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I sometimes invite an adult class to close their eyes as I read aloud the story from Mark 2 of the paralyzed man whose four friends carry him to Jesus. I ask the class to imagine themselves in the story as the paralyzed man.

"Focus on some spot within you," I suggest, "some paralysis before which you are helpless. Imagine your friends and family deeply concerned. They have heard about this man Jesus, a healer. Would you let them take you to see him? In spite of your failures, your desperate discouragement, you let their insistence sway you and you agree to their plan. They take you to him and explain the problem."

After some moments of silence, I invite the class to open their eyes and share something from their imaginary experience. What is it like, I ask, to face Jesus and be offered healing and forgiveness?

Responses vary, but eventually someone always asks, "If this is a healing story, why does Jesus bring up forgiveness of sins?" Someone else will say, "I wondered that, too. I have trouble with the word sin. I feel guilty just hearing it, but I also try really hard to lead a good Christian life." Yet another will comment, "Some of my friends say that they resent the Christian idea of sin. They try to lead a good life, and they don't want to come to church to be told they're bad."

Reading the Gospels makes us aware of Jesus' insistent forgiveness and makes us come face to face with the most unpopular word in the Christian lexicon: sin.

Sin is a state of being alienated from God, from others, and from our true selves. Out of our sense of alienation, we behave in alienating ways. We are painfully—usually secretively and shamefully—aware of our alienation, our ensuing failings, and their repetition. It is an enormous burden to our hearts. Within our alienating shame, we lose our flexibility. We are desperate to fix things. Like Adam and Eve in the garden, we sew fig leaves together to hide our nakedness from ourselves, from each other, and from God.

In churches, we become greatly concerned with appearances: we smile a lot, we use correct theological vocabulary, and we feel deeply lonely. Hence, we abide in profound alienation. The forgiveness of God, offered abundantly in Jesus, can relieve our hearts, restore us to God, to community, and to our right minds.

Jesus assumes the universality of sin and makes forgiveness central in his life and teachings. He understands the desperation that Paul later describes when he says "the wages of sin is death," separation forever from the face of God. But being human like us, Jesus does not fight the limits of humanness. Rather, he submits to God in a radical vulnerability, exposing control systems by which human beings try to bargain our righteousness. Human terror, being so exposed, demands that Jesus the God-man die. It is through his submission to this saving death that he secures life for us.

Throughout the Gospels, we watch Jesus act on two basic beliefs about human nature: the universal need for forgiveness and the abiding presence of an interested and compassionate God. Jesus tenderly receives those who are obviously sinful and forcefully confronts good religious people who bargain their goodness before God. In other words, those who know they are burdened and alienated find release, and those who have covered their need with fig leaves of their own self-righteousness are found out and invited to give up pretense.

Most of us who counsel others know the ominous, undifferentiated sense of badness many people carry. It can drive us into isolation and compulsion. The alcoholic, hating himself, continues to drink. The lying child, in dread and terror, continues to lie. The overeating woman, with profound shame, continues to binge. They all say, "It would be so easy to change if I only had the willpower." Jesus knew that those who have "willpower" are just as trapped as those who do not.

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June 16 1997, Vol. 41, No. 7