Sinner

Dr. Emily McGowin, assistant professor of theology, at Wheaton College writes:

When I taught high school, one of my favorite assignments was having my ninth-graders write their own Beatitudes. I asked them to speak to people the world might consider "unblessable." Here are a few:

-Blessed are drug addicts and felons, people who try everything but still buckle under the pressure of their past lives and can never get back on their feet, for even they belong in the Kingdom of God.

-Blessed are the orphans and foster children of the world because they are exactly who God wants in his Kingdom.

-Blessed are the homeless because the Kingdom of God belongs to them too.

-Blessed are the abusers who take out their anger on the weak, for even they can repent and receive the Kingdom of God." (This particular student was abused by a parent and removed from the home because of it.)

In May of 2010, Indiana congressman Mark Souder resigned his position after confessing to an affair with a part-time staffer. In more than a dozen emails to WORLD magazine, Souder reflected on his downfall. In one email, he shares how difficult it is to keep people in power in check. "Politicians and any top professionals are skilled manipulators and smooth with words," he wrote. "Holding us accountable is hard." Another email reveals the agony he feels over his failure. He writes: "My sin, while forgiven, is greater in that God put me in a position of public trust, so I deserve whatever criticism I receive." He goes on to write about what he did and how he felt in the midst of his affair: "I prayed multiple times a day, sang hymns with emotions and tears, felt each time that it wouldn't happen again, read the Bible every morning …. So how in the world did I have a torrid—which is an accurate word—many-year affair? How could I compartmentalize it so much?" In yet another email, Souder adds: "Bottom line, however, is that the problem is sin …. The problem is getting the will subordinate to the Holy Spirit early enough that the Spirit is not quenched."

A film made in 2002, The Magdalene Sisters, told the sad story of the "maggies" of Ireland. They got that nickname from Mary Magdalene, a revealing story in itself. The gospels mention only one fact of Mary Magdalene's past, that Jesus had driven seven demons from her. Nevertheless, a tradition grew that Mary Magdalene must have been the same woman as the prostitute who washed Jesus' feet with her hair. Hence when a strict order of nuns agreed to take in young women who had become pregnant out of wedlock, they labeled the fallen girls "maggies."

The maggies came to public attention in the 1990s when the order sold its convent, bringing to light the existence of the graves of 133 maggies who had spent their lives working as virtual slaves in the convent laundry. The media soon scouted out a dozen such "Magdalen laundries" across Ireland—the last one closed in 1996—and soon relatives and survivors were spilling accounts of the slave-labor conditions inside. Thousands of young women spent time in the laundries, some put away just for being "temptresses," forced to work unpaid and in silence as a form of atonement for their sins. The nuns took away illegitimate children born to these women to be raised in other religious institutions.

A public outcry erupted, and eventually campaigners raised money for a memorial, a bench in St. Stephen's Green, a park in downtown Dublin. I determined to visit the memorial on a trip to Ireland. It was a typical gray day in Dublin, with a sharp September wind and the threat of rain in the air. I asked a policeman and a park guide about the memorial to the maggies, and they both looked at me quizzically. "Dunno that one. Sorry."

One by one, my wife and I examined the bronze statues and impressive fountains, mostly honoring fighters for Irish independence. Only by accident did we stumble across a modest bench beside a magnolia tree. A couple was sitting on it, but behind their backs we could see brass-colored lettering. We asked if they would mind moving aside for a moment so we could read the inscription. The plaque reads, "To the women who worked in the Magdalen laundry institutions and to the children born to some members of those communities—reflect here upon their lives."

Walking away from the humble memorial, I found myself reflecting not simply on their lives but also on the sharp contrast between how Jesus treated moral failures and how we his followers often do. Jesus appointed the Samaritan woman as his first missionary. He defended the woman who anointed him with expensive perfume: "Wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her." And Mary Magdalene, she of the seven demons, he honored as the very first witness of the Resurrection—a testimony at first discounted by his more prestigious followers. Where we shame, he elevates.

The genius of Christianity takes the words of Paul "who gave himself for our sins" as true and efficacious. We are not to look upon our sins as insignificant trifles. On the other hand, we are not to regard them as so terrible that we must despair. Learn to believe that Christ was given, not for picayune and imaginary transgressions, but for mountainous sins; not for one or two, but for all; not for sins that can be discarded, but for sins that are stubbornly ingrained.

Practice this knowledge and fortify yourself against despair, particularly in the last hour, when the memory of past sins assails the conscience. Say with confidence:

Christ, the Son of God, was given not for the righteous, but for sinners. If I had no sin I should not need Christ. No, Satan, you cannot delude me into thinking I am holy. The truth is, I am all sin.

My sins are not imaginary transgressions, but sins against the first table, unbelief, doubt, despair, contempt, hatred, ignorance of God, ingratitude towards Him, misuse of His name, neglect of His Word, etc.; and sins against the second table, dishonor of parents, disobedience of government, coveting of another's possessions, etc. Granted that I have not committed murder, adultery, theft, and similar sins in deed, nevertheless I have committed them in the heart, and therefore I am a transgressor of all the commandments of God.

Because my transgressions are multiplied and my own efforts at self-justification rather a hindrance than a furtherance, therefore Christ the Son of God gave Himself into death for my sins.

To believe this is to have eternal life.

Brian Warner once said:

Initially I was drawn into the darker side of life. But it's really just human nature. I started to learn that everything that's considered a sin is what makes you a human being. All the seven deadly sins are man's true nature—to be greedy, to be hateful, to have lust. Of course you have to control them; but if you're made to feel guilty for being human, then you're going to be trapped in a never-ending sin-and-repent cycle that you can't escape from, and you're going to be miserable. Ultimately you'll be living in your own hell. So there's no need to worry about going to hell, because hell will be on earth.

