I relate to so much of this, especially the negative shame. I so often think of Martin Luther's idea about sin as incurvatus in se, man turned in on himself, and how those "sin management" things you mentioned are often ways to stay curved in toward ourselves, away from others and God. Very Screwtape-y, now that I think about it!
Confession has become a regular part of my prayer life as an Anglican, and I love how Anglican prayer places it first (gets it out of the way, so the rest of the time I can focus on God with "a quiet mind") and always follows swiftly with God's forgiveness and living a godly life. Totally changed how I feel about sin: less stuck in negative shame spirals, more quickly recognizing and acknowledging, and WAY easier to own up to others and say sorry. I was introduced to Earley's work when we started attending an Anglican church, and it was so formative as we joined this tradition. I love that, even when I'm doing morning prayer alone, confession is spoken as "we," so it encompasses individual and corporate dimensions, even all of groaning creation.
Melody, wow, this is so beautiful. I also approached sin in a new way when I became Anglican. That communal "we" is powerful. Thank you so much for sharing!
Having started this life on the pool deck before wading into the "more progressive waters" with my family as a young child, my adult self finds its comfort in the more Evangelical end of the pool. And now having already lived well more than half of my earthly life, I begin to realize that this exchanging of places that sometimes occurs across our denominations can be a healthy thing as long as we don't completely eradicate from our memories the things we learned elsewhere. The things that became our traditions began as useful tools toward our spiritual development before taking on a life of their own, and those of us who have "changed sides" now find ourselves glancing back to see value in the things we fled. So, our denominational differences appear, at least to me, to be God's way of showing us that none of us will ever have it all figured out - at least not on this side of glory - and that we need to continue to look across the fences we construct for truths we may find a bit uncomfortable.
There is so much good truth in this comment, Ken. Thank you for sharing! It's really helpful for me to hear from people who have been further down the road than I have because it's easy for me to just get focused on what I'm doing or believing, as if the world begins and ends with my perspective. Thank you for living in so much wisdom!
I may sound wise, and I may (by God’s grace) even say a few truly wise things, but I am just as far as ever from living it - as my wife would happily attest. It’s appropriate for us to respect the wisdom of our elders, but that wisdom must only ever direct us to pursue God alone.
I can relate to almost every word of this - especially the overwhelming reign of shame in my high school and early adult life. But I think about the pendulum swing you described a lot - like how do I acknowledge that I am very much an often-broken product of broken systems, who has inherited family brokenness to boot, while recognizing, confessing, repenting of my very real shortcomings...all without sounding like a fundamentalist. I am weighing this in my own life and as a parent who very much wants to avoid my children perceiving themselves as loathsome insects held over the flames by an angry God. I also do not have the answers...but I'm curious how other parents in the comments handle this as well.
Elizabeth, thank you for sharing in this experience! It is such a tricky tension, and I'm still trying to sift through what to believe. I haven't even thought about educating children; I have a hunch you are doing a wonderful job :)
Drew: I have so. many. thoughts. But first of all: thank you for this! This kind of experience, writ large across a lot of areas of traditional Christian language and practice, is what I'm trying to tackle/speak to in my Big Project in our program :) (Actually, the very first chapter I want to tackle is on repairing/rehabilitating/[insert metaphor here] the word Sin!) Having your words speak into my own thinking is enormously helpful: would love to talk more.
Your line that encountering sin-talk was "like reading a language I used to be fluent in but had since forgotten" is so poignant: how do we re-translate a native (dead) language into a new, vibrant, but still etymologically-rooted and meaningful dialect? Such a good question...
Without going on too long here, I'd say my starting point for thinking about a doctrine of original sin (and even total depravity, though those good old words need a lot of couching and explication) is in the idea of solidarity. What is the ground for human solidarity? Yes, we're all created in the image of God, and that's our starting point for affirming universal human kinship. But the funny thing there is that each of us expresses that image in a beautifully idiosyncratic way: the image of God is like a mosaic that needs all of the individual pieces, and each of us bodies God forth in a way no one else can. So it's kind of an abstract place to start from, if we want to build neighborliness.
