Wrestling with Salvation - Wrestling with Sin

Sin is anything that leads to our separation or alienation from God. It can be our decisions and actions or it can be outside forces that act upon us that breach our relationship with God. It would be easier for us if we could just come up with a list of does and don'ts for the Christian life. Perhaps that would enable us to know definitively what is a sin and what is not a sin and provide a firm foundation from which to launch out into life. Because then we could easily distinguish between what is good and desirable for the Christian life and what is not.

The problem with such a list, however, is that it could never be long enough. Additionally, in some circumstances, what may be a sin for me may not be a sin for you. For some the occasional use of alcohol presents no problems regarding relationships with others, themselves, or God. But for others, alcohol represents a self-destructive force that impacts relationships with others and God.

We also sometimes struggle with what our faith calls a good and what our culture or society calls a good. For example, our culture says that it is good to acquire more and more wealth. But our faith calls that acquisitiveness into question. Jesus points to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, challenges the rich young man, and teaches that where our treasure is there our hearts are also. If our hearts focus on acquiring things, then it is awfully difficult for our hearts to be about moving into deeper relationship with God.

Another problem with such a list of dos and don'ts is that it would present a particular problem when dealing with systemic sin, those forces that act upon us and drive a wedge in our relationship with God. We see this kind of sin all about us but often don't look at it in terms of sin. It is represented in systems that encourage people to escape from poverty but then does everything it can to keep people where they are. It is represented on a global scale as we take for ourselves at rates greater than our fair share or at rates that prevent others from enough food, natural resources, or life itself. The indicators of such systemic sin struck me as we saw the hovels along side tremendous shopping centers in San Salvador.

We may long for that list of dos and don'ts, a list of sins to avoid. But such a list is not enough. In order to know what it is that leads us from the path of following Christ, what leads to a breach in our relationship with God, what cuts us off form the source of life, we have to work much harder by carefully looking over and assessing our lives.

When we consider sin in our lives, the image for each of us will be different. You may see a wide array of images such as the image of a thief, or someone sharing a bed with another's beloved, or a bottle of alcohol or pills, or people living upon the death and waste of a lava field with no hope of anything more. As we participate in the self-reflective work necessary to consider sin and our own lives, Barbara Brown Taylor offers the suggestion that the experience to search for, to dig for in order to know the sin of our lives is that "one that makes part of you die" (Speaking 62). When we find such an image, we can identify the sin present in our own lives.

She further suggests that there are those moments in life, deep down in our experiences where we have seen the light of God and we've turned away from it because it is "too beautiful to behold or because it spoils the dank but familiar darkness;" there are those moments when you've broken something just to prove that you can; there are those moments of doing whatever you have to in order to feed or comfort yourself (Speaking 62-3). Sin is whatever makes part of you die, whatever alienates you from God.

That sin is our only hope may sound contradictory to you but it isn't. When we look at our lives and we examine those parts of us that are dead, those decisions, choices, and forces that alienate us from God, that cause a breach in our relationship with God and one another, then we have taken the first important step towards reconciliation - God's own goal. Such realization awakens us to the need to do things differently, not just to feel sorrow or guilt, but to change ourselves and the societal conditions that lead to death. This act of turning back to the path of following God is repentance and it is a choice of life over death.

Jesus says, "Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live."