The Nature of Sin and the Crepe Myrtle Tree

I was reading an article on Flipboard, one of my sources for news on my cell phone. The article’s title was ‘God: Not So Black-and-White’ ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/katie-buerger/god-not-so-blackandwhite_b_8684090.html). The article began by stating that God is the “greatest mystery”, and goes on to say that because we don’t know the mind of God Christians should not judge the actions of others, especially when we are guilty of sin ourselves. From the article — “His mind and will are not as simple as black-and-white print on a page that can be read and then fully known. This is why it perplexes me that some Christians . . . forget this. In Christianity, I often see a lot of pressure around either: a) whether or not someone is going to Hell, or b) whether something or other will send you to Hell.”

Human beings will never enter into and understand the deep things of God; He is the uncreated Creator of the Universe. The more science learns about the Universe, the more science knows that it does not know. If this is true for the humanistic philosophy we call science, what about our comprehension of the supernatural work of God? Especially when many people reject the existence of the supernatural altogether. We see through a glass darkly.

But that does not mean we know nothing about God. Scripture reveals the character of God to us and tells us that “He is our God and we (repentant believer) are His people.” Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians “that we have the mind of Christ” and later that “God’s Spirit lives in us”. He is mysterious, but not inscrutable; He desires to make Himself known to His people. But is God only shades of gray, not black and white? God hates sin, God is love, Jesus is the only way to the Father, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). These are a few examples from Scripture that are not ‘gray’; they are bold, specific, and convicting. They are ‘black and white’. So, yes God is shrouded in mystery; yet God is personal, present, and alive in each of His people, giving us specific instructions and teachings.

The author of this article goes on to make a another point. To her, many Christians seem to be people of ‘the pointing finger’ (my words). They are pointing out sin in our culture and, in so doing, attempting to convict many of these sins. The author speaks out against this type of judgement, saying that because God is so ‘gray’ (in her words), who are we to presume to tell someone, or an entire culture, that they are sinners?

Paul warns us against the ‘pointing finger’ in Romans 2. Speaking of the depravity of Rome and members of the Roman church Paul writes “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgement on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgement do the same things.” (Ro 2: 1). But then Paul writes “We know that God’s judgement against those who do such things is based on truth.” Black and white truth, not shades of gray.

For me, the author of this article is advocating for a Christianity that is soft on sin, or at least does not offend or convict others when sin is mentioned. God moves in the gray zone, so who are we (the Church) to speak about what is right and what is wrong, the article claims. Of course, the truth is that God is very specific about sin. He defines sin and tells us not to do it. But the article does raise an important issue: how do we, the believing Church, address sin in our own lives and in the lives of our society, and do it in a way that is authentic, and not judgmental or hypocritical? Dare I say ‘loving’?

For me, it is helpful to understand the nature of sin as I think about these questions. Here is how I see it — and I am not going to dig into Scripture to support this point. Not because I don’t think I can, but because I just want to write this down tonight. So, with that caveat, I see two components to sin: the root (Sin — capital ‘S’, singular); and the ‘tree’, so to speak (sins — small ‘s’, plural). We, and I am including myself in this, do a pretty good job of identifying ‘sins’ in our lives, and especially in the lives of the people around us. We are quick to judge the morals of our Nation — the violence, sexual licentiousness (adultery, pornography, and fornication — a word that has been taken out of the NIV), greed, corruption, lying, addictions, and so on. And we must speak out against these things — they are sins, they defame God and His Creation, and they are the signs of spiritual, emotional, and physical decay and death.

Of course, the fallen world around us hates this condemnation. Evil hates the people of God and all that they stand for. But I think we have forgotten three things:

First, our battle is not against flesh and blood. We are at war with the powers of darkness and the sins that I enumerated above are most fundamentally the manifestation of this darkness in the lives of the people around us. Christians, of all the people in the world, are the ones with the power of the Kingdom of God and the Holy Spirit to push back this darkness and rescue humanity from a tidal wave of evil. Each human being is made in the image of God — all are worthy of restoration and redemption. And worthy of our love.