But sin is so...well, to use an old word in an old way, common. It's grubby. It's boring. It's kind of depressing. And we all have a share in it, in ways that are too grubby and boring and depressing to recount. It's a place where nothing I bring to the table is particularly special or remarkable...and we're all bringing varieties of the same sad dish. We're all (to borrow Luther's language that another commenter highlighted) curved in on ourselves, and we all share the same sad posture. We all need the same kind of inbreaking love that will straighten our spines and turn our gaze outward. There's solidarity in that shared common lot: if I can't sort myself out, I can't expect you to, either. The mercy lands on all of our curved spines. It's a starting point for seeing every other human being as stuck in a common lot, and a recipient of the same transforming love. No matter what time we show up at the vineyard, all of us are too late. But all of us are welcome, and paid. So there's no room for shame, because it's a party for sinners at the end of the day.
Oh Sarah, I don't even know where to begin in responding to this. Ummm, copy and paste to all of it. I have never thought of sin as the common denominator of humanity. That's such a beautiful concept! Have you read much on Eastern Orthodoxy's conception of sin? That might be a very interesting thread for you to pull on; I'm actually hoping to center my own response to this piece in that theology.
And can I read your Big Project when you are comfortable with it? I'd love to read more!!
I’ve read a bit, but more about Orthodoxy in general and less on specific takes on sin. Any recommendations for where to dip in? And yes, lol, once Big Project starts taking any sort of respectable shape I’d be glad to share :)
You fleshed this tension out really well, Drew. I keep thinking of that Romans 2:4 scripture “Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from sin?” And how kindness/patience is never equated with inducing shame. The concept of sin really does need to be communicated with severity, but with sincere kindness/patience/gentleness. With the eyes of compassion that Jesus had when he looked upon the crowds of people who were all just lost and in need of a shepherd. I’ve been thinking about this concept of how to communicate sin and the reality of it to my own children without accidentally fostering a slow growing shame or self-hatred. God is kind. He’s gracious. So that’s what I ask for when I ask for his help - help me be kind.
Abbey--you are SUCH an embodiment of kindness, patience, and gentleness :) I see it each time I visit you all. Thank you for sharing how you are grappling with the concept of sin. I agree--sin is severe and must be treated with great seriousness. How to do that without inducing the shame and self-humiliation is a big question. I want to know your journey!
I have an unfinished post on this as well. I’ve been thinking about my own reaction to hearing about sin patterns and the “dangers of the fire of hell" type language. There’s definitely been a shift towards eliminating that language in broader culture, as you point out, to rid ourselves of shame. And I agree that shame is not helpful and causes a self-hatred that I think then causes others-hatred because we are not able to love others as we love ourselves - we hate others as we hate ourselves.
I do think guilt can be good. I think shame makes us forget who we are, but guilt can remind us of who we want to be. There’s a song by Don Chaffer called “Bring The Sadness Back In” that I think about a lot. We do need to able to call sin bad and be a bit guilty in order to change the trajectory of our formation.
"And I agree that shame is not helpful and causes a self-hatred that I think then causes others-hatred because we are not able to love others as we love ourselves - we hate others as we hate ourselves."
Wow--that'll preach, Dustin. I agree with you about the distinction between shame and guilt. I've grown much more comfortable with words like guilt, conviction, and repentance. They seem quite biblical and have layers of nuance that shame doesn't seem to have. I need to listen to that song!
As a 40-year youth pastor, I say "ugh" about the behavior modification gospel you grew up in and so many many many others.
I like this article a lot for so many reasons. What caught me the most was your opening about how you don't talk about sin much anymore. Is this bad? Or is this growth of your imperfect progress? As you are vulnerably growing (as you share with us), are you living your life with larger grace thus less shame to keep you small. Larger vs. smaller. Especially as you are growing in compassion for systemic sins. Grace is not an excuse to sin—it’s the power to overcome sin. When we realize how deeply God loves us, we begin to live differently—not out of fear of punishment, but out of gratitude.
Brenda, these are such compassionate and kind words. Thank you for taking the time to reply! I like how you talk about the larger vs. smaller paradigm. I'd like to think that God's grace is making me a larger person and more capable to show others grace as I have been shown so much too.
It strikes me how effective sin and shame are at keeping young people in the church. The freedom and love of Christ was hard for my adolescent self to "really feel," but shame went deep into my teenage bones, took advantage of my burgeoning mental health struggles, scrupulosity and the like, and stuck around in ways that I still have trouble shaking off. Sin felt more real and active in my life in tangible ways as a young person, ways that surpassed any meaningful experience I had with God. But it kept me coming back to church despite the distress it caused, because church marketed itself as an only place to find relief.
