A better way to deal with sin than focusing on how wrong it is
For several years an atheist attended our weekly men’s Bible-study group. A retired physician, he had met one of our members at their heart rehab sessions, and they had become fast friends. For quite awhile, he attended our studies every week. I prayed for him, met with him occasionally for lunch, suggested books he said he’d read, and left the outcome to God.
I wish I could report his remarkable conversion, but to my knowledge, he has not come to faith. The buddy who invited him has now slipped into dementia and lives at Mason Christian Village. I haven’t seen the atheist in more than a year, and I miss him.
Discussing our sin
In the course of our relationship, I learned he had studied the Bible, or at least biblical history. And although I knew he had information and opinions about much we discussed, generally he stayed silent. That made his outburst one morning all the more memorable. I don’t recall the text, only that the topic of our discussion frustrated him. “You guys are always talking about SIN!” he growled, and then he withdrew, staring at his lap.
Perhaps strangely, I thought of his accusation again this week after clicking on a headline in my newsfeed and reading a piece posted by The Atlantic: “The Porn Crisis That Isn’t.” I haven’t been able to forget one comment in the report. Be assured I’m not inclined or qualified to make pornography the subject of this post. But I do want to try to highlight a broader principle I think this quote illustrates:
Believing that porn is morally “bad” is strongly correlated with feeling like you have an addiction to pornography, regardless of how much porn you actually watch. “The best predictor of self-perceived sexual-use problems, like pornography addiction, is high levels of religiosity,” says Bryant Paul, a media professor at Indiana University and a faculty affiliate of the Kinsey Institute, which studies human sexuality. “It’s a better predictor than actual amounts of use.”
In other words, pornography use may feel like a bigger problem for users who think it’s wrong than for those who don’t. That’s quite a conclusion. If true, does this tendency apply to everything we Christians might label, much to my atheist-friend’s dismay, as sin? What does this say to Christians who can easily rattle off an impressive list of things they shouldn’t do, even though they know they very much want to do some of them? (And things they fear or avoid, even though the preacher has told them repeatedly they should do them?) And does our embarrassment at repeated failure with something on our list make it more difficult for us to get rid of it? Could this hinder recovery for Christian porn users (or wife beaters or heavy drinkers or overspenders) who know how much the church condemns their behavior?
Forgive me for raising questions that, again, I’m not qualified to answer. (My psychology is purely of the arm-chair variety. Perhaps a credentialed counselor can help us here; we welcome your comments, below.) But I will say that my instinct is to answer each of these questions with a “Yes.”
Hiding our sin
One proverb repeated by us armchair psychologists is, “We’re only as sick as our secrets.” And in this case, the professionals agree. If we hide something because we think revealing it will lead others to revile or reject us, we set ourselves up for debilitating shame. And shame makes us emotionally and spiritually—and sometimes even physically—ill.
Centuries before the advent of contemporary psychology, the Bible writer James understood this when he said, “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed” (5:16). Confessing a failure doesn’t make it not wrong. But bringing it into the daylight is the first step toward finding a way to avoid it in the future. Every Christian needs someone to help him obey this command.
Choosing our focus
But there’s something else. If we obsess about something we should avoid, we’re setting ourselves up to go after it. Keep remembering the cookies in the pantry, and eventually you’ll cheat on your diet. Keep reading the ads and visiting the showroom with the car you can’t afford, and you’re likely to buy it anyway. Keep your eye on your beautiful co-worker and remind yourself repeatedly that she could be available to you; sooner or later you’ll see if you’re right, even if you’ve told yourself you know what you want is wrong.
The better path is to focus on a positive next step. Throw away the cookies and discover some healthy snacks you enjoy. Wash your car, get a tune-up, and pay for a vacation with the money you don’t spend on an auto loan. Rehearse in your mind all the reasons you appreciate your spouse, and repeat the list to them when you’re alone.
The poet and professor Scott Cairns helps me here. In one poem he says biblical repentance “turns not/ so much away, as toward,/ as if the slow pilgrim/ has been surprised to find/ that sin is not so bad/ as it is a waste of time.”
Indeed, the cookies won’t nourish you. The car will break down. The affair will bring heartbreak and regret. Porn will create a thrill that immediately grows cold. When we see sin as simply a colossal waste, its sway will diminish. Perhaps then we can remember our far better alternative, described by the apostle Paul.
“I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus,” Paul wrote. “I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back” (Philippians 3:13-14).
I’m wishing I could tell my atheist friend I’ve made this my goal, too.
Photos by Paul Skorupskas, Nick Gavrilov, and Possessed Photography on Unsplash
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