Sin and Sinner

27th Week in Ordinary Time - Friday (12 October 2018)

Galatians 3:7-14

Luke 11:15-26

“Know that the Kingdom of God has overtaken you.”

We must have heard that we are called to love the sinner and hate the sin, but I think we now need to modify this slightly. We are called not just to love the sinner, but also use the sin. The evil or the sin itself can become the raw material for spirituality. “Where sin abounded grace superabounded” (Romans 5:20). Sin and gift are two sides of the same coin. Salvation is not sin perfectly avoided. Salvation is sin turned on its head and used in our favour. We will be able to discover that the same passion that leads us to sin, that leads us away from God can also be a gift, it can also lead us back to God and to our true selves. Along with Richard Rohr, I could say that you should not get rid of your sin until you have learned what it has to teach you. Otherwise, it will only return in new forms. This is what Jesus in today’s gospel says of the unclean spirit that returns to the house all “swept and tidied.” “It goes off and brings seven other spirits more wicked than itself.” Tragically, the last state of the house will be worse than the first.

Nature abhors a vacuum, as we know. And sin is nothingness or worthlessness that we find in ourselves. We cannot remove nothingness; we can only fill it with something. How should one deal with worthlessness? The only way is to fill it with what is valuable and good. Light and darkness are not opposites; rather darkness is the absence of light. And when light enters in, the darkness is no more. The only way to fight sin and evil is to fill it with goodness and love, more and more.

For God, therefore, problem becomes a part of the solution. Psychological wholeness and spiritual holiness never exclude the problem from the solution. If it is wholeness, then it is always paradoxical, and holds both the dark and light sides of things. Failures and weaknesses are not those to be left out, eliminated, rejected or dumped, but embraced and owned and integrated. Wholeness is not the absence of the negative and the dark. But it is the situation where both light and darkness, positive and negative are integrated. They are con-joined to give the whole picture. Our negative energies are not to be hated, but to be accepted, owned, embraced and integrated into compassion.

So it is not about removing the sin from the sinner (that's not possible), but it is about holding (=treasuring) them both in compassion till it transforms one and the other. Holding the tension in compassion. Holding the opposites in love. Holding the contradictions in ourselves creatively so as to transform ourselves. A creative tension. That's what growth is all about. That's when I shall know that God's Reign has overtaken me already!