When I finally got good mental health care and managed to let go of some of my spiritual anxieties, (the weight of my sin?) there wasn't a whole lot of good, Christian love, or an undeniable presence of a loving god to take its place, so largely my relationship with god/the church dissolved.
For those of us with religious anxiety, the idea of personal sin can be debilitating. The idea of systemic sin (as well as universal salvation or a non-omniscient/non-omnipotent God), focusing on collective rather than personal experience was actually effective in making religion non-threatening to me again.
I think you bring up good points here and I'm curious to following along if/where you land. This is an important conversation, especially for those that are leading young people in the church and having such an impact on their young minds/self-esteems.
Kristen, thank you so much for sharing a part of your story! I also have scrupulosity, so I've spent much of my adult years untangling scrupulosity from my faith. It has been really, really good for my faith but also really, really hard. I don't want to discount the importance of seeing systems of inequality or getting good mental health care, so I'm glad you have found help in those spaces!
You might like Alain de Botton’s take on original sin: There’s something wrong with each of us. It’s a more merciful way to talk about sin and its power over us.
I’ve shifted from the fundamentalist way of thinking of sin, but not toward thinking about corporate sin so much. More to the idea of defect and brokenness in us. I find that it’s a more helpful to way to think about personal sin and even accountability.
Joel, thank you for this perspective! I've actually experienced a lot of freedom learning the Eastern Orthodoxy conception of sin. I started writing about it in this post but cut it because it deserves it's own space to grow in an upcoming piece. I think both what you describe and their understanding of sin as disease is a really great counterweight to the sin-as-depravity narrative.
Beautiful! I would love to hear more. My guess is that their conception is more metaphysical than moral.
I always thought the moral one was theologically correct, not to mention the arguments for total depravity. But you have to wait and see how these things work out in practice and in Christian counseling and spirituality. There, the fruit of an intensely moral conception of sin works itself out in negative ways. Thanks for your narrative of the same dynamic!
Drew, I understand and hear where you are coming from. It's a difficult line to tread. As a minister, I always include a confession in my services - but I belong to a denomination in the UK where it is not a necessity. My thinking here is that it is impossible to begin to contemplate an all-loving God, without realising how far we fall short on a daily basis, to be honest. However, it is a far more complex problem for many. I am also a Chaplain and psychotherapeutic counsellor - and the issues that we loosely call shame and guilt are pressing issues for many people. I encourage people to listen to the way that they "talk" to themselves - and maybe even write it down. Then ask themselves if they would talk to the person they loved most in the world in the same way. I'm afraid my pet name for myself used to be "stupid cow!" to prove that I am not immune from this one. All too often the answer is clearly not! If we are loved by God and expected to love our neighbour - how can we begin to do either, if we fail to love ourselves and beat ourselves up on a regular basis? I think the words of the summary of the Law is " Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your strength with all your heart and with all your soul - and love your neighbour as you love- ??" And we end up not doing that last bit terribly well in my experience. Learning to take care of ourselves enables us to take care of others, and learning that actually perfect doesn't exist here on earth - and we all do make mistakes (as distinct from "on purposes") are simply a part of being human. We can't do everything - no matter how "called" we feel, and that true ministry doesn't need ME to do it (if it is of God, it will flourish without me desperately giving it CPR) , - and actually none of us is irreplaceable... and we can go on holiday (honestly) - is an important learning in both the secular and sacred world. And we can get to spend more time just being with God-instead of throwing Him a shopping list in a five minute break... Who knows what will happen?
Wow, Dr. Thomson, thank you for sharing from your own life and your ministry service. I'm growing in my ability to simply spend time enjoying God. I want to place a list of rules and strictures around that time, but I am learning how to live with a God of largeness and nearness. And I think you are right--the greater we view God, the greater we understand how much we are definitively not God. Thank you for reminding me of this :)
I find.it immensely reassuring when I rediscover that I do not have to be "in control" of every last detail ( for the umpteenth time). All that is required of me is to love. That's a "doing word" by the way. I believe that every human being is worthy of love ( no matter who they are or what their belief) because we are all created in some wonderful way in the likeness of our Creator - but I cannot claim perfection. Nevertheless, it remains my starting point and goal. Sometimes I have to remind myself that Jesus died for them too! It's a bit like my relationship with my husband really - I love him deeply - but I have to admit that I don't always like him!! I don't think we can fool God and I don't believe that we should deceive ourselves either. I believe that the whole thing is as simple (and as difficult) as that. I can quote the underlying scriptures if you like - but I am sure you can work them out for yourself. I'm very content not to be God, it's quite enough for me to get on with the "baby stuff" and let God be God. How terrible it would be to believe that I knew everything about Him. That would not be theology - it would be idolatry!!
