Sin and Self Acceptance - How Reflecting on our Faults can Help us Love.
Been contemplating sin for the last few weeks. In recovery circles we’d say I’ve been doing a fearless moral inventory. In practice, this means setting aside regular intervals to review my motivations, thoughts, words, and actions in order to honestly name those aspects of habitual thought and action that work against desire to love God others.
Doing this is a bit like keeping a food diary, the discoveries are not always pleasant. (Did I really eat a half cup of French fries while cooking dinner?). That said, the result has been the opposite of what you might think.
The Christian moral vision is unintelligible without some understanding of the doctrine of sin. Not all Christians agree about what this doctrine means, but there are basically four components:
1. Sin as sickness – The idea here is that all of us, however good and upstanding we appear to ourselves and others, have an inclination to cheat, to cut corners, to advantage ourselves at the expense of others. In the Christian moral vision, it is insufficient to simply do right. We are called to do right, rightly, that is out of right motivation. If we help our neighbors because we want them to think well of us, vote for us, or watch our back, we are really serving ourselves. This tendency, left unchecked, unchallenged, and unchanged actually produces problems for us and our neighbors.
2. Sin as falling short – None of us keep our own standards 100% of the time, so the idea that we’ll keep a higher moral standard with perfect consistency is unattainable. And yet, actually, this is the very thing we need for actual human thriving. If all of us could be relied upon 100% of the time to do right, to not take advantage of others, to work for the good of others, we would not need laws, locks, or litigation. We fall short.
3. Sin as corrosion – The idea here is that even our good actions can be tainted by a destructive self-interest. No one starts a church, enters a marriage, or starts a family with the goal of spiritual abuse, divorce, or estrangement. And yet, there is something at work within individuals and systems that seems, pardon the expression, hell bent on distorting, corroding, and destroying the people and systems themselves.
4. Sin as lifestyle – There is a tipping point at which enjoying combative infotainment gives way to becoming entrapped in conspiratorial thinking, when the bottle of wine we use to unwind becomes functional alcoholism. This is the point where the habits of thought and action are designed and aligned to keep us stuck in addictive and destructive patterns.
In contrast, our popular stories about reflection on sin, say that it will damage our sense of self, forcing us to live fearful, inauthentic, guilt ridden lives. Our culture says, “you don’t need to be, ‘saved’ from sin, simply discovered and accepted.”
Here’s what I’ve learned. After 3 weeks of contemplating the envy, wrath, pride, deception, lust, and gluttony in my own life, from seeds in early memory to current fruit that poisons joy and undermines relationships, I’ve never felt more loved and lovable. Why? Because if I can receive the love and grace of God even as I stare unflinching into the depths of my own depravity, then I can give and receive love anywhere.
It seems to me, that self-acceptance is a sham without contemplation of sin, self-deception, and selfishness. We don’t have to be discovered in all our exquisite individuality in order to be whole. We can be human and holy in the grace of God.
Have you ever done a fearless moral inventory? What was that experience like?