[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

The Great Divide

I spent last Sunday out on the verandah, peacefully reading a solid 
old-fashioned novel. In it, a little girl steals two small treasures. 
She does so out of love and for very good reasons, but still it's 
theft, and she knows theft is wrong. She knows she has transgressed.

Now, there's a word we don't use often. In fact, I had to look up the 
definition of "transgress", which (according to the Canadian Oxford 
Dictionary) means to "contravene or go beyond the bounds or limits 
set by (a commandment or law)." There's also a geological meaning, of 
sea overflooding land, but that's a side road I'm not taking.

The little girl makes herself ill and miserable over her 
transgression; it warps her whole life. She keeps throwing up. But 
she can't make good what she's done until she gets help from an 
intelligent and compassionate adult, who hears her confession and 
helps her restore the stolen goods safely, knowing that the tiny 
treasures she loves will still be available to her.

I read another book last week, one that makes the case for 
Christianity above all other world religions precisely because 
Christianity is the best at dealing with situations like these. 
Instead of simply condemning wrongdoing, we view it with compassion. 
Most people don't do wrong things because they want to, but because 
they're muddled and confused and fearful and selfish. As Paul says, 
it's not that we don't want to stop doing what we know is wrong. It's 
that we can't seem to stop ourselves.

But there's a grey area where transgression crosses some sort of 
undefined boundary and turns into real sin. The little girl's theft 
harmed only herself; that was what needed to be set right. But 
sometimes what we do, or fail to do, harms others. Our failures 
aren't small and easily set to rights, but serious and with important 
consequences. Then what on earth do we do?

That's when Whatever-It-Is presents us with the great temptation: to 
whistle our way past the scene of the crime. I've come up with a 
personal concept for this; I call it meta-sin. Canadian Oxford 
Dictionary, "meta", definition 2(c): "of a higher or second order". 
Meta-sin is what sits lumpishly on top of sin, preventing repentance 
from getting anywhere near it. It's a combination of undealt-with 
fear, shame, guilt, and dishonesty that transmogrifies into wilful 
self-blindness.

There are two rough orders of meta-sin: denial, and blame-the-victim 
-- or sometimes both simultaneously, as in "I didn't do anything 
wrong, and besides, you made me do it." There are all sorts of shades 
to these categories, all sorts of mechanisms by which we hide from 
our own sight and try to hide from everyone else's, God's included. 
Scapegoating our victim, assigning blame to others, lying to 
ourselves, minimizing what we've done, telling our victim to just get 
over it, "moving on"....

But meta-sin has a truly deadly quality, in that it shifts 
responsibility for the sin to the person or people who have been 
sinned against, which multiplies the original sin and makes 
forgiveness and restoration far, far more difficult.  It lands the 
victim with both the original wrong and with profound injustice -- 
and then it expects the victim to suffer in silence the injustice of 
having to suffer in silence. Nasty stuff.

Why do we fall into such destructive patterns? After all, we have in 
the Gospel the ultimate good news of God's love and forgiveness, of 
Jesus' willingness to go to an excruciating death to break the power 
of sin and death. We're told in no uncertain terms that when we see 
ourselves clearly, we are blessed, and when we think we can save 
ourselves, we're in the most serious spiritual danger. We shouldn't 
need to cover up transgressions -- even real sin -- with meta-sin. We 
should be able to say "I'm sorry" and mean it, and see if there's 
anything we can do to make amends.

So why don't we?

Pride. Five letters, one syllable.

Being forgiven is *exasperating*. It makes us feel small. It makes us 
feel patronized. It's very, very hard on the ego.

And ego is what listens to Whatever-It-Is and yields to that 
temptation to fall into meta-sin. We want to believe that we're nice 
people, good people, not sinners -- and certainly not people who 
would actually *harm* other people. We want unconditional positive 
regard, whether or not we actually deserve it -- and frankly, I don't 
know anyone who does, myself included. We may suspect that we have a 
shadow-side, but we're just not going to go there.

But sooner or later, reality has to have its say, at least for most 
of us.  Maybe some people can put their hands over their ears and 
loudly chant "LA-LA-LA-LA!" indefinitely. I don't know. My 
acquaintance is not unlimited.

That's where you can see people lining up on one side or the other of 
a great divide: on one side, those who have been broken and who have 
truly seen their brokenness, and on the other, those who haven't.

Over eternity (C.S. Lewis makes this clear) the sorting-out process 
will continue, with God inviting us deeper and deeper into both our 
own brokenness and God's healing, merciful love, but never overriding 
our ability to say "no". Ego's something *we* have to abandon; that's 
the price we pay for love.

Some of us will refuse to pay that price, and to them God says, "Thy 
will be done." Forever? We have no way of knowing.

But God's an optimist, and God knows just how seductive God's love 
is. Eventually, maybe everyone will be able to step across the dread 
boundary into the realm of self-knowledge, where meta-sin has no 
place, sin can be repented and amends made, and transgressions seen 
for what they are.

Maybe not in this life, for some people. But I trust God to sort them 
out. I have enough work of my own to do without taking anyone else's on.



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A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in 
no other way. -- Mark Twain