what is sin? (it's not what you think)
desire, god's law, and the self
Sin is misalignment.
If a car’s steering is out of alignment, there is an unwelcome drift that will happen if the driver isn’t vigilant. If a person’s spine is misaligned, they can experience back or neck pain, frequent headaches, or even regular illness. If the work someone does is misaligned with their skills and abilities, they can feel ineffective, frustrated, thwarted, and worthless.
I think sin is misalignment. Sin is a misalignment of my life and self with the God who is love.
if sin is misalignment, what is the law for?
Not that sin doesn’t have a moral/ethical component. Not that there isn’t a law that God gives to His people in Scripture, or that there won’t in fact be a judgment. I believe all that to be true.
But why does God give the law? Is it because He is especially concerned that we follow rules? Is it that He wants to control our behavior and stop us from doing our worst? Is it that He is worried about the practical functioning of human society, and so gave us a legal framework to govern ourselves?
I don’t think so.
That doesn’t mean the divine law doesn’t have these effects and many others. But I don’t think these are the primary goals of the law. I don’t even know if they’re part of its main thrust.
The Shema, the most important part of the law in the OT, says, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).
The law is about wholeness. It’s about communion. It’s about fellowship with God, alignment of the self, of desire, of all that I am—heart, soul, and might—with the Lord. The law’s revelatory work to reveal our sin isn’t about morals or ethics or keeping people’s behavior in check. It’s about showing us where we are out of step. Lacking in wholeness. Misaligned with Love Himself.
desire and wholeness
Recently, in a conversation with a spiritual adviser, he asked me, “What do you want? What does your heart desire?”
The question felt to me like a cross between self-realization and Christian spirituality, and I really didn’t know how to answer. Does he want a Janis Joplin answer: “Oh Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz”?
Or a life calling / self-actualization-through-career kind of thing, like in the Silicon Valley parody: “I want to make the world a better place through software defined data centers for cloud computing”?
When I heard the question, I laughed because my answer was so cheesy. I felt like I was in Sunday School. I simply responded, “I want to live close to Jesus. I want my life to be in alignment with God.”
I wasn’t trying to give the right answer. But down to brass tacks, that’s what I want in my life.
I want to be whole. I want my life to be fully aligned with the Community of Love at the center of all that is—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I want to be part of that Divine Communion and grow to reflect it and participate in it more and more.
Sure, a new car would be nice. A meaningful job would be swell. But those things pale in comparison to what IS. To what is good and true and beautiful.
sin is misalignment
The problem isn’t that I don’t know what I want. It’s that I am misaligned. My habits, thoughts, tendencies, and desires are all going in any number of different directions.
Sometimes I want Jesus most, to be with and near Him, to be like Him and have His joy and freedom.
Sometimes I want my own glory most, to be seen as great in others’ eyes, to achieve and accomplish a goal, to earn my significance and status.
Sometimes I want some sort of physical pleasure, whether more sleep or more sex or another Oreo cookie shake from Jack in the Box.
More often than not, I want Jesus but my habits and ways of life don’t take me closer to Him. They lead me in the opposite direction. My desire goes one way. My choices and actions go another.
When that's me—when I’m in that state of misalignment—I am not alone. I’m not flourishing, but I’m in good company at least. St. Paul put his own experience this way:
For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. (Romans 7:18-20)
There’s not a cosmic ledger being kept by an angel with a flaming pen somewhere, marking down whether I’ve been naughty or nice. There’s not an anxious King in heaven, worrying whether this free will thing is getting out of hand and punishing those who step out of bounds.
Sin is its own punishment. Being misaligned with love is Hell itself.
Learning to achieve wholeness, to be aligned with Love and the God who defines Himself as ultimate self-giving, that is freedom. Joy. Peace. Salvation.
A life participating in the Community of Love that is God, wholly aligned with Him—heart, soul, and might—well, that just might be heaven itself.