Minimizing Sin

It's easy to minimize sin, trying to convince ourselves and others (and unfortunately, often successfully, despite whatever cognitive dissonance) that sin is not really that bad.

"It's just once", "I'm not really hurting anybody", "Everybody does this", "Nobody has to know", "It's not a big deal", so on and so forth...

I think as Christians, we know it's not right to minimize sin. I think we know that everything we do and think and say is not just "to ourselves and won't harm anyone", but rather a capital (literally) offense against the most supreme God, who knows all our inner thoughts and motives and has the ultimate right and authority to judge.

As if that's no big deal.

We also know that our own sin will affect others - whether it is to turn someone else away from Christ because of our actions, to directly harm someone else even if we didn't realize it, basically to damage the relationship between us and others or others and God.

As if that's no big deal.

People are fickle though - we often sway too far to one side or to the other. Either sin is no big deal or sin is so debilitatingly great that we can't function. So to the other extreme then - is it possible to maximize/make too great a deal of sin?

I don't know if this is the right answer... But I don't think so. Sin is sin is sin, and no sin is so small that it doesn't grieve God. I think that part of what it means to really grow in Christ is to understand the weight and depth and despicableness and destructiveness and horror of sin, no matter what it looks like.

I think there is no problem with "maximizing" sin, because of Who it is ultimately against. It is maximum. But instead, the problem on this side is that we minimize the power of God. We think our sin is too great for God to bear, we think that His grace is not sufficient, that His sacrifice does not suffice, that His Words do not heal and His power does not overcome.

This can lead to despair and bitterness, and to giving up - which consequently, funny enough (haha, not), can lead to the complete other side of the pendulum. "It's too hard to deal with this", so therefore, sin is not that bad after all. Isn't it funny how cognitive dissonance works?

Oh, how completely hopeless and futile our ways are when we're left to our own devices.. it brings to mind the passage in Romans 1, where God gives up the people to their own ways because though they knew Him, they did not glorify or give thanks to Him.

Sometimes I don't understand myself

Actually, make that a lot of the time..

Isn't it wonderful that we have a God who knows the depths of our hearts? Who sees everything, gross and disgusting and all, the things we may not yet see or understand or admit, yet still loves us so?

To be fully known and fully loved is something that I think every heart seeks but I also think so few really understand or get to experience. Maybe that is just the cynical part of me? God doesn't wish that any should perish [a], yet so often even we who have been bought with a price live as though we were not. Who can say that their heart is pure? [c]

I think I understand more and more Paul's laments of what I now see as utter despair in Romans 7. He cries out with such desperation, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" Can you hear the sorrow in his voice?

Maybe we need to be in such a place of desperation before we can understand the depth of what he says next. The Gospel, without an understanding of sin, is still the Gospel, in all the glory and majesty and awesomeness that it is. But who can accept it and its weight without that understanding of sin? And even as Christians, no matter how long a Christian, if we do not continually come to a place of this recognition, I think our faith can then teeter into the realms of self dependency, ungratefulness, salvation by works, and a whole other host of stuff..

Lord, please keep us at your feet, always, according to your mercy...

In our weakness

A few months ago, my dad spoke about Samson - about how as a man of faith he was made strong in his weakness, and how through suffering we can experience God. Hebrews 11 has always been both interesting and confusing to me. None of the people brought up in the passage led sinless lives -- far from it, and of course not unexpected. (After all, who can say that they've lived a sinless life? Only one holds that right.) But of course I didn't understand that. I used to think, "hey wait a minute that's not fair, I know that person did this and that other person did that, they're not people of faith!" ......HAH!! How ridiculously judgmental. How foolishly arrogant. How utterly, shamefully, and pathetically did I miss the point. (And still do, so easily.)

Faith does not come alone, and good works are the fruit, the evidence of faith. BUT those men and women's actions alone didn't earn them a rank in Paul's writings, nor did their actions disqualify them from faith. Faith, and all that comes with it, is from God and God alone... and ours is a God who, though He is the Holiest of Holies who will not tolerate sin in any form and holds the absolute right and authority to destroy us with no hesitation... had His own Son carry our sin in our stead, and offers us life everlasting in return. Redemption, grace instead of punishment, life instead of destruction. (What in the world did I know of fairness?) What could possibly be more unfair? Ours is a God who blesses and curses, who heals and breaks, who grows and destroys, who gives and takes away. This is a God under whom we rightly ought to live in fear and trembling, and by His fathomless grace gives us hope, forgiveness, a new identity as beloved sons and daughters.

Samson was the promised son, granted divine strength, power, and blessings far beyond his family name. And he was arrogant. He took his gifts for granted and fastened those blessings to himself as part of a self-constructed identity -- and he didn't realize that the Lord had left him when he told Delilah of his secret, having totally forgotten who granted him that gift in the first place. After months in the Philistine jail, Samson was physically weak, literally blind, and publicly humiliated... but he was also changed. No longer did he believe that he could do it all, but I think we can see he recognized the true source of all that he had. He called out to the Lord, crying out in desperation for God to remember him just once more... Though we do not know the exact state of his heart and thoughts all those months later, we can know that he truly lived to be the man of faith as Paul wrote of him in Hebrews all those years later.

