was tired of feeling like everything I do is a sin somehow. The conviction that everything I do is wrong, that I can’t avoid sinning. I've been recognizing an old trend from a previous church, and I remember the sermons that went through every one of the ten commandments and contorted scripture to conclude that not only have we committed them all in spirit, (which we have, and Christ pointed that out in the sermon on the mount and also when He was addressing the rich young man who could not break his idolatry of gold enough to follow Christ) but we do them every second of every day. That seems…presumptive, like when Eve said she was forbidden to touch the fruit - that’s more than what God’s actual command was. I think it IS reasonable to say that I’ve been unjustly wrathful, often, and that’s the same root sin as murder. I’m glad there’s no secular rap on that. It’s also reasonable to say that I’ve used paid time inappropriately, I remember a particular instance with shame, and therefore have stolen, but I’m going to go ahead and make the truth claim that I’m not doing any of those things right this minute. If there is a compulsion to it, I’m resisting adeptly enough that I don’t even notice.
If you’ve just thought to yourself, “ah! What a PRIDEful thing to say, she’s committing the sin of PRIDE and she doesn’t even know it” I’ve had that conversation before, and back then, I was reading off of your copy of the script.
Some people are so used to the notion that we commit every sin all the time that they may be quite comfortable to see me turn around and explain that such an assumption indicates a pride problem on their own part, but I hope you aren’t comfortable with the notion. It has cost me much grief, and despair, and a heavy burden to think that I cannot, never, ever ever, not even with Christ as my advocate, not even with the Holy Spirit indwelling in me, ever NOT sin. Grieving our savior should not be a light thing. We are called to repentance, is it possible to repent - turn away - from sin if we can do nothing but sin?
Maybe you’ve never experienced that ideology. I was inundated with it when I was in high school at one of my old churches. A friend of mine and I were talking about this, and she said she took it for granted that she was sinning constantly. We were having breakfast together, fellowship opened in prayer, discussion that pursued truth and companionship, and somehow, in some unseen way, we were sinning. Can you repent of whatever sin that is? Passages in the bible make it clear that if you aren’t turning away, aren’t even struggling to stop, it’s not repentance. Perhaps it was different outside the high school group. Perhaps the adult classes didn’t take the idea of original sin so far, but it seems like a lot of the sermons did. I remember feeling bombarded, as a teen, with every little nitpicky way in which everything, absolutely everything I did was somehow a sin.
Someone else I know, who also struggled with it, described it this way: she played the piano. If she played the piano to the best of her ability, she was committing the sin of pride, but if she played anything less than to the best of her ability, she was not properly using the gifts that God had given her, and that was a sin, too. She could not play the piano and not sin, even though playing the piano was not a sin. If you got a tattoo, that was a sin because your body was a temple and you deliberately made a permanent mark on it. I don’t have any tattoos, I have a lot of scars because I subconsciously pick at my scabs: SIIIIIIIIN. Now, that passage about defiling the temple is in the context of sexual sin, it gets pretty specific, but vegan Christians have insisted that it means a cheeseburger is sin, and health obsessed Christians have pointed out that not exercising is a sin. You could probably use that passage to indicate that everything you don't like is a sin. Trying to think of something I don't like. The Eternals is a sin, 'cause that whole movie was a waste of time, and you let that nonsense enter your brain, and don't you know your body is a temple?
I’ve seen, recently, a passage in 1 Peter “...casting your burdens on Jesus, for He cares for you” interpreted into a reflection that HAVING burdens, anxieties, fears, is a sin. The passage, if you treat it like a cohesive whole is preceded by a command to humble oneself, and in that context, God is casting your anxieties/burdens on Christ, but both the command to humble oneself and the notion that we are the ones casting burdens on Christ are implications of prayer, not of sin.