Now, I don't agree with everything Brian Warner says—you might know him as Marilyn Manson—but he says a couple of interesting things. He says there's a certain naturalness to sin. He says feeling guilty for being human can lead to misery. He talks about a cycle of sin and shame many of us know something about. He's right when he says you have to learn to control sin even though it feels so natural. I think he's wrong in what he says about having hell on earth, because there are a lot of ways to experience a hell on earth. One is to be plagued by guilt and shame for sin, to live in what he called a never-ending cycle of sin and shame, but the other is to fail to control sin, to let sin take over your life or take over our culture and our world.

After 14 years of denials, Pete Rose has finally come clean and admitted he bet on baseball while manager of the Cincinnati Reds.

Rose says he was a big-time gambler who started betting regularly on baseball in 1987 but never against the Reds, according to his autobiography, My Prison Without Bars.

In the book, Rose admits that betting became more of a problem when he retired as a player. He details losing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"I didn't realize it at the time, but I was pushing toward disaster," he wrote. "A part of me was still looking for ways to recapture the high I got from winning batting titles and World Series. If I couldn't get the high from playing baseball, then I needed a substitute to keep from feeling depressed. I was driven, in gambling as well as in baseball. Enough was never enough. I had huge appetites, and I was always hungry."

Hollywood star and director Mel Gibson felt called by God to make his film The Passion of the Christ, a portrayal of the final 12 hours of Jesus' life on earth. Although the film has been criticized for being anti-Semitic, Gibson has never pointed a finger at the Jews. Instead, he says all of us are responsible for Christ's death.

In the movie, Gibson portrays this in a remarkable way. While Gibson's face never crosses the screen, we do see his hands once. They are the ones, with spike and hammer, nailing Jesus to the cross.

In the article "Johnny Cash Approaches Judgment Day with Faith," Cash tells Steve Beard of Relevant magazine about his drug use:

I used drugs to escape, and they worked pretty well when I was younger. But they devastated me physically and emotionallyand spiritually. That last one hurt so much: to put myself in such a low state that I couldn't communicate with God. There's no lonelier place to be. I was separated from God, and I wasn't even trying to call on him. I knew that there was no line of communication. But he came back. And I came back.

There it stood—the best tree in the lot. It was the second Christmas of our married life, and with newlywed-like impulse, we decided to forego the two-foot high plastic tree that graced our coffee table the year before. We had found the perfect tree instead. It was wide at the base and came to a perfect point on top. With blissful Christmas cheer we paid the $25, maneuvered it into our '77 Chevy Citation, and drove to our apartment.

I cleared a spot next to the couch and set it up in the corner. At least I tried to set it up in the corner. Our perfect tree immediately fell, turning our tree stand into green and red scrap metal. Another tree stand and multiple attempts only brought about the same problem: the tree wouldn't stand up.

When I probed into the forest of green needles, I discovered our perfect tree had a huge flaw. The base of the tree began straight and centered, but the middle of the trunk contorted in pretzel-like twists, bending this way and that, but coming out straight at the top.

It was perfect on the outside but hopelessly flawed within. It could never stand on its own.

In our not-so-perfect Christmas tree I saw the story of Christmas. On the outside we like to show that we have it all together: "Tis the season to be jolly!" But inside we know differently: hurts, pains, disappointments, anger, and bitterness. Worse yet, there is that contortion of our souls the Bible calls sin.

No matter how many ornaments Lisa and I hung on our tree, we knew it could never stand on its own. And no matter how many ornaments we attach to our lives, we can never be right with God on our own.

The Christmas story is not about God seeing how nice we were and coming down to spend time with sweet people. It is the story of God seeing twisted, hurting, sinful people, and coming down to die for us. It is a story about love. God came to save us from sin. While it entailed the joy of a new baby being born, it also ended up with Jesus taking our sins upon himself and dying as our substitute.

My sin was all the more incurable because I did not think myself a sinner.

In 1982, U2 singer Bono told journalist Terry Mattingly:

I don't believe in preaching at people. The truth is that we are all sinners. I always include myself in the 'we.' I'm not telling everybody that I have the answers. I'm trying to get across the difficulty that I have being what I am.

Four congregation members with concerned faces met in their pastor's office. With earnest and imploring eyes, they presented him with a clipboard filled with sheets of signatures.

"This petition," said the spokesperson of the group, "requests changing the term 'sinner' to 'person who is morally challenged.'"

Old Doctor John Duncan taught Hebrew in Edinburgh long ago. He was sitting one day at the Communion in a church, a Highland church, and he was feeling so personally unworthy that when the elements came 'round, he felt he couldn't take them. He allowed the bread and wine to pass. As he was sitting there feeling absolutely miserable, he noticed a girl in the congregation whom, when the bread and wine came 'round, also allowed them to pass, and then broke down into tears. That sight seemed to bring back to the old saint the truth he had forgotten. And in a carrying whisper that could be heard across the church, he was heard to say, "Take it, lassie, take it. It's meant for sinners." And he himself partook.

Early in 1993 British police accused two ten-year-old boys of the brutal murder of two-year-old James Bulger. The two boys pleaded innocence. The young defendants responded to police questioning with noticeable inconsistency. The climax came when the parents of one of the boys assured him that they would always love him.

Confronted with irrefutable evidence linking him with the crime and the assurance of his parents' love, the boy confessed in a soft voice, "I killed James." The miracle of God's love is that he knows how evil we are, yet he loves us. We can confess our worst sins to him, confident that his love will not diminish.