drew, this resonates so much. i deeply relate to your trajectory of moving from shame-inducing-worm-theology-teenagehood into, as an early adult, faith spaces that heal that shame wound and tend to emphasize belovedness over wretchedness and corporate sin over personal. which has been healing and a needed correction, but it rings true that where there is correction there could also be overcorrection and i deeply appreciate your honesty and courage to point that out.
i moved from reformed evangelical churches to an acna church and though we confess every week during the liturgy as you mentioned, i did my first ever private confession with my priest during holy week. i was apprehensive beforehand because i wondered if it would induce shame, but his posture of compassionate witness and the absolution at the end i think just banished the shame. so i’m curious if continuing to color in my theology and experience of confession will help me also cultivate a more balanced understanding of sin.
thank you for this piece and i look forward to reading more of your thoughts on this!
Blair! I moved from Evangelical spaces to an ACNA church as well! Even having a time of personal confession during the service was incredibly powerful for me, and I am now beginning to wonder if adding in a more proper confessional space in spiritual direction could be appropriate.
Thank you for sharing a bit of your journey with a random guy on the internet! I am grateful for you!
This is good and timely! I think the way we think about evil and sin go hand in hand. It’s easy to oversimplify and do damage in any number of ways. I’ve been thinking a lot about this myself lately and they may end up getting written too. Thanks for sharing.
Drew, I'm sitting here rummaging through my spiritual direction binders looking for the notes I took on shame. Thankfully, I found them. My Jesuit instructor likes to joke about the first time he sat in a room full of evangelicals in the 90s, teaching them how to pray. Something was off...it felt dark and sluggish, he said. And then he figured it out: They weren't aware of their belovedness in God. They were so hyperfocused on sin, they forgot they were swimming in a sea of Grace.
Another instructor goes on to talk about John Forrester's book: "Grace for Shame: The Forgotten Gospel." Here's the part that was extremely helpful for me: Grace for guilt is forgiveness. Grace for shame is to be heard and seen and known. To come out from hiding and be fully seen and your loved ones did not leave the room. They stayed with you. Which takes a lot of attunement for those who we want to stay with us! We know God does this for us, but it's really hard if all we've experienced is our friends/family leaving. When there is acceptance, it gives us some breathing room to look at our wounds. Now I get to let my wounds be attended to in light of my belovedness in a triune God. I like to think of this as the space in which confession happens. Twelve step programs model this so well. And instead of feeling like we're horrible people bc we have to keep coming back, maybe feeling shame isn't a failure. The temptation from the evil one is to say that we are failures. When really, shame is just an opportunity to become more free.
One last thing. :) And this is a soft spot for me. Western Christianity has done a horrible job of providing safe spaces/people for leaders in the church to go to. I think of Ravi Z. We put him in a sensationalized spot where he couldn't deal with his sexual shame from day one. Where and to whom could he confess? I see Jesus always moving towards the shamed people. And when they got close to Him, their terrain of freedom expanded. 🤍
Anyway, thanks Drew for inviting the conversation. :)
I have to constantly remind myself of grace. Because I lean towards remembering my sin and feeling condemnation and shame as a result. What's the quote? "For every one look at your sin, take ten looks at the cross"?
I think it's something like that. Keep sin in view, but grace all the more.
It's a difficult line to walk, the line between corporate and personal sin. Both are realities of our fallen state, but neither should be emphasized at the outright expense of the other. As a student of social work, I find myself in circles similar to yours. Two actions have been spiritually grounding for me: having close friends with whom I can be vulnerable and regular prayers of confession. Earley is on to something when it comes to having friends who can be honest with us. I also benefit from Douglas McKelvey's "Liturgy of the Hours: Nightfall" which includes a beautiful confessional piece. I hope you can find similarly grounding practices for your own Christian practice.
I relate to so much of this, especially the negative shame. I so often think of Martin Luther's idea about sin as incurvatus in se, man turned in on himself, and how those "sin management" things you mentioned are often ways to stay curved in toward ourselves, away from others and God. Very Screwtape-y, now that I think about it!