Is fear a sin? One can sin by being afraid. Joshua, who was directly commanded several times at the beginning of his campaign to not fear would have been sinning, and he was tackling the statistically impossible. Giving way to fear would have led to tremendous sin, for his office was to cleanse the land of a people who were cannibalistic, ritualistic murderers, rapists, monstrosities. It was unjust to cleanse them in the time of Joseph before they became so, but now they must be gone, and Joshua was the beginning of that. To fear was to disobey, and at one point, the people of Israel absolutely disobeyed in fear. A lot of mess came with that little incident. But my kid, waking in the night because his new room is strange, because he’s having allergy trouble and thought he couldn’t breathe, am I going to soothe him by brushing the hair tenderly off his forehead and saying “you know, the bible says that you’re sinning right now. That’s why it’s important to not be afraid.”
I’ve met people who were afraid to pray, for fear that they were praying the wrong thing, and an agony in their soul, and a circumstance that could not be mitigated without loss of life was put only hesitantly into the arms of He who already knows all our hearts and minds. They were robbing themselves of intimacy with Him because they were afraid that their prayers would be wrong. 1 Peter 5:7 was written for them. Being told that having a burden is a sign of their sin does nothing to resolve any problems.
I need to make clear my belief that there is no action, no institution, no enterprise that a human being can engage in that cannot be corrupted. We are the great corruptors. What concerns me is a tendency to take it to the extreme that we as individuals in Christ are incapable of refraining from sin. Or that every possible instance of sin is always sin for every person: a child weeping in fear of the night, or a woman rejoicing because she played a song beautifully, or a teenage boy saying “at this moment, I’m not sinning.” It is presumptive to take what is a sin of the heart and assume that all people are committing it at all times.
If in being told to lay our anxieties on Christ, we are being told not that we should take comfort, to pray, to involve Him in the management of those anxieties, but that having them at all is a sin, then having tears is also a sin, for Jesus told the woman at the funeral in Luke 7 “Don’t cry” - a directive, just like “do not fear”, and on the basis of that linguistic nuance was fear called a sin. And if tears and anxieties are a sin, then we make Christ, who wept at the tomb of Lazarus and sweated blood in the garden of Gethsemane, out to be a sinner.
No! Damnable blasphemy!
I think we did it again. We took a good and right thing, and we corrupted it by taking it too far. We took the truth that we are incapable of satisfying the law, that we have unrighteousness that required the blood of God Himself to purge and said that it cannot be purged until we are dead. It’s a huge deal, and 1 John makes it clear that saying we’re without sin is miserable self-deception. But John also says that because Christ was manifested to take away our sin, whoever abides in Him does not sin, and who continues to sin has neither seen nor known Him. Sin is something that now, through Christ, I CAN STOP DOING! It’s reaffirmed later in 1 John 5:18.
I can’t tell you the relief that came when those verses were pointed out to me. They are confirmation when I strive to do right that I am not always, at all times, grieving my Saviour. They are condemnation against those moments when I am tempted, and tell myself that since I can never avoid sinning, how could it really matter which particular sin I am committing so long as I’m not hurting other people with it? How frustrating it has been to be commanded to stop while believing, firmly, that I cannot, and know that I will be punished not only for what I was doing, but also for failing to obey the new command to stop! And if I am not punished in this life, then Christ, my Christ, receives the punishment on my behalf.
It’s a difficult error to sort through. I’ve had a hard time even talking about this, and I’ve only broached it hitherto with people whom I trust, because quickly, quickly, quickly, my claim that it is possible for me not to sin is mistaken for a claim that I never sin anymore. Honestly, never sinning anymore should be the goal, but I don’t think it can be accomplished if I concentrate mostly on sin. My musings are mistaken for antinomianism, and the damage other people carry with them replace my words with their fears.
The notion of our ubiquitous sin is so inculcated that saying “I think that at this moment, I am not sinning” even if you clarify that it is only possible in Christ, and through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, becomes perceived as blasphemy. I remember someone doing it in the high school group, he said “I can sit here, in this chair, and not sin,” and we all shouted back, “well, try it, then!”
So he sat there, in that chair, and smiled for a few seconds.
“Well?” we demanded.
“I didn’t sin,” he said.
“Nuh-uh! You committed the sin of pride!!”