Second, the root of violence, greed, addictions, etc. is always deeper than the sins themselves. Treat the tree and if the root is still healthy, the tree will grow back. Often stronger than before. That is why we need to understand that beneath these sins and the evil that they represent, there is Sin. This Sin is the Sin of finding our value, acceptance, our sufficiency in something other than God. It is the worship of other ‘gods’; the worship of self; the sin of idolatry and pride. Throughout the Bible God warns His people against Sin on almost every page. He is much more opposed to Sin than He is to sins, especially in the New Testament.  It is this root that makes all the other sins possible.

This is where the Crepe Myrtle tree comes in. This is a bush or medium-sized tree that grows in the southern states in the US (and may grow in other warm climates in the world). In the summer it can be covered with small red or white flowers. Very beautiful (and why, as a metaphor for sin, it is imperfect. Sin is ugly). But each winter, around February as I recall, it is customary to cut the tree all the way down to the trunk — cut off all the branches and leaves; nothing left but one or two trunks, sometimes just sticks, often less than 6-feet tall. And then, miraculously in the spring it begins to grow again, better, stronger, fuller, taller than the year before. Our sins are like this. When we try to cut them out of our lives, especially in our power, and without the spiritual and emotional healing that is often necessary, we might prune them away for a while. But they almost always come back, stronger than before. Jesus tells us this in Luke 11: 24 — when a house (your heart) is swept clean, the evil spirit can come back later “and the final condition of the man is worse than before.”

But if we rip out the root, Sin, the tree will die for good. The prescription is ‘to repent’ and ‘crucify’ this root of self and unbelief in our lives. As I have said before we don’t repent just of what we have done (sins), we repent of who we are (Sin). In this way, the door is open for the Holy Spirit to do a mighty work of transformation in our heart — root removal.

Third, sins are hard to hide. They are generally out there for all to see, even those hidden sins, like pornography. Hidden sins affect our heart and we cannot hide our heart for long from anyone who gets to know us; sins leave their marks on us for the world to see. But Sin, that is a bit of a different story. Christians can cover up Sin, deceiving ourselves with good works, ministry, Bible study, teaching and all the other things that we ‘do for God’, when in reality we are doing these things for ourselves. One of the most dangerous idols, especially for Christians (and especially for pastors and teachers), is the idol of needing to relevant. Also, we can hide our Sin in the bushes, so to speak. Everyone around us is in the same boat so we don’t stand out, and we don’t feel any sense of conviction. After all, we are doing it for Jesus.

And so, as Christians, with a responsibility to speak truth into a corrupt culture, calling sins sin, we find ourselves increasingly marginalized. Why? Well, probably for many reasons. Sinners don’t take kindly to being called out. But increasingly the culture is looking at us and accusing us of hypocrisy, and with good reason. While pointing out sin, we have not dealt with our own, personal Sin. And the truth is, as we are living with Sin in our hearts, sins are never far behind. They may not be sins of addiction or physical violence, but gossip, exclusion, slander, anger, bitterness, or fear are sins commonly associated with Sin.

Do we want the Kingdom of God to expand? You know it will be released through us, as we bear His image into the world, one person at a time? But the world has a sharp nose and eye for hypocrisy; it can tell whether we are authentic or not when it comes to sins and Sin. We cannot love our enemies, and the Church has plenty of those in the world today, until we (individually and collectively) repent of our own issues of Sin that are preventing the Holy Spirit from truly living within us and flowing out of us. Because, most fundamentally our fight is not with flesh and blood, but with the powers of evil. To win this war we need to be filled with the Spirit and that requires repentance and “giving up the right to ourselves” aka crucifixion.

Therefore, on one hand I disagree with the article I mentioned at the top of this post. God is clear about sin — black and white, if you will. There is no gray in God. Mystery, yes. But no gray. And the Church is called to renounce sin wherever we see it because there is an eternal consequence for the sinner. On the other hand, I do agree with author’s charge about being judgmental and hypocritical. We need to make sure that we are dealing with the Sin (and sins) in our own lives. We are called and anointed to be the image bearers of God to the nations. We won’t be perfect, but we have to be on the Way of holiness.

“And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools will not go about on it.” (Isaiah 35: 8