I've been thinking about sin a lot lately. I know that sounds odd, and it probably is, but nevertheless I have been ruminating on the issue of sin - of willfully violating the will of God and the teachings of Christ. And I have come to a startling conclusion about myself that I am beginning to believe applies to a majority of Christians.
We have a sin-seriousness problem. A big sin-seriousness problem.
What do I mean by that? Well, you might expect me at this point to rail against churches that never preach about sin and start talking about how more pastors should talk about how much sin there is in the world from their pulpits. If you're expecting that, though, you will be disappointed by what follows. When I say we have a sin-seriousness problem, I mean something much more than just, "we don't preach about sin enough." I mean we have a two-fold sin problem.
On the one hand, we often seem to take the sins of outsiders - those who are outside of the Christian faith (i.e. atheists, muslims, hindus, etc.) - too seriously. We are quick to tell them why their way of thinking, their way of life is "wrong" and "sinful." We see a gay couple walking hand in hand and are assaulted by an intense desire to go tell them that God disapproves of their lifestyle. But we don't do that - instead we put some banal bumper sticker on our cars that proclaims how we feel about marriage and about gays. All the while that gay couple - constantly confronted with "Christians" who are against homosexuality - comes to believe that because of their lifestyle, God hates them too. They internalize a message of hate instead of a message of love. We have taken their alleged "sin" so seriously that we have stolen from them the realization that grace and love are extended to even the worst "sinners."
But there's another side to this sin-seriousness problem as well. Not only do we often take the sins of outsiders too seriously, we fail to take our own sin seriously enough! We gloss over our own shortcomings and our own failures rather than confront the truth and discomfort of our own sin. We gossip, we lie, we cheat, we judge others and we never worry about confessing our sin or repenting of it. "God will understand," we say, or "This is just how God made me to be."
Even if we acknowledge our sin, we rarely if ever truly mourn for it or feel true repentance. Our attitude seems to be that "God's grace will take care of it, so it's no big deal." While the first part of that statement is most definitely true - God's grace most certainly can take care of all our sin - the second part is false. Sin is always a big deal. Sin is what separates us from God. Sin is what destroys our lives and relationships. Sin is the reason Jesus had to face Good Friday. To take sin lightly or to fail to recognize the seriousness of our own sin even after we have become "Christians" is to minimize the significance of both Good Friday and Easter Morning.
This two-fold sin-seriousness problem - taking others' sin too seriously and our own not seriously enough - has caused many well-meaning Christians to look like hypocrites and it has caused many people to walk away from Jesus altogether. Isn't it time that we tried to figure out this sin-seriousness problem?
Jesus himself offers the solution when he talks about specks and planks. He warns his disciples to work on their own sin issues - the planks in their eyes - before even trying to address the sin issues of others - the specks in their eyes. We could go a long way to solving the sin problem by merely flipping it on its head. Rather than being accused of taking the sin of others' too seriously while overlooking my own sin, I'd much prefer to be accused of taking my own sin too seriously and overlooking the sins of others.
Wouldn't you?