Confession has become a regular part of my prayer life as an Anglican, and I love how Anglican prayer places it first (gets it out of the way, so the rest of the time I can focus on God with "a quiet mind") and always follows swiftly with God's forgiveness and living a godly life. Totally changed how I feel about sin: less stuck in negative shame spirals, more quickly recognizing and acknowledging, and WAY easier to own up to others and say sorry. I was introduced to Earley's work when we started attending an Anglican church, and it was so formative as we joined this tradition. I love that, even when I'm doing morning prayer alone, confession is spoken as "we," so it encompasses individual and corporate dimensions, even all of groaning creation.
Melody, wow, this is so beautiful. I also approached sin in a new way when I became Anglican. That communal "we" is powerful. Thank you so much for sharing!
Having started this life on the pool deck before wading into the "more progressive waters" with my family as a young child, my adult self finds its comfort in the more Evangelical end of the pool. And now having already lived well more than half of my earthly life, I begin to realize that this exchanging of places that sometimes occurs across our denominations can be a healthy thing as long as we don't completely eradicate from our memories the things we learned elsewhere. The things that became our traditions began as useful tools toward our spiritual development before taking on a life of their own, and those of us who have "changed sides" now find ourselves glancing back to see value in the things we fled. So, our denominational differences appear, at least to me, to be God's way of showing us that none of us will ever have it all figured out - at least not on this side of glory - and that we need to continue to look across the fences we construct for truths we may find a bit uncomfortable.
There is so much good truth in this comment, Ken. Thank you for sharing! It's really helpful for me to hear from people who have been further down the road than I have because it's easy for me to just get focused on what I'm doing or believing, as if the world begins and ends with my perspective. Thank you for living in so much wisdom!
I may sound wise, and I may (by God’s grace) even say a few truly wise things, but I am just as far as ever from living it - as my wife would happily attest. It’s appropriate for us to respect the wisdom of our elders, but that wisdom must only ever direct us to pursue God alone.
Amen! I'm really grateful you took the time to comment on this, and I'm grateful for your voice and desire to point me to God alone!
I can relate to almost every word of this - especially the overwhelming reign of shame in my high school and early adult life. But I think about the pendulum swing you described a lot - like how do I acknowledge that I am very much an often-broken product of broken systems, who has inherited family brokenness to boot, while recognizing, confessing, repenting of my very real shortcomings...all without sounding like a fundamentalist. I am weighing this in my own life and as a parent who very much wants to avoid my children perceiving themselves as loathsome insects held over the flames by an angry God. I also do not have the answers...but I'm curious how other parents in the comments handle this as well.
Elizabeth, thank you for sharing in this experience! It is such a tricky tension, and I'm still trying to sift through what to believe. I haven't even thought about educating children; I have a hunch you are doing a wonderful job :)
Drew: I have so. many. thoughts. But first of all: thank you for this! This kind of experience, writ large across a lot of areas of traditional Christian language and practice, is what I'm trying to tackle/speak to in my Big Project in our program :) (Actually, the very first chapter I want to tackle is on repairing/rehabilitating/[insert metaphor here] the word Sin!) Having your words speak into my own thinking is enormously helpful: would love to talk more.
Your line that encountering sin-talk was "like reading a language I used to be fluent in but had since forgotten" is so poignant: how do we re-translate a native (dead) language into a new, vibrant, but still etymologically-rooted and meaningful dialect? Such a good question...
Without going on too long here, I'd say my starting point for thinking about a doctrine of original sin (and even total depravity, though those good old words need a lot of couching and explication) is in the idea of solidarity. What is the ground for human solidarity? Yes, we're all created in the image of God, and that's our starting point for affirming universal human kinship. But the funny thing there is that each of us expresses that image in a beautifully idiosyncratic way: the image of God is like a mosaic that needs all of the individual pieces, and each of us bodies God forth in a way no one else can. So it's kind of an abstract place to start from, if we want to build neighborliness.
