Sin

(Hurting the One we Love)

Peace be to you. 

The three previous sacraments discussed were:

Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist

All of them refer to a life above the physical, namely the participation of the Divine Life.

By Baptism we are born to it,

By Confirmation we grow into it and accept the full responsibilities of union with our Lord.

By the Eucharist and in the Eucharist our union with Him reaches its peak and its ecstasy.

Penance, or Confession.

Now we come to another sacrament, which represents a fall away from that Divine Life, namely, the Sacrament of Penance, or Confession.

• It is the sacrament, which refers to the sins that have been committed after baptism.
• It is the great sacrament of the Mercy of God and, if we may use the word, is an indication of how very realistic God is.

Once we are born to Divine Life, we should live in it, but practically some fall away, lightly, or seriously.

• God, therefore, in His Mercy has instituted the Sacrament by which the sins committed after baptism may be remitted. No human being could ever have thought of this sacrament, for it is something like the Resurrection. We rise after we are dead.
• It is a journey back again to God. It enables us to get rid of infections before they become chronic diseases and epidemics. It is not an unpleasant and necessary sacrament.  It is not to be viewed merely as a humiliation.
• It is the inflowing of God’s Mercy, an opportunity for the increase of the Grace of Calvary.

 

 

Medicine of the soul

It is a medicine of the soul, a healing of our wounds, a homecoming, an undoing of the past, an opportunity to get a fresh start in life.  Another bath, a kind of second re-baptism.

• Sometimes a reconciliation is sweeter than an unbroken friendship, and it certainly is true that if we had not sinned we never could call Christ It is the sacrament also which restores us again to the fellowship of the Church, to God’s community, to His Kahal, to His Mystical Body. But before we can tell you about that sacrament, we must introduce the word “sin”.

SIN:

• George Bernard Shaw once said that the modern man is too busy to think about his sins. Perhaps Shaw should have said the modern man keeps nervously busy so he will not think about his sins. Every sinner is an escapist, just as Adam was when he hid from God.

Remembering Original Sin

The sins we are going to talk about now are not Original Sin, but Actual or Personal Sins.

Remember, we have already spoken about Original Sin and we said that it was not personal.

• We are not personally responsible for Original Sin. It is a sin of human nature. It is ours simply because we are the descendants of Adam.

We are involved in it very much like a citizen is involved in a country whose head has declared war.  Oh, yes, it left us weak and gave us even a tendency toward sin.  But the tendency or the inclination to sin is not sin. As a result of it, it became possible for us to turn sex into lust, thirst into intemperance and alcoholism, hunger into gluttony and prudence into avarice.

• Through that sin, we became almost like those who were given the inheritance of a great estate. But, with all of its mortgages, too, our nature is spoiled before we received it. That for Original Sin.

Actual Sins: personally responsible

Now we come to the sins for which we are personally responsible.  They are sometimes called Actual Sins.

 Why is sin possible?  Because we are free.  You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink.  You can tell a man he ought to do something, but in his will he can resist.

• Sin lies in the abuse of freedom. It has something to do with a wrong or an evil choice. In fact, we never sin without the will.

Two attitudes toward freedom

We can take two attitudes toward freedom, both of which are wrong.  We can exaggerate human freedom; we can minimize it.  We can put too much stress on it and also too little.

 

Exaggerate freedom

• We can first of all exaggerate freedom.

We do this when we deny that we are the creatures of God and subject to His law.  This was the essence of the temptation of the devil to our first parents.  He said, “You will be likened to gods”. (Genesis 3:5) In other words, you will not be creatures, you will be creators.  We exaggerate freedom when we say, “I love myself, my own will, I am my own law.  I determine what is right and wrong.  I shall treat my neighbor as an inferior, as a plaything for my pleasure, as a means to my profit.  I am the end of my own existence.”  That is the abuse of freedom you find in those who live without God. 