Like the unpopular girl who went out and bought herself a pair of fashionable shoes with her birthday money, we did our best to tear him to shreds because he did not know his place. Actually, I didn’t really say anything one way or the other, but I let other people govern the conversation, and even though I agreed with them at the time that his claim of having the capacity to not sin is prideful, I did think, even then, that the onslaught was unjustified, and I should do something to mitigate it.
And I don’t think it’s explicitly stated from the pulpit. It may not even be intended. I don’t know that a pastor has ever told me “you are always sinning” but I’ve been under the purview of pastors who had so focused on every way I MIGHT be sinning, and indeed with the assumption that I was sinning, that after several years during my formative years, this conclusion that the Holy Spirit is ineffectual and that I am as incapable of righteousness as I was when I was unregenerate was how I internalized it. Looking around a bit, clearly I'm not the only one.
I remember my English course at university, the one that made me realize what the preaching I’d been under was - it won't be the last time I mention this, it was very inspiring. At a secular college, where I was having to work hard to keep my philosophies from becoming a feeble facsimile of my professors’, I’d hit some kind of glorious pocket of spiritual nourishment, where I was rejoicing in Christ and in the powerful work of the Lord Almighty twice a week and during homework. Then I’d walk into church and get bored and overwhelmed with guilt and drudgery because the English course was teaching John Donne, Edmund Spencer, John Milton, and they were all preaching Christ, but church was only preaching my sin and manifold failures.
It happened again recently, when someone described the faithfulness of the pastors in the Ukraine. The pastors were asked how to best pray for them they asked for praise because of the great work they saw God doing, through all the turmoil and suffering, that they could see His hand. And I rejoiced, and I felt fellowship with those pastors because of the occasions in which I remembered to praise in the midst of turmoil (such as my little turmoils have been) when I’ve seen the hand of God turn the wretchedness around me to His purpose. Then it all came crashing down because the pastor announced “how often do WE remember to do that?” with the implication that we hardly remember to do it at all, and my heart went from glorifying God, who teaches us to praise in the midst of sorrow, and look for Him in the agony of grief, to….blah. Guess my small snippets of turmoil aren't enough to count. I'll probably just fall away when REAL turmoil comes.
I am not making the claim that repentance does not need to be preached, it’s essential: it’s the first half of the ultimate problem of how we are made righteous before the face of a perfect God, recognizing that we are in ourselves hopelessly unrighteous. But for years the preaching was orchestrated in such a way that the other half, the crucial half, the half without which we may as well remain ignorant of our sins, was mentioned in passing at the end, the flourish at the end of a latter, the curl of a piglet’s tail, that in Christ, we are made righteous. Because of Christ, we may cease our sin, and we are free to cast our burdens on him. We are not free to continue sinning, for all that every sin we have and will ever commit is covered by the blood of Christ, we are finally free to cease.
Honestly, as I’ve said already and firmly believe, there is no enterprise we can engage in that we cannot also corrupt. We will never make any headway playing wack-a-mole with all the ways we MIGHT sin. In the early years of teaching, I tried to make a rule for every single thing my students MIGHT do wrong. My imagination failed. How could I have known that I’d need a rule like “don’t try to dislodge the ceiling tiles by throwing your shoe at them” or “don’t lick the windows”. In the end, I had to base my rule system around what I needed them to do, not what I wanted them to never do.
Likewise, the cure for sin is not an obsession with never sinning. It is the face of Christ.
The inspiration to do more, do right, treat people with a modicum of respect, pray more, read scripture more, has always for me sprung not out of the necessary hatred of my sin, but out of a love for Him. I have demonstrated proficiency at self-loathing, indulging in it comes to a point where I no longer marvel and glorify that Christ has loved me, but rather regard Him a fool for it. I’m capable of hating anything, even the things I ought to despise, to the point of error. But I can never love Him enough, in fact, I'm sure that loving Christ and letting that love flow into everything else is the one thing we CANNOT corrupt. But that's a fine line, Toser's wife will tell you.
