Robert Barron - What Is Sin?
Peace be with you. Friends, I’m not sure if you’re like me, but even though I love Lent and Easter and all the great festivities, it’s with a sense of relief that I return with the Church to Ordinary Time. And how wonderful now on this Tenth Sunday, as we pick up Ordinary Time, the Church gives us such a fundamentally important reading. Get out your Bibles. Look at Genesis 1, 2, and 3, these pivotally important chapters. Number 3, of course, is about the fall and original sin. To return to these stories is to discover again, listen, the basic dynamics of sin. The perceptiveness here is stunning, it’s staggering, how deeply the author perceives, under God’s inspiration, the nature of sin.
Listen now, as it’s done in the typical biblical laconic narrative. «After the man had eaten of the tree, the Lord God called to him and said, 'Where are you? '» Now, the omniscient God obviously is not having a bad day and having lost sight of his creatures. He knows exactly where they are. But what’s being signaled here is sin always involves an alienation from God. John Henry Newman said that natural religion always wears its dark side outward. What he meant was in the natural state, we know that God exists through our conscience, and we know that we’re alienated from God. It’s true. We’re all sinners, and so our experience of God is one of separation. God said, «Where are you? Where are my creatures? I’ve lost sight of you».
It means, really, we’ve lost sight of God. We’ve wandered away. Fellow sinners, I know you feel this way. I know you experience God in just this way. He answered, «I heard you in the garden, but I was afraid because I was naked, and so I hid myself». Gosh, there’s so much spiritual power and eloquence in these lines. So «I heard you in the garden, but I was afraid». Well, why would you be afraid of God? He wasn’t afraid of God before the fall. He walked in easy fellowship with God. God’s friend, not afraid of him. What made him afraid? Well, because «I was naked and so I hid myself». Well, he was naked before and he wasn’t hiding himself. What happened? Sin awakens in us, just by its very nature, a sense of shame and self-consciousness.
Now, watch this, everybody. The best moments in life, the best moments in life are without exception those times when you are least aware of yourself, right? Just think of the most splendid moments in your life, the best moments of a day. It’s when you’re lost in a project or you’re lost in the beauty of nature, you’re lost in the wonder of a friendship, in a conversation, a work of art, whatever it is. It’s when you’re least aware of yourself, you’re happiest. Something Jordan Peterson said I think is dead right. He says it’s borne out by all the psychological research, namely, self-consciousness and misery are psychologically identical. Think about that. What’s misery? Well, it’s the state of being self-aware.
I’ve shared often before with you Augustine’s definition of sin: «Curvatus in se». When I’m caved in around myself, that’s when I’m miserable. What happens to Adam here? He was naked before, wasn’t afraid of God, wasn’t ashamed, wasn’t hiding from God. But now in the wake of sin, which is alienation from God, violation of God’s law, he becomes painfully self-aware, ashamed. He needs to cover up something in his life. It’s a wonderful image here of that un-self-consciousness. Think of when you’re in the presence of a real friend, not someone that you’re just acquainted with, but I mean a real friend. You can be psychologically naked. You can be self-revealing. You’re not trying to hide something from that person. What happens is our sin awakens in us shame and the desire to hide and cover ourselves up.
Well, it’s exactly what we do, painfully, in the presence of God. I think about this, as I record these words, finishing up a Confirmation season, so I’m dealing with teenage kids like 15, 16. I’m not picking on the kids here; it’s true of any teenagers anywhere in the world. Do you want to see people in a kind of agony of self-consciousness? Watch kids that age. There’s something about a teenager, they’re just so aware of themselves and they don’t want to say or do something that’ll make their friends laugh at them. They’re in an agony of self-regard, trying to hide. What makes life wonderful is when we can finally let down all those guards and we can lose ourselves. We can forget ourselves. That’s what’s lost in the original sin.
So, first, it’s an alienation from God. Mind you, before I forget. The «Where are you» is a sign of the alienation, but it’s also, and it’s so important in the Bible here, is God doesn’t give up on us. If God had been offended by our sin, and the heck with them, the heck with them, they didn’t listen to me. But see, the God of the Bible is not like that. There’s a straight line from this image of God to the father of the prodigal son. He doesn’t give up on us. He’s after us. Where are you? Where are you? Looking for us, even as we run away from him. But the alienation gives rise to shame and the shame gives rise to what?
