Sin…In a Postmodern World

Jeremiah 9:4-6 (New International Version, ©2010)

⁴ “Beware of your friends;
   do not trust anyone in your clan.
For every one of them is a deceiver,^[a]
   and every friend a slanderer.
⁵ Friend deceives friend,
   and no one speaks the truth.
They have taught their tongues to lie;
   they weary themselves with sinning.
⁶ You live in the midst of deception;
   in their deceit they refuse to acknowledge me,”
            declares the LORD.

Job 42:6-8 (New International Version, ©2010)

⁶ Therefore I despise myself
   and repent in dust and ashes.”

Epilogue

 ⁷ After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has. ⁸ So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.”

When I was a boy I believed myself largely misunderstood. The middle child syndrome, they call it. Whoever “they” are. I listen to “they” because I like what  “they” say. “They” tell me I am not to blame. “They” tell me that the attention and favoritism given my older brother, and the adoration and pamperation given my younger sister, sandwiched me in between a brother and a hard place. I am a second son, so the pictures in the family albums were 20 of him to every 1 of me (I got to be in some of his). My sister was the baby and the first girl, so of course she occupied a special place as my Dad’s only girl and my Mom’s special replica of herself. I felt like an outsider in my own home, an outcast to my own blood, an unfortunate mistake who was supposed to be a girl. In reality (I autonomously declared), "I am nothing more than a bump in the road on the way to my sister". These were my feelings. This was my truth. And no one could take my private logic from under my pillow at night and out of my psyche by day. I told myself I was a victim of unfortunate circumstances, a birth order anomaly that excuses anything and everything I ever did wrong. It was God’s fault for giving me an older brother, and my parents fault for not stopping at two, and my sisters fault for being so stinking cute and sweet and cute and sweet and cute. I simply did not belong, except on the top bunk, the floor of the living room, and in the middle of the back seat of my father’s car.

It is so convenient to be a victim. Victims always have someone to blame for shortcomings and obvious character flaws. If only I had not been given such a lot in life I could be something, somebody, do something that would change the course of human history. If only I had been given the slightest chance to rise above my circumstances and become the man my dog believes me to be. If only I could find a way to release myself from this malnourished lot in life and be ushered into the glory of the oldest child or baby girl. I did not realize this dream as I grew toward man hood, but I so loved having something to blame for all that I would never and could never be.

I am not sure how old I was when I realized my truth was in fact a lie. I know when the realization began. It was a winter’s night in southern WV, the kind that causes both man and beast to stay in doors. In doors at my house often meant mischief. Pack kids into a small area with no way to escape and mischief is soon to follow. I cannot remember what angered my sister so, I only knew that my life flashed before my eyes as I threw her off of my back, right fist accidentally finding her right eye, glasses broken on the floor, blood on her cheek, and tears now freely flowing down her entire face. I had gone and done it now. “But Dad, I was just trying to throw her off of my back……”, I tried to say. I think the “just” was coming from my mouth when I found myself flying from the kick in my behind from her room into mine. My Dad always could say so very much without a single word. I knew I would be a grandfather three times over before he ever let me out of my room.

Sometimes I was grounded for life. Other times I was grounded for the night. ON this occasion I was grounded “until the cows come home” I heard my Dad utter faintly as he walked down the stairs having thrown away the key to the rest of my life. Soon I was alone, and there is nothing worse than a boy like me being left alone in the upper floor of my house with no one to enforce eternal punishment that I was already bored with and tired of. I snuck into my sister’s room just to see what I could get into. After all, she was down stairs eating “my ice cream” just because my Dad loved her more than he loved me. Of course this was not “true”, unless you asked me. And then what was true for me was in fact true for me. I escaped to my bed having accomplished my dastardly deed. How does Donny Osmond the teenage boy look with a Grocho Marx mustache? My sister would soon know, for a mustache was added to each of her posters hanging on her walls.

AS she finished dinner and came to her room, something unforgettable happened to me. It began with her tears, as my sister looked at the posters of her fantasy to be husband and began to weep. I had touched a nerve in her the intensity of which surprises me still. It was a moment of sheer poetry, tragedy of course, as the actions of an older brother crushed the teenage spirit of my sister. I lay on my bed, in the dark, listening to her cry. There was little she could do. There was no eraser or paint or make up or miracle that could erase the reality and totality of what I had done to my sister that night. I lay quietly as she cry. I engaged myself in a theologically illuminating discussion within my own mind. Why this and that and the other thing?

The crux of it all was a simple question which had begun to occur to me, “Why do I continue to do the things I end up regretting?” The apostle Paul asked a similar question in Romans 7. It seems that 2000 years of human history had not rooted out this universal human problem, the thing we call sin. I did not want to make my sister cry, and no matter how expert I had become at blaming others for my choices and mistakes, the utter reality of my own sinfulness was undeniable truth no matter my ability to explain or justify it. I was a sinner through and through, and it mattered little that I could articulate reasons for my behavior, the actions were done in my body through my hands and a reflection of my choices flowing from my nature, no matter my chronological order of birth.

In a Post Modern world we have been taught to objectify our sin. "Continual Psychological Theoretical Advancement" has pointed us in the direction of our parents and our society and our long lost cat as the reason for our shortcomings. Since truth is defined by whoever seems to have the best case at the time, we find it very convenient to buy into a world view and philosophy that works to take us “off the hook” for our obvious flaws. Since truth is subject to personal evaluation and veto, the case one might make for the reality of sin as the real reason for the human situation seems archaic and harsh. Who would dare blame a child for their selfishness? How dare we hold a human being responsible for the consequences of his or her own choices, given their home environment and lot in life? Who are you to arrogantly assume that the sins of one generation should and will bring consequences that extend for generations to come?  It seems that our society has so expertly adopted a view of sin that centers both cause and ownership in someone other than “me”. And as long as we believe that the ultimate source of truth is that which we tend to believe at any given time, sin will remain precisely where we have placed her – in you and away from me. I'm off the hook for hating my brother and my sister. Shame on Mom and Dad, The neighbor's down the street, my Pastor when I was 12, and grandpa's second cousin on his mother's side, for turning me into the pathetic creature you know and try to love today. (Don't worry, if you can't love me yet, its most certainly someone else's fault - just not my fault.)