How often do I look to a self-constructed identity, based upon the things I think I've accomplished and the things I think I have? I think that I can do it all, while in truth apart from God's grace I can do nothing. And I think with deep undertones of arrogance, while so oft forgetting the source of everything I have been given. All that I have accomplished and all that I have is only through Him and Him alone.. I can rightfully take no credit... And though my penchant for overscheduling and overloading is a pattern that I've noticed over and over in my life, it wasn't until recently that I finally realized, wow, this is not just a "personality thing". It's not something for which I can simply point to my ambitiousness and leave at that, nor try to explain is due to my wide-spread interests, or even say is the fault of poor time management or "poor stewardship". No matter how true or untrue each of these may be, they are only a mere outward layer. The core of the matter is that it's yet another idol, another deeply lodged sin and a whoring of the heart after other gods. It's a meaningless pride in "my own" abilities, nurtured, indulged, and manifested, and it'd be pointless to try and sugar coat that. Like Samson, I so easily forgot what the true source of my strength is..

From one view, it would be so easy to just try and patch this all up with a simple formula, with a little "oh ok that's fine Lulu, let's just start to limit the amount of activities you take on" and "psh no worries, let's just do a re-vamp of your schedule". While I do think that is necessary at any rate, a silly little bandage like this does not heal. How circular and utterly meaningless. Sheer determination can only get me so far, and I realize this over and over again as I try my best and continue relying only on that. But realization is not repentance. And praise the Lord for His mercy which does lead to repentance! Even still, "I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate... Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" How true Paul's words now ring - of a true hopelessness in light of himself... Yet he ends it with hope, in light of God's mercies. "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin."

All this running about, all this doing this and doing that, it's all meaningless without a driving force and fixed vision that is firmly rooted in and fed by all that God is, and all that His Gospel means. It's all just sinking sand, a blind chasing after the wind, all meaningless ventures if there is not a constant recognition of where I come from, who I am, why I am the way I am, and where I am going. And all these selfish little "I-I-I" questions, in the end they all only lead back to who God is. There is no other answer. He says to me, Child, be still and know that I am God. Heart, soul, why are you so often not still? In the rushing of troubled waters, there is only turmoil and a hurried and rash obscuring of that which truly matters. When you are weak, there He will be shown all the more to be strong... When you are weary, there know again Who grants you rest... When you remember again how you are only a jar of clay, and how broken and withered a vessel at that, there, remember also what you are crafted and constantly remolded to carry.

"So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen."

Look back on this later, self. Look back and remember.

A Treatise

During my senior year at Wellesley, I often talked about Carol Dweck and her work's impact on me. Here is a short treatise on:

How psychology changes lives

One of the most influential people in my life is a woman named Carol Dweck. Carol is a social psychologist currently working from Stanford University. I've never actually met her in person, but her research about mindsets and failure helped to change my perception and understanding of myself. I grew up believing that failure was bad, and that failure in any way was a sign of my ineptitude as a human being. I had to avoid failure at all costs because I needed to uphold my image of being "smart", of being a good daughter, capable, put together, a good role model, etc..

Reading about Dweck's work opened up the floodgates for me in a sense - it helped me to better understand where I was coming from, why I was the way I was, what I could do to move forward. From her work, I understood that failure is not a condition in which I am eternally bound; rather, it stems from a mindset from which I was capable of breaking through hard work and perseverance. Looking back on my senior year, I have to say that her work was an important part in my pulling through thesis/antithesis - not only that, but it helps inform me in the ways that I think about education and instruction.

Sounds lovely right? And I held to this pretty firmly. I shared this with others who would listen, and I encouraged others to look at her work and research for themselves.

I even wrote up a nice little blog post about it, see?

But after writing this, even in my thinking of writing this, I realized how empty and meaningless our world's psychology really is.

Another Treatise, then:

How the Gospel changes lives

One of the most influential people in my life is a man named Jesus. Jesus is the Son of the Living God, wholly man and wholly God, who walked the earth more than twenty centuries ago. He currently lives in a time and space that I can't quite understand, everywhere and everytime, and also in me. I've never actually met him in person, but I have met him many times, and his life, death, and resurrection have changed my perception and understanding of myself. I grew up believing that failure was bad, and that failure in any way was a sign of my ineptitude as a human being. I had to avoid failure at all costs because I needed to uphold my image of being "smart", of being a good daughter, capable, put together, a good role model, etc..

Knowing Jesus opened up the floodgates for me - it helped me to better understand where I was coming from, why I am the way I am, what I could do moving forward. From the Gospel, I understood that failure is a condition in which I was eternally bound; it is not something as simple as a mindset from which I can break through merely hard work and perseverance. Indeed, it is impossible to escape through any way, except by the power of his life, death, and resurrection. Looking back on my past twenty-some years, I have to say that his work - his Father's work - his Spirit's work, are the most important and dare I say only real part in my pulling through thesis/antithesis - not only that, but it is the only thing that can give me hope, strength, and a future.

Sounds lovely right? And I hold to this firmly. Yet I do not boldly share this with others who would listen, and though I wish to encourage others to look at this for themselves, I do not nearly as often as I wish.

I only wrote up a nice little blog post about it, see?

But after writing this, even while thinking of writing this, I realized how empty and meaningless our world really is without it.


I am but a work-in-progress... and works-in-progress in the agile cycle are iteratively thrown into the fire.


Lord, throw me in.