SIn...

Happy title, huh.

I've been thinking a good bit about sin.  It is, after all, Lent.  It is also political season--and the two things go together in my head.  There seems no better way to illustrate the pervasiveness of sin than to follow political campaigns.  Either the politicians are pointing out the sins of the "other," or their own shortcomings just keep glaring through.  

I read a great column by Frank Bruni about a college friend, deeply Catholic, and his journey through his own real life and faith journey, ending ultimately in not believing in God (who allows misery and suffering), but who today lives a rather remarkable life of Christian discipleship (even while holding to his atheism).

In this man's experience as a person and eventually a doctor, abortions have historically been a step women take--with or without legal approval.  There are times in a woman's life that having a child is unthinkable.  So this former Catholic, with deep contemplation on the scripture and life, performs abortions at a clinic every week as a service to women.  To do so, he contends with all the "stuff" you would expect--protesters, violence, etc.  

He tells a story at the end of the article about a woman always at the protests.  She scaled a ladder so she could be seen above the rest.  She was passionate and unmoveable in her belief that abortion was wrong in every circumstance.  She judged all who entered as the same "loose, unprincipled" people--shouting "murderer" at the doctors and "whore" at the women.  

The doc continues the story of the day the woman wasn't on her ladder.  He noticed her absence.  What he didn't expect was to find her in his examination room, awaiting an abortion.  She "didn't have the money for a baby right now," and "her relationship wasn't where it should be."  She received what she requested without judgment and with compassion.  And I quote the article, "A week later, she was back on her ladder."

I am struck again and again in so many places and in so many ways at the human inability to recognize sinful behavior in ourselves.  It's a bit hard to understand why we can't see it in ourselves.  We are utterly expert in seeing it in others.  The biblical text reminds us that even when no sin is there (healing people on the Sabbath, for example) we create it.  When sin dwells in us, we deflect it.  When sin overwhelms, we ask God why it hasn't been taken care of.  

For a long time, pastors and theologians swung so far to the "sin" side that we forgot our "created good" side.  I think the pendulum is swinging back to the opposite side of the arc.  We have so remembered our "good" side that only God could be "bad" and only the "other" could be sinful.  We are created good, in the image of the God who loves us more than we can imagine and who chooses to partner with us to change the world.  But until we can see our own shortcomings realistically and see others's shortcomings compassionately, we're just going to crawl back up on our ladders and nothing will be accomplished.