In 1973, eminent psychiatrist Karl Menninger wrote
the very word ‘sin’, which seems to have disappeared, was once a proud word. It was once a strong word, an ominous and serious word…but the word went away. It has almost disappeared – the word, along with the notion. Why? Doesn’t anyone sin anymore? Doesn’t anyone believe in sin?
Imagine not having a mirror. We would go off to work with unkept hair, no longer caring what we looked like. Imagine no pain. Like the leper who had lost all feeling in hands or feet, we would not know that it was time to present ourselves to a GP for diagnosis.
Sin is a reminder to us that not all is well with us. Falling short of God’s standard (which is 100%) is sin. It is our failure to love God (as He has revealed Himself in Christ) with all our heart and our neighbour (meaning anyone and everyone) as ourself. By refusing to acknowledge sin (our own), we are being cruel to ourselves. Cruel because, in overlooking the remedy God has so graciously provided, we invent others that take us further away from God and one another.
Take, for example, the sin of self-esteem or its cousins, self-worth and self-fulfilment. Naturally, we all want to have a strong sense of our value and worth, one that is robust enough to help us navigate our way through the ups and downs of life. However, in seeking to locate this in ourselves, is to perpetuate every problem it is meant to solve.
When we esteem Jesus as our new Master, we find that we are able to esteem others as equals and, paradoxically, we can then esteem ourselves. Such esteem is not located in our own goodness but in the relationship we have with God through Jesus. Like a mirror, we have first to be shown up before we allow God to forgive and then change us.
This can be a painful experience but the medicine of the love of God in Christ turns the pain into joy as it does its work. Better to name our problem as sin than either ignore it or dress it up with other names. For once our restlessness is named and owned it can be then wonderfully dealt with.