How Do You Define Sin? (And Other Burning Questions)
Frequent readers of the Sisterhood Chronicles know we cross-post Rev. Megan Castellan probably more than is allowed under terms of fair use, but she’s very kind and lets us keep sharing her work. In fact, she’s so kind that she even agreed to be our speaker at April’s Sisterhood meeting, in which she compelled us to examine and reclaim religious language “co-opted by a particular brand of American Christendom that is not helpful to us in this moment.”
Going back to the peculiar roots of American Christendom, Megan gave a helpful overview of American’s post-World War II shift in religious observance, when the concept of church attendance moved from demonstrating piety or faith and more toward exhibiting civic duty. As the century’s second half became increasingly tumultuous, this “height of American Christendom” became synonymous with upholding the status quo. Christianity, that most radical and counter-cultural of faiths, was essentially defanged when resistance was needed most, and its core language (at least in the U.S.) followed suit.
Consider (as Megan had us do) your earliest understanding of sin. Our candid answers revealed that we tend to think of sin in terms of individual moral failing that results from a personal choice. In turn, this conception signals that individuals therefore must do all the work, both to sin, to stop sin, and to correct sin. Sin
Worse, sin as individual choice presumes that everyone in the world has the same power as I do right now — that they have the same ability to abstain from sin. It also assumes that sins do not have long-lasting consequences, and casts harm that no one can seem to prevent as “God’s will.”
Yet the Bible (the prophets in particular) talks much more about social and corporate sin. In this context, God and human participate equally to address huge, thorny, hairy, complicated structures that are not easily solved by choice or even by collective action.
Yes, it’s easy to feel helpless as one person facing globally scaled challenges. But as Megan reminded us, “guilt is ultimately not a helpful emotion.” She encouraged us instead to think of original sin this way: “It’s sin we’re complicit in but we can’t get out of, yet God loves us anyway.”
Megan then brought up the word salvation, where she pointed out that the notion of salvation equaling “we get to go to heaven” is predominantly an American Christian view (and another casting that promotes the idea that God hands you suffering in the here and now). The more expansive view of salvation makes it not just something that happens after death. Rather, in the Bible, its roots as a technical legal term link it inextricably to redemption — an ongoing process with all of creation.
As Megan remarked when she opened the discussion, we live in a Good Friday moment — one where everything broken can be made new again. And to accomplish this in our present world, “we need to reflexively and consciously end all of the privilege Christendom gave us.”
To help us all continue this critical journey, we leave you with the Episcopal prayer Megan read to us and encourage you to absorb its language in a spirit of deeper understanding and refreshed commitment.
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord: who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