But sin is so...well, to use an old word in an old way, common. It's grubby. It's boring. It's kind of depressing. And we all have a share in it, in ways that are too grubby and boring and depressing to recount. It's a place where nothing I bring to the table is particularly special or remarkable...and we're all bringing varieties of the same sad dish. We're all (to borrow Luther's language that another commenter highlighted) curved in on ourselves, and we all share the same sad posture. We all need the same kind of inbreaking love that will straighten our spines and turn our gaze outward. There's solidarity in that shared common lot: if I can't sort myself out, I can't expect you to, either. The mercy lands on all of our curved spines. It's a starting point for seeing every other human being as stuck in a common lot, and a recipient of the same transforming love. No matter what time we show up at the vineyard, all of us are too late. But all of us are welcome, and paid. So there's no room for shame, because it's a party for sinners at the end of the day.
Oh Sarah, I don't even know where to begin in responding to this. Ummm, copy and paste to all of it. I have never thought of sin as the common denominator of humanity. That's such a beautiful concept! Have you read much on Eastern Orthodoxy's conception of sin? That might be a very interesting thread for you to pull on; I'm actually hoping to center my own response to this piece in that theology.
And can I read your Big Project when you are comfortable with it? I'd love to read more!!
I’ve read a bit, but more about Orthodoxy in general and less on specific takes on sin. Any recommendations for where to dip in? And yes, lol, once Big Project starts taking any sort of respectable shape I’d be glad to share :)
You fleshed this tension out really well, Drew. I keep thinking of that Romans 2:4 scripture “Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from sin?” And how kindness/patience is never equated with inducing shame. The concept of sin really does need to be communicated with severity, but with sincere kindness/patience/gentleness. With the eyes of compassion that Jesus had when he looked upon the crowds of people who were all just lost and in need of a shepherd. I’ve been thinking about this concept of how to communicate sin and the reality of it to my own children without accidentally fostering a slow growing shame or self-hatred. God is kind. He’s gracious. So that’s what I ask for when I ask for his help - help me be kind.
Abbey--you are SUCH an embodiment of kindness, patience, and gentleness :) I see it each time I visit you all. Thank you for sharing how you are grappling with the concept of sin. I agree--sin is severe and must be treated with great seriousness. How to do that without inducing the shame and self-humiliation is a big question. I want to know your journey!
I have an unfinished post on this as well. I’ve been thinking about my own reaction to hearing about sin patterns and the “dangers of the fire of hell" type language. There’s definitely been a shift towards eliminating that language in broader culture, as you point out, to rid ourselves of shame. And I agree that shame is not helpful and causes a self-hatred that I think then causes others-hatred because we are not able to love others as we love ourselves - we hate others as we hate ourselves.
I do think guilt can be good. I think shame makes us forget who we are, but guilt can remind us of who we want to be. There’s a song by Don Chaffer called “Bring The Sadness Back In” that I think about a lot. We do need to able to call sin bad and be a bit guilty in order to change the trajectory of our formation.
"And I agree that shame is not helpful and causes a self-hatred that I think then causes others-hatred because we are not able to love others as we love ourselves - we hate others as we hate ourselves."
Wow--that'll preach, Dustin. I agree with you about the distinction between shame and guilt. I've grown much more comfortable with words like guilt, conviction, and repentance. They seem quite biblical and have layers of nuance that shame doesn't seem to have. I need to listen to that song!
As a 40-year youth pastor, I say "ugh" about the behavior modification gospel you grew up in and so many many many others.
I like this article a lot for so many reasons. What caught me the most was your opening about how you don't talk about sin much anymore. Is this bad? Or is this growth of your imperfect progress? As you are vulnerably growing (as you share with us), are you living your life with larger grace thus less shame to keep you small. Larger vs. smaller. Especially as you are growing in compassion for systemic sins. Grace is not an excuse to sin—it’s the power to overcome sin. When we realize how deeply God loves us, we begin to live differently—not out of fear of punishment, but out of gratitude.
Brenda, these are such compassionate and kind words. Thank you for taking the time to reply! I like how you talk about the larger vs. smaller paradigm. I'd like to think that God's grace is making me a larger person and more capable to show others grace as I have been shown so much too.
It strikes me how effective sin and shame are at keeping young people in the church. The freedom and love of Christ was hard for my adolescent self to "really feel," but shame went deep into my teenage bones, took advantage of my burgeoning mental health struggles, scrupulosity and the like, and stuck around in ways that I still have trouble shaking off. Sin felt more real and active in my life in tangible ways as a young person, ways that surpassed any meaningful experience I had with God. But it kept me coming back to church despite the distress it caused, because church marketed itself as an only place to find relief.
