Let's Talk: The Truth About Sin

One of the more maddening aspects of American society has been the redefining of truth in such a way as to permit anything that one desires as a good.  It is antidote to solve a common human problem: what do I do with with my dark side?  Society would have us merely redefine our dark sides as not darkness at all.  There is a problem with that though.  Darkness does not become light because it has been defined as such.  Darkness remains darkness.  To try to redefine darkness as light doesn't set aside any mask we might wear to cover the darkness, it only hermetically seals the mask to our face.  

So what is this 'dark side'?  It is the ugliness we posses in the human heart that seeks the use or misuse of others.  It is the ugliness we possess that tries to numb us to the pain caused in ourselves and  others as we use or misuse others.  It is the things we do that cause strife in our lives.  It is the frustration we have in denying such ugliness.  However, that ugliness is like a viper wrapped around our leg:  denying it there does not make it go away and embracing it and trying to befriend it does not make anything other than a viper.  As long as we do either of these, we ensure the viper continues to pump its toxins into us until we lose the ability to fight it.

So many of the problems we have in our society come from a lost concept that was obscured by decades of feel good, self-esteem driven psychobabble.  The idea lost is the idea of personal sin.  The acknowledgement of personal sin is almost seen as an enemy to a good self-image.  Personal sin gets repackaged as a mistake or error in the hopes that calling it by another name takes away everything that word sin usually entails.  In the place of personal sin arose the idea of corporate sin.  This is usually the sins of an entire group, usually, let’s be honest, a group to which I do not belong.  This has not been good to society as a whole or to the mental and spiritual health of individuals.

What is sin?  Sin is an act which operates against the good of another, against the good of the individual, or against the Supreme Good that is God.  Sin is when selfishness takes hold in the human person and their actions.  Not all sin, though, is on an equal plain.  The Catholic Church differentiates between what are called ‘venial sins’ and ‘mortal sins.’  It has since her inception.  Even though the words are rarely used much anymore, the concepts are still supposed to be taught.  Many, though, have the impression that such concepts as mortal sin were thrown out by Vatican II, and a new morality rose in its place.  This is witnessed by the high percentage of Catholics who have no problem with missing Mass and the even higher percentage of Catholics who do not go to Confession ever. I believe there is a direct correlation between the two.

Let’s start with what is sin.  In the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1849, it reads,” Sin is an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is a failure in genuine love of God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods.   It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity.”  What does this mean?  Love of God and neighbor are motivated by the good of another.  Our lives, which are given God’s sanctifying grace at baptism, are to be ordered in a way where our actions are ordered to the love of God and others.  When we choose against that, we disrupt the order within ourselves and others.  Selfish choices break down every relationship that person is engaged in.

This makes sense.  Very few of our choices happen in a vacuum. Our choices, good and bad, bear directly on lives of others.  When sins become habitual, they become even more disruptive to those around us.  Sin isolates us.  To give an example: pornography.  I have heard it said that there shouldn’t be a big deal about porn because it is a private thing.  What’s the big deal?  Porn, like all sin, conditions us to see others in a certain way.  In this case it conditions us to see others as a means of self-gratification.   Like a cancer, it spreads into other avenues of our lives, into other relationships, almost imperceptible at first.  It has the physical ability to form neural pathways in our brains that make it harder and harder to stop (especially if begun at a young age).  I use this example, because there are many studies on the adverse effects of porn.  This sin, like all sin, also weakens our relationship to God by telling Him that our misuse of others is more important than His demand we love as He loves.

Not all sin, though, has the same effect.  As not all sin has the same effect, the prescription for healing is different as well.  A mortal sin has three criteria (see Catechism 1857-1859): Grave Matter, full knowledge, and deliberate consent.   The catechism tells us that the Ten Commandments give us ‘grave matter’.   One must know what they are doing is sinful.  Part of growing as a human being is developing an understanding of good and evil.  We train our children to know this.  When a grown person does not understand the difference between good and evil or sees no problem in committing evil we call this sociopathy. Finally, full and deliberate consent must be given.  In short: it’s wrong, I know it’s wrong, and I choose to do it anyway.  Mortal sin has the effect of severing the relationship we have with God.  We lose the sanctifying grace of baptism.  Without that grace present, we cannot enter into heaven! With that loss, we also lose the ability to share in the Eucharist.  We cannot share in the benefits of a relationship with God and spurn that relationship at the same time.   The only way for that sanctifying grace to be restored is through the sacrament of Reconciliation.  Recall this grace is given the first time around by a sacrament (baptism).  It makes sense that it will take a sacrament to restore that grace also.  The wounds caused by sin must be healed by the grace of God.

Not all sin, though, falls into the definition of mortal.  This does not mean it does not need to be forgiven, only that the effects damage, but do not destroy, sanctifying grace and hence, the necessary relationship with God.   We call this venial sin.  They are acts that lack one or more of the criteria.   Venial sin needs to be dealt with as well.  Why? Left unattended, they can leave the soul disposed to greater sin (see Catechism 1863).  Forgiveness of this can be done through asking God for forgiveness through an Act of Contrition.  Within the context of Mass, we deal with the forgiveness of venial sin through the Penitential Rite (Lord have Mercy) so that we might approach the reception of the Eucharist without any sin.  It is worth noting that the penitential rite is insufficient to forgive mortal sin.

Why tend to this at all?  Why admit sin?  First, we do it because it is the truth.  We all have to deal with temptation.  We call this concupiscence. Concupiscence is the viper with which  we must tangle.  We use virtue to overcome temptation.  However, we all fall.  That is just the truth.  We can either do something positive about it or deny it.  Think about it though.  If you are physically ill, is it wise to ignore it?   If we don’t treat a wound, do we not invite infection?  If we let it get infected, cannot the consequences be harmful or even catastrophic?   As good physical health is helped by our not ignoring wounds or illnesses, so is our spiritual and mental health helped with not ignoring sin and its consequences.   If we think we can heal a spiritual wound without sacramental grace, we are delusional.  Only God possesses the medicine we need.  This is why, he gives his Apostles the duty to forgive sins in His name (see John 20:22-23).   God wants us to be whole.  He wants us to be not burdened by the weight of sin.  Reconciling us back to God through the forgiveness of sin is the whole reason the Son of God came among us, gave us a Gospel, gave us a Church, and gave His life on the Cross! When we deny we need forgiveness, we deny our share in the benefit of the Cross.  This is blasphemous!

I talk about this topic, not so much to send the reader into a downward spiral of shame and guilt.  I talk about this so as to tell the reader that acknowledgment of sin need not end in a spiral of shame and guilt.  This is the lie we get told:  If we acknowledge sin in our lives it only tells us how bad we are.  This lie leaves us hopeless and angry.  The whole idea of Confession is to say we can take that shame and guilt, natural byproducts of sin, and have them taken away by God’s grace.  The message of the Church is that we should neither have to live in denial or hopelessness; that we can be forgiven and restored. If by our free will we chose against God, by our free will we must chose to be reconciled to God. 

In dealing truthfully with sin and its consequences,  the necessity for the mask is gone.  It gives us the  ability to fight the viper called concupiscence and beat it soundly.  To be truthful about sin gives us the ability to free of sin.  Freedom only comes through truth.  We see that no matter how vehemently society wants to redefine sin away, the effects of sin do not disappear.  Wisdom does ensconce itself in deceit, but in truth.