Sin and How We're Wrong About It

Last week in church I heard this really great statement that I felt the need to write down and memorize and live by until I realized it as really wrong.

How does this sound? "The ability to know God is found when we step out of self." Oooh, epic. Sounds real deep. I wrote it down, but I've been thinking about it, and in the past week I've only grown to hate this sentence. I think it's quite churchy and kind of shallow and simple-sighted.

I've been thinking about sin, what it really is. I think sin is one of the most misunderstood/misrepresent

ed ideas ever, next to love. In church, we learn that certain things are sins -- lying, cussing, lusting, being jealous, skipping church, staying up past bedtime (I'm screwed), etc., but I feel like the Church is missing what sin actually is, forgetting that it's not a list. Sin isn't just certain things -- ideas or actions. Sin is our very nature. It's not so much that hate is a sin as hate is just...sinful. And it seems the same, but if you think about it, it isn't.

Does any one else feel like sometimes sin is presented as something we can avoid? It's as is we're told that as long as we don't x, y, and z, we can live without sin and be holy. But no, that's a joke. Sin isn't a list -- sin is our hearts, our minds, our eyes and ears and mouths and all of it. Sin is simply anything that goes against the good and perfect directional will or nature of God. Sin is anti-God, or even more-so, it's a thought or breath naturally absent of God. It's with us at birth, and we take it to the grave. It is inevitable (Can I say that?).

Holiness isn't a checklist, either. It's so much bigger and more beautiful than that.

This is where that statement comes into the picture, and it bothers me. "The ability to know God is found when we step out of self." This sentence, if it ever wanted to reach some kind of accuracy, would need to be butchered. You could go about it a few different ways. The first thing that bothers me about it is that it seems to suggest that we have the ability to "step out of self," when we don't. We are not capable of beating our own devastation independently. If we were able to draw near to God through ourselves, we would not need a savior. But the point is that we are sinful and that keeps us from being able to draw near. So the first thing that I would change is that last bit.

Then I would go right back and just drop the last bit completely, because it's not needed. And then I would change the verb "found" to "given" and put a cute little period on the end.

"The ability to know God is given." By God. To us. We can't do it, or find it, by ourselves. We can't get past our nature. We are sin. That never changes. It's just potentially beatable because God is that awesome, that able.