When I finally got good mental health care and managed to let go of some of my spiritual anxieties, (the weight of my sin?) there wasn't a whole lot of good, Christian love, or an undeniable presence of a loving god to take its place, so largely my relationship with god/the church dissolved.
For those of us with religious anxiety, the idea of personal sin can be debilitating. The idea of systemic sin (as well as universal salvation or a non-omniscient/non-omnipotent God), focusing on collective rather than personal experience was actually effective in making religion non-threatening to me again.
I think you bring up good points here and I'm curious to following along if/where you land. This is an important conversation, especially for those that are leading young people in the church and having such an impact on their young minds/self-esteems.
Kristen, thank you so much for sharing a part of your story! I also have scrupulosity, so I've spent much of my adult years untangling scrupulosity from my faith. It has been really, really good for my faith but also really, really hard. I don't want to discount the importance of seeing systems of inequality or getting good mental health care, so I'm glad you have found help in those spaces!
You might like Alain de Botton’s take on original sin: There’s something wrong with each of us. It’s a more merciful way to talk about sin and its power over us.
I’ve shifted from the fundamentalist way of thinking of sin, but not toward thinking about corporate sin so much. More to the idea of defect and brokenness in us. I find that it’s a more helpful to way to think about personal sin and even accountability.
https://open.substack.com/pub/joelcarini/p/zwingli-was-right-original-sin-is?r=k9yk0&utm_medium=ios
Joel, thank you for this perspective! I've actually experienced a lot of freedom learning the Eastern Orthodoxy conception of sin. I started writing about it in this post but cut it because it deserves it's own space to grow in an upcoming piece. I think both what you describe and their understanding of sin as disease is a really great counterweight to the sin-as-depravity narrative.
Beautiful! I would love to hear more. My guess is that their conception is more metaphysical than moral.
I always thought the moral one was theologically correct, not to mention the arguments for total depravity. But you have to wait and see how these things work out in practice and in Christian counseling and spirituality. There, the fruit of an intensely moral conception of sin works itself out in negative ways. Thanks for your narrative of the same dynamic!
Drew, I understand and hear where you are coming from. It's a difficult line to tread. As a minister, I always include a confession in my services - but I belong to a denomination in the UK where it is not a necessity. My thinking here is that it is impossible to begin to contemplate an all-loving God, without realising how far we fall short on a daily basis, to be honest. However, it is a far more complex problem for many. I am also a Chaplain and psychotherapeutic counsellor - and the issues that we loosely call shame and guilt are pressing issues for many people. I encourage people to listen to the way that they "talk" to themselves - and maybe even write it down. Then ask themselves if they would talk to the person they loved most in the world in the same way. I'm afraid my pet name for myself used to be "stupid cow!" to prove that I am not immune from this one. All too often the answer is clearly not! If we are loved by God and expected to love our neighbour - how can we begin to do either, if we fail to love ourselves and beat ourselves up on a regular basis? I think the words of the summary of the Law is " Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your strength with all your heart and with all your soul - and love your neighbour as you love- ??" And we end up not doing that last bit terribly well in my experience. Learning to take care of ourselves enables us to take care of others, and learning that actually perfect doesn't exist here on earth - and we all do make mistakes (as distinct from "on purposes") are simply a part of being human. We can't do everything - no matter how "called" we feel, and that true ministry doesn't need ME to do it (if it is of God, it will flourish without me desperately giving it CPR) , - and actually none of us is irreplaceable... and we can go on holiday (honestly) - is an important learning in both the secular and sacred world. And we can get to spend more time just being with God-instead of throwing Him a shopping list in a five minute break... Who knows what will happen?
Wow, Dr. Thomson, thank you for sharing from your own life and your ministry service. I'm growing in my ability to simply spend time enjoying God. I want to place a list of rules and strictures around that time, but I am learning how to live with a God of largeness and nearness. And I think you are right--the greater we view God, the greater we understand how much we are definitively not God. Thank you for reminding me of this :)
I find.it immensely reassuring when I rediscover that I do not have to be "in control" of every last detail ( for the umpteenth time). All that is required of me is to love. That's a "doing word" by the way. I believe that every human being is worthy of love ( no matter who they are or what their belief) because we are all created in some wonderful way in the likeness of our Creator - but I cannot claim perfection. Nevertheless, it remains my starting point and goal. Sometimes I have to remind myself that Jesus died for them too! It's a bit like my relationship with my husband really - I love him deeply - but I have to admit that I don't always like him!! I don't think we can fool God and I don't believe that we should deceive ourselves either. I believe that the whole thing is as simple (and as difficult) as that. I can quote the underlying scriptures if you like - but I am sure you can work them out for yourself. I'm very content not to be God, it's quite enough for me to get on with the "baby stuff" and let God be God. How terrible it would be to believe that I knew everything about Him. That would not be theology - it would be idolatry!!