 

Minimize freedom

• But on the other hand, sin is possible because we minimize freedom. This comes about when we deny there is any such thing as guilt. We minimize freedom when we say that all guilt is morbidity.  It is sickness, it is a psychological complex, or guilt is just a hangover from religious and family and moral taboos.  Those who minimize freedom, of course, always expect to be praised when they are good, but when they do evil they say, “Oh no, it really is not my fault.  I was under a compulsion.”
• That is a very handy word. It denies responsibility. Nobody is bad, no one is a juvenile delinquent.  They are only sick.  You get too fat.  You can’t help it; you are a compulsive eater.  You drink too much.  You can’t help it, you are a compulsive drinker.  You steal.  You can’t help it, you are a compulsive thief.  You see, behind that word and behind all other escapes, there is the assumption that I am “determined”.  I am “determined” by environment, I am “determined” by my grandparents, I am “determined” by something inside or outside of myself.

• Now this is serious, I mean, this denial of guilt. Indeed, there are some manifestations of guilt that are morbid but even the morbid manifestations of guilt, such as the psychiatrists deal with, do not necessarily prove that there was no real guilt at the base of it. When Lady Macbeth washed her hands every 15 minutes, we have a morbid manifestation of guilt, but there was real guilt that prompted that morbidity, namely the murder of the king, in which she was involved.

• In the past, it was customary for a man to blame someone outside of himself: economics, politics, bad environment, poverty, society, grade B milk, insufficient playgrounds.

Minimize freedom -continue

• In all instances, guilt was transferred from the individual outside of himself. One of the new excuses is to say that, “No, a man is not guilty at all. The fault is not in the stars, but wholly in our unconsciousness.  We cannot help being the way we are.”

• Some very serious effects follow from this denial of personal guilt. The aim of it, as you see, is to make everybody “nice”. The worse sinners are “nice” people, but by denying sin they make the cure of sin impossible.  Sin is very serious, but it is more serious to deny sin.

• If the blind deny that there is any such thing as vision, how shall they ever see? If the deaf deny there is any such thing as hearing, what chance is there of being cured of their deafness?

So, too, by the mere fact that we deny sin, we make the forgiveness of sins impossible.

• That is why that those who very often deny sin become scandalmongers, talebearers, and hypercritics because they have to project their real guilt outside of themselves to others. And this gives them a great illusion of goodness. It will be found generally true that the increase of faultfinding is in direct ratio and proportion to the denial of sin. 

Sin works like a cancer

In some persons sin works like a cancer, undermining and destroying the character for a long time without any visible effects.

• And when the disease becomes manifest, it has progressed so far that some souls give up hope, which indeed they should not.
• Then there comes despair. Despair is something that demands the Infinite. Animals never despair simply because they do not know the Infinite.  Seldom will a man openly revolt against the Infinite, and if he has revolted and sinned and still does not accept the fact, he tries to minimize the gravity of the sin by excuses just as Cain did.

That is why I say modern man has lost the understanding of the very name of “Sin”.  He puts the blame on someone else, on his spouse, his work, his friends, on tensions, and sometimes by ignoring the real guilt that is there, he may become either a psychotic or a neurotic.  It is awful when despair takes possession of souls.  Then the sinner does not realize that each present sin is adding to thousands of other sins.

Traveling at 70 miles an hour, an automobile is already at excessive speed, but if 20 more miles an hour are added, the danger mounts.

Un-repented sins beget new sins

Un-repented sins beget new sins and the dizzying total brings despair, and the soul will say, “I am too far gone”.  

The drunkard becomes afraid of a sober day because that sober day will make him see his state as he really is.

• The greater the depression, the more a sinner needs to escape from it through further sins until he cries out with Macbeth in his despair, “I had lived a blessed time, for from this instant, there‘s nothing serious in mortality. All it is but toys. Renown and grace is dead.”  (Macbeth Act II, Scene iii)
• And this despair has another effect, too. It often turns into fanaticism against religion and morality. A man who has fallen away from the spiritual order will hate it because religion is a reminder of his guilt.  Husbands who are unfaithful to their wives will beat their wives in order to justify themselves.