Well, watch how the narrative unfolds. The Lord says, «Well, then I can tell. I mean you’ve eaten of the tree I forbade you to eat from». The man replied, «The woman whom you put here with me, she gave me the fruit from the tree, and so I ate it». The Lord God said to the woman, «Why would you do such a thing»? The woman answered, «The serpent tricked me into it, and so I ate it». Watch the rhythm now. Alienation from God leads to shame, and the shame leads to blame. It’s the shame-and-blame game. That’s what happens to us. See, in our shame, our self-reproach, our awful self-regard, which is the same thing as misery, what do we do? We start casting about, blaming everybody around us. That’s why I’m unhappy. She’s why I did it. He’s the problem. They’re the problem.
Does any of that sound familiar, fellow sinners? It’s the basic dynamic. Alienation from God leads to shame, which in turn leads to blame. Now, if you doubt me on this, could I invite you, anytime of the day or night, go on the internet? What do you find in this, I think, honestly, increasingly dysfunctional space? You see exactly the shame-and-blame game. What’s going on but a kind of orgy of blaming and of shaming. Calling to mind people’s sin, reminding people of their sin, and then blaming, blaming, blaming on all sides.
Now, who’s this serpent? Responsible ultimately for all of us, the serpent who tempts them into sin and therefore into shame, and therefore into blame. Who is he? Well, he’s got a name in the Bible. I’ve talked about «ho diabolos» a lot, the scatterer, but his name in the Hebrew Scriptures is the «satanas». Satan comes from that. It means the accuser, or even more precisely the prosecuting attorney. What’s the prosecuting attorney’s job? To blame, to blame. They did it. He did it. She did it. The accuser. Somehow, we are under the thrall of this accusing power, and he produces the world of sin, alienation, shame, blame, that we all function in. I don’t know about you, read this section again, Genesis chapter 3, you want to understand the dynamics that dominate so much of our lives.
Now, let’s go from that to our Gospel. This tells us, Genesis 3, how the world that we live in started. The shame-and-blame game, how it started. Who is Jesus? Well, God so loved the world, this fallen dysfunctional world, that he sent his only Son into it, that those who believe in him might find eternal life. He comes from outside the dysfunction, but into the dysfunction. That’s the Incarnation if you want. I’m putting it in more soteriological language there, the language of salvation. He came from outside the dysfunction, but entered into the dysfunction. Not of it, but in it. What’s his job? To cast out Satan. The root of this problem on the biblical reading is this accuser who’s given rise to the alienation, shame, and blame game. What’s Jesus' job, is to cast that power out.
Watch how, throughout the Gospels, Jesus reverses the shame-and-blame game. Is he about the business of shaming people? No, on the contrary, of inviting and forgiving. «Neither do I condemn you». Eating and drinking with, yes, sinners and prostitutes and tax collectors. The blame game, no. The forgiveness game, the game of compassion, inclusion. Now, I don’t mean that in the wokeist sense it’s being used today. But, yes indeed, inclusion in this good biblical sense. Jesus' open-table fellowship, inviting everybody in. Do you see how he’s undermining Satan?
Now, listen to this Gospel, this interesting, weird Gospel from Mark. «When his relatives heard of this», meaning all that he was doing and especially the exorcisms, «they sent out to seize him for they said, 'He’s out of his mind.'» See, they’re right. I want you to see that, they’re right. He is out of his mind, meaning, he’s not living in the space produced by the shame-and-blame game. He’s come from outside of it, and so within the world of sin, he seems crazy because he is. He’s turned that world upside down. Then, I love this, the scribes, the official religious leaders, they come from Jerusalem, and they say, «Hey, he’s possessed by Beelzebub, and by the prince of demons, he drives out demons».
Well, how about that for a stupid bit of logic, which Jesus completely exposes, and listen to the language he uses: «How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom can’t stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand». No, I am here to drive out Satan. That’s what he’s saying. I am here to drive out this dynamic which has come to dominate all of human life, to undo the alienation, shame, and blame game by declaring and embodying a whole new kingdom.
The kingdom of God, not the kingdom that started with the original sin and has haunted and poisoned the human race ever since. Not that kingdom. I’m driving out the prince of that kingdom so as to become the Lord of this new kingdom of love and compassion and inclusion and forgiveness. There’s the Gospel, everybody. There’s the Gospel. A new world has come. The old prince is being cast out and a new King has arrived. Accept his kingship, live within his kingdom. And God bless you.