drew, this resonates so much. i deeply relate to your trajectory of moving from shame-inducing-worm-theology-teenagehood into, as an early adult, faith spaces that heal that shame wound and tend to emphasize belovedness over wretchedness and corporate sin over personal. which has been healing and a needed correction, but it rings true that where there is correction there could also be overcorrection and i deeply appreciate your honesty and courage to point that out.
i moved from reformed evangelical churches to an acna church and though we confess every week during the liturgy as you mentioned, i did my first ever private confession with my priest during holy week. i was apprehensive beforehand because i wondered if it would induce shame, but his posture of compassionate witness and the absolution at the end i think just banished the shame. so i’m curious if continuing to color in my theology and experience of confession will help me also cultivate a more balanced understanding of sin.
thank you for this piece and i look forward to reading more of your thoughts on this!
Blair! I moved from Evangelical spaces to an ACNA church as well! Even having a time of personal confession during the service was incredibly powerful for me, and I am now beginning to wonder if adding in a more proper confessional space in spiritual direction could be appropriate.
Thank you for sharing a bit of your journey with a random guy on the internet! I am grateful for you!
This is good and timely! I think the way we think about evil and sin go hand in hand. It’s easy to oversimplify and do damage in any number of ways. I’ve been thinking a lot about this myself lately and they may end up getting written too. Thanks for sharing.
Michaele, PLEASE write about this! I would love to read your thoughts and learn from you!
"I’m not sure if I was worshipping God or sin management." C'mon nowwwww
Awwww, thanks Paige!
Drew, I'm sitting here rummaging through my spiritual direction binders looking for the notes I took on shame. Thankfully, I found them. My Jesuit instructor likes to joke about the first time he sat in a room full of evangelicals in the 90s, teaching them how to pray. Something was off...it felt dark and sluggish, he said. And then he figured it out: They weren't aware of their belovedness in God. They were so hyperfocused on sin, they forgot they were swimming in a sea of Grace.
Another instructor goes on to talk about John Forrester's book: "Grace for Shame: The Forgotten Gospel." Here's the part that was extremely helpful for me: Grace for guilt is forgiveness. Grace for shame is to be heard and seen and known. To come out from hiding and be fully seen and your loved ones did not leave the room. They stayed with you. Which takes a lot of attunement for those who we want to stay with us! We know God does this for us, but it's really hard if all we've experienced is our friends/family leaving. When there is acceptance, it gives us some breathing room to look at our wounds. Now I get to let my wounds be attended to in light of my belovedness in a triune God. I like to think of this as the space in which confession happens. Twelve step programs model this so well. And instead of feeling like we're horrible people bc we have to keep coming back, maybe feeling shame isn't a failure. The temptation from the evil one is to say that we are failures. When really, shame is just an opportunity to become more free.
One last thing. :) And this is a soft spot for me. Western Christianity has done a horrible job of providing safe spaces/people for leaders in the church to go to. I think of Ravi Z. We put him in a sensationalized spot where he couldn't deal with his sexual shame from day one. Where and to whom could he confess? I see Jesus always moving towards the shamed people. And when they got close to Him, their terrain of freedom expanded. 🤍
Anyway, thanks Drew for inviting the conversation. :)
I have to constantly remind myself of grace. Because I lean towards remembering my sin and feeling condemnation and shame as a result. What's the quote? "For every one look at your sin, take ten looks at the cross"?
I think it's something like that. Keep sin in view, but grace all the more.
It's a difficult line to walk, the line between corporate and personal sin. Both are realities of our fallen state, but neither should be emphasized at the outright expense of the other. As a student of social work, I find myself in circles similar to yours. Two actions have been spiritually grounding for me: having close friends with whom I can be vulnerable and regular prayers of confession. Earley is on to something when it comes to having friends who can be honest with us. I also benefit from Douglas McKelvey's "Liturgy of the Hours: Nightfall" which includes a beautiful confessional piece. I hope you can find similarly grounding practices for your own Christian practice.