• Some souls reach a point where, like Nietzsche, they want to increase evil until all distinction between right and wrong are blotted out. Then they can sin with impunity and say with Nietzsche, “Evil, be thou my good.” Expediency can now replace morality, cruelty becomes justice, lust becomes love.  Sin multiplies in such a soul until it becomes the permanent state of Satan.  Oh, he’s not happy. As Seneca said, “Every guilty person is his own hangman.”  And, as Shakespeare said, “Conscience doth make cowards of us all”.  (Hamlet Act III, Scene i)

 

Now, what are we do in the face of this sin

Ø Now, what are we do in the face of this sin, continue to deny it?

Is it not much better to try to define it and understand it?  Thus far, if we are clear, we have indicated that sin is not a manifestation of animal instincts.  It is not an eruption of the subconscious.  It is not something, which happens because we were loved too little by a grandmother or loved too much by a grandfather.

It is an act of freedom by which we throw the whole harmonious nature out of joint.  It is not just self-interest because that is good, but it is rather the affirmation of self at all costs.

Elementary concept of sin

Here we are assuming the very elementary concept of sin, so let us begin with some analogies from the physical and biological order.

Sin in general is disobedience to the law of God.

The laws of God are in the physical universe.  Suppose someone builds a skyscraper out of plumb.  The building will not stand because he refused to respect the law of gravitation.  Because he disregarded it, the law of gravitation, as it were, throws the building down.  In the broad sense of the word, he sinned against the physical law. 

Now we come to a higher level, common sense.  

Common sense is also a reflection of the Divine Law.

Suppose I take my fist and drive it through a windowpane.  I am free to do it, but when I do it, I punish myself.  My hand is cut and bleeding.   I have violated a law and I see the consequences.

Go into the biological order.

Why does anything die?  It dies because there is a domination of the lower order over the higher order.

When do plants die?  When the lower order, the chemical order, begins to dominate the plant life.  Fire kills a plant.  Fire belongs to the lower order.

How can an animal die?  It can die through the domination of the plant life over the animal life, for example, through poisonous plants.

How does the body of man die?  By the gradual, very often the gradual, burning away and oxidation of the animal tissue and also by lower forms of life getting inside of man and destroying his life.  All right, death then, in the natural order, is the domination of a lower order over a higher order. 

When does the soul die?  Whenever there is the domination of the lower order over the higher order.  Whenever there is the domination of the ego over the Community, of flesh over the Spirit, of time over Eternity, of the body over the Soul, then there is death and that death we call Sin.

That is why scripture equates death in the biological order and Sin in the moral order.  “The wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23)  Sin, therefore, is a deliberate violation of the laws of God. 

Another Analogy – Coffeepot

If you buy an electric coffeepot, you will find instructions.  Putting it in the form of a commandment, the instructions may read, “Put not the plug into the electric current when thy pot is empty”.  But suppose you say, “Why should anybody tell me what to do?  He’s violating my constitutional rights.”  When you say that, you forget that the manufacturer of that coffeepot gave you instructions in order that you might get a perfect use out of it.

And when God made us, He gave us certain laws, not in order to destroy our freedom, but in order that we might perfect ourselves.  And when we violate those laws, we hurt ourselves.  We break a relationship.  That is why, in the parable of the prodigal son, the father said to the prodigal, “He was dead.  Now he is alive.”(Luke 15:24)

 

 

 

What, then, is Sin for the Christian?  

It is the breaking of a personal relationship.

For those who are in the state of grace, it is a kind of Crucifixion.

It is the wounding and hurting of the One we love.

Why, therefore, are we sorry for our sins? 

Not because we have broken a contract, not just because we’ve broken a law, but

• because we have hurt someone that we love, and
• it is only when we discover God and, above all, His Mercy in Christ that we begin to understand Sin fully.
• In other words, it takes Love in order to make us understand Sin. That seems strange, but it is true, and regardless of how great the sin is, there is always Mercy.

To be a sinner is our distress, but to know that we are a sinner is our hope, and the Hope is the Sacrament of Penance.

God love you.