I’ve heard sermons that make opening a bible and loving my saviour such a burdensome chore because I MUST do it, because I should instinctively need to do it - and at the moment I don’t FEEL an instinctive need, so what’s wrong with me? I, I, I, me, me, me, all the time, and every sentiment is one of failure. And I’ve heard sermons that made me want to open my scriptures for the same reason that I want to open a wikipedia article about romanesco broccoli. Broccoli sounds boring, doesn't it? Go look it up.
I try to listen to sermons on my own time apart from attending church because, due to the palpable almost-two-ness of my youngest, I have difficulty listening to sermons in church. I’ve heard ones that made me feel guilty for not loving Christ enough in spite of all He’s done for me, and I’ve heard sermons that made me want to know Him more, not just the bits I always hear about that involve me, but who He is beyond that: the guy who designed romanesco broccoli and made the curve of a hurricane match the curve of a nautilus shell.
For sermons and sermons, one pastor made me feel guilty because as soon as some other thing got my attention, all my resolutions to memorize at least a little more scripture, or read a certain epistle at least once a week evaporated - it’s not hard, I have spare moments here and there, so why can’t I do it? Simpleton! In about two sermons, a different pastor had me finding time at specific stoplights and during specific tasks to regularly commit to memorizing Hebrews 1. He didn’t tell me to do it, I just knew I needed to be memorizing scripture anyway, and suddenly memorizing this was barely even hard because He, Christ, is the radiance of the glory of God, and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power…and that’s pretty cool.
There do seem to be a fair number of pastors who preach guilt and repentance and only allude to Christ, who dig out every possible mention of sin at the expense of the actual meaning of the passage. I’m not sure why it is so popular. It hasn’t served us well. I have a theory that it feeds an addiction to selfish guilt, but for obvious reasons that thought is wearying, and I haven’t tried to analyze it much. Neither have a lot of kids I went to youth group with. A lot of them walked away from the church altogether.
Whatever makes the pastors do it, they walk the edge of a knife, because when Christianity is so much about our sin and every way we might sin (which, make no mistake, is infinite) that we do not know the face of Christ except as the last 2 minutes of a “really convicting sermon”, then this statement, “everyone who is born from God does not keep on sinning” is discordant, and maybe offensive, and it’s 1 John 5:18.
I haven’t finished sorting all this out, it’s very hard to even start expressing it without being dogpiled either by people who think my notion of sin existing needs to be corrected, or people who think my notion that I don’t always sin needs to be corrected. The key to understanding this is probably through 1st John, but I don’t read Greek, so I’m stuck with translations and fallible commentators. And I’ve been a little bruised in trying to sort things out on my own in the past. I’ve had people tell me how prideful I am to go at it on my own (like a Berean, and they received praise for their diligence). Do I really, REALLY think I know better than Giants like Calvin and Augustine? I have my answer ready next time I receive this accusation, by the way: if Calvin and Augustine and anyone else are so infallible, put them in the canon, otherwise anything is questionable. Also, both Calvin and Augustine asserted a Sethite view of Genesis 6 because they had emotional difficulties with what the passage actually says and what the patriarchs of the New Testament affirm, so nuts to them - nuts when they’re wrong, at least.
I have only just yesterday noticed that John closes out a whole epistle about love, and Christ, and the possibility of righteousness through the love of Christ (which was written in response to the gnostics who asserted that all flesh is evil, the spirit is good, and it therefore didn’t matter much what the flesh did - been there, my dude) with a reassertion of what the true God, Christ, and eternal life are, and a warning to keep away from idols.
Why? I’m not sure. It’s a little alarming. If the gnostics can make an idol of a false version of Christ, could I make an idol of Christlessness, while I obsess over every possible sin? I’ve heard of Christless Christianity in the context of churches who do not preach repentance, who do not acknowledge our sin, and therefore don’t actually have anything to be saved from and it’s all just behavior exercises. But I should say that any context where Christ is regularly put to the wayside is Christless. No matter how much or how little we sin - and I hope to sin very little - there is only one cure.
