Sin

1 John 3:1-7

This week, the Catholic Church released a formal document that expresses a doctrine of “infinite dignity.” It stated that “every human person possesses an infinite dignity, inalienably grounded in his or her very being, which prevails in and beyond every circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter.”  If you are into reading long and sprawling theological documents, you can read it here.

If you are interested in a journalistic summary (caveat emptor!), you can find one here that isn’t behind a paywall.

What most who are commenting on this are focusing on in this document is the section called “Some Grave Violations of Human Dignity.” This list of “violations” included poverty, war, the suffering of migrants, human trafficking, sexual abuse, violence against women, marginalization of people with disabilities, and digital violence. These are all violations of human dignity we likely all mostly agree with.

Controversially, and not unexpectedly, this list also included the more thorny and complicated ethical concerns of abortion, surrogacy, euthanasia and assisted suicide, “gender theory,” and sex change.

Being a Christian inevitably forces us to confront the challenge of understanding sin, how it affects us, and what our responsibility is in resisting it. But being a Christian can be hard when as a community of believers we all bring a different perspective as to what sin is.

I agree in part and vehemently disagree in part with some of these claims the Catholic Church has decided to make this week. My own varied response to this document from the Catholic Church might be an example of how sometimes what we see as sin (or not) can create a lot of division between us and fellow Christians. We can become convinced that what we think is sinful is the true basis of whether or not our fellow sibling in Christ is in real communion with us as a fellow believer.

This is not new. Determining what sin is, or what our belief about sin says about whether or not we are “in” or not is a problem as old as scripture.

These days, I think we are so disgusted by how awful this conversation becomes we would rather not deal with talking about sin at all. Maybe we feel the temptation to avoid it altogether so that we won’t judge our neighbor. Or perhaps it’s easiest to avoid the more thorny ethical questions and keep our conversation on sin focused on the easy things to agree about.

In 1 John, the author reminds us that God has given us love and that “we should be called children of God, and that is what we are.” Unfortunately, the author of 1 John does not provide a list of definitive sins for us to guard ourselves again. All the author says is, “sin is lawlessness.”

This week, I wonder if there is a way for us to be humble in how we consider sin and the way it impacts our lives. Some sins are minor, but still cause harm to those we love. Some sins are massive and systemic, and require hard conversations, policy changes and government reforms.

Perhaps the most difficult thing about dealing with sin isn’t about naming it--the most difficult thing about sin is that being healed from sin requires us to be willing to become transformed.