Everyone Is Living In Sin

 You are living in sin. I am living in sin. Everybody is living in sin. Everybody.

People in church and doing church practices are in the same boat of sin that non-church people are in.

 First, a bit about that church people boat of sin. Church people know demands (Demand/Law) from their church leaders, not to say also God, such as “believe in Christ correctly!” and “believe in Christ fervently!” Or, church people don’t go so much for the believing side as much as they do the doing side and they know the demands (Demand/Law) through the constant questions like “what kind of justice or peacemaker have you been today?” and “how loving have we been?”

 Secondly, the sin boat of non-church people. The demands (Demand/Law) here are felt financially (“have you done all you can to provide for your family and improve your position?”), socially (“do you have the right friends and run in the right circles?”), emotionally (“have you conquered your fears and despairs? Is your joy true or is it fabricated?”), relationally (“not only do you have friends, but how good are those friends?”), physically (“what are you numbers and how many steps have you taken or how many fitness minutes have you invested?”), and intellectually (“have you kept up to be able to compete in the workforce?”).

 To be sure, the church people have the same demands and feel the same Law pressure as non-church people. Church people add the God thing. But, to be fair, non-church people balance things out by adding their own divine questions: What is to become of me? What is to become of our world?

 There is, in both church and non-church, a constant state of personal empowerment and agency that is demanded and must be engaged.

 I called this boat, these boats, sin. What is the sin? Not a failure within this structure of merit and improvement, but rather that a person is defined (“saved”) by any or all of a fulfillment of these demands (Law).[i]

 Everyone is living in sin. Sin is this dynamic where You are the focus (Subject) who acts on Others and Circumstances (Object) in order to carve out safely and security. Church people do it with Destiny as called God, and themselves. Non-Church people do it with themselves and with Destiny as called Fate.

 What to do? What to do about Sin?

 Maybe nothing.[ii]

 Maybe you like striving for adequacy and never quite, or by a long shot, gaining on it. It’s important to know that I am not here talking about improving things in your life, be they financial, familial, vocational or any other of the spheres of our human endeavor. Of course improvements there are worthy.  I’m talking, rather, about knowing your full sense of self, “wholeness,” peace and serenity, in whether or not you have achieved or achieved enough in those spheres.

Martin Luther called this distinction (personal improvement Vs. wholeness) the “things that are below us” versus the “things that are above us.” We have a free will and personal agency in all of our temporal life (“should I marry him?,” “should I take this job?”…”the things that are below us”) but have absolutely no free will or agency with Peace with God or Peace with the Universe or “feeling whole” or however you want to name it (“the things that are above us”).

 The distinction, the difference, is vital.

 So, back to the question of “what to do?”

 If you like striving for adequacy with the “things that are above us” then you don’t have to do anything. Keep at it. Good luck. I say that with no malice. Just honesty. Luther named this “good luck” sentiment with a pithy phrase: “the gouty foot laughs at your doctoring,” as in “you can do all you want to do with gout but you are not going to cure it.” (BTW, you can find that “gouty” phrase and too, the important naming of “things that are below us” and “things that are above us” in Luther’s landmark (I’ll call it that) essay (more like a book unto itself) entitled The Bondage of the Will).

 But, hmmmm. I’m guessing you’d rather not do that endless striving. I’m guessing you’d rather have Peace rather than working for it incessantly.

 The “having it” rather than “working for it” is called faith. Living in faith.

But, how does one get it?

That’s the thing. It’s not to be gotten. It’s to be given. It’s not another thing for which to work.

It’s given to us by God.

And, mind you, it’s given by God in the very simple and straightforward words: I forgive you.

Faith is not a thing or concept to understand or a lifestyle to lead. It is a promise believed. It is believing the promise that God gives when God tells you that you are forgiven.

Forgiven for what? It’s an important question because so many think and feel that God is a tyrant (or, softer, overlord) creating rules and regulations virtually impossible if not actually impossible to abide and extracting punishment unless one “says the right word,” which is to say “I’m sorry.”

But this is not that.

This is not being let off the hook from guilt and punishment. This is being put back into your human skin after you have sold it, willingly, for the cheap fabrication of life that is sub-human despair or super-human pride (take you pick) shaped by measuring yourself against achievements or failures.

Forgiven for your endless striving to be more than your flesh and bone self. Forgiven for the sin I have been describing here: not the failure to live up to some standard, however laudable, but rather living as if some standard is what defines you. Living as if some standard is what gives you your identity and community and purpose and destiny.

 One more thing. And it’s not a small thing. It’s what trips most everybody up. This “living in faith” is not something that exorcises our “living in sin.” The living faith does not cast out the living sin. They both happen at the same time (there is a famous (for some!) Latin phrase for this: “simul justus et peccator” (simultaneously Saint and Sinner). Why is this so? I don’t know. But I do know it’s true. Anybody who has come to faith knows it…..just about a million times a day you think you don’t do enough and/or you are not enough all at the same time that you know that meeting these demands are not what define you.

 But where do we find such a word of “I forgive you?”

 I have good news for you and bad news for you.

 The Good News is that those words are available every Sunday at your local church. That is, they are available if the Pastor is doing his or her job and not adding on a lot of their own life advice (or what they will say is God’s advice) and simply adding on more pressure and Demand upon your life.

The Bad News is that there are so many churches that give advice instead of forgiveness. I am not throwing stones at Preachers. I just know it’s true, and how hard it is to get it right.  I’m a retired Pastor, I know how hard it is to deliver Promise and not Demand. I know how hard it is to speak for God instead of speaking about God.

 So, that Word that liberates instead of binds is out there, delivered just down the street if you are lucky. But beware. And then, I’m afraid I have some other bad news for non-church people if they haven’t of course noticed it already. This word is in church. It’s not out there in nature or in community building or fitness programs or at home in your cozy chair. So you are going to have to break through a couple of things to get to it: one, the culture of church that so turns you off. Two, what I have already been talking about: finding a church that isn’t telling you what to do (Demand) but rather giving you what God gives (Promise).

 You are living in sin. I am living in sin. Everybody is living in sin. Everybody. Living in faith is possible. It will counter that drum beat of Demand and it will give you life. Find a church that delivers God and not Advice. God’s words of “I forgive you” in the preached sermon, the waters of baptism and the bread and wine of communion. Become human again.

 The world swirls with ICE and the heat of democracy’s demise and affordability as real and not a concept. Not to mention Gaza and Ukraine. Not to mention melting ice caps. And here I am talking of sin, confession and forgiveness. Yes. Exactly. Life changes, and the world changes, when forgiveness is given and received.

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[i] By the way, this is the same thing as describing Sin not as “sins” (plural), things done or left undone that, according to God, or even human morality, should not be done or left undone, but rather Sin (singular), not trusting that God has your back come hell or high water, now and for eternity.

[ii] I know “maybe nothing” sounds like the world of Sin may not be so bad. That it isn’t the Death and Destruction, Hellfire and Brimstone, as it is usually presented or described. But stick with my argument here. Read on. Stick with the honesty of what it’s actually like to never have peace in your life. I think you will agree with me that this is destructive and deadly.