Sin and Alienation

Sometimes the words of our religious language miss the mark

Our beloved Cleo (2003-2017) deep in meditation

Pax

All that matters is to be at one with the living God
to be a creature in the house of the God of Life.

Like a cat asleep on a chair
at peace, in peace
and at one with the master of the house, with the mistress,
at home, at home in the house of the living,
sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.

Sleeping on the hearth of the living world
yawning at home before the fire of life
feeling the presence of the living God
like a great reassurance
a deep calm in the heart
a presence
as of the master sitting at the board
in his own and greater being,
in the house of life.

-D.H. Lawrence

Earlier this week, a spiritual direction client asked me about sin. He wanted to know what I thought about the word sin and what it meant to me. It was 8:30am. My first session of the day. I took a long deep breath, stalling for time as I formed a reply. I found myself thinking “Oh, God, what do I have to say about sin?” And then a response came: “I do so dislike the word sin.”

I imagine that the idea of sin was quite useful at some point in Christian history. Perhaps that’s very generous of me? But it seems to me that however useful it might have been in the past, that  it’s not a useful word these days. There’s something about the word that makes me bristle. It conjures up notions of an angry loveless authoritarian idea of the Divine that I no longer find useful. Am I the only one who has this reaction? I think not, but perhaps others have a healthier relationship with this key word of the Christian faith?

Our beloved Chester (2000-2016) resting in suchness on the bed.

When I began exploring Zen Buddhism and practicing zen in the late 1980’s, one of the things I loved about it was the language. There were simply none of the words that I personally found so problematic at the time, and so the teachings were easily understood and absorbed. Words like sin, on the other hand, tend to make people zone out.

Alienation is the word that Br David Steindl-Rast, my spiritual initiator, likes to use in place of sin. It’s an interesting word, alienation. It points to a state of being rather than to an action. When I think of sin, I typically think of an action: a lie, an unkind act, that kind of thing. There are sins of omission and commission – things we do and things we should have done that can be labeled sins. When sin is habitual, we may speak of “living in sin.” And the state we experience when “living in sin” is one of alienation.

If alienation is a good substitute for the word sin, Br David suggests the word “belonging” as a contemporary replacement for the word salvation, it’s opposite. To me, salvation feels rather abstract, theological and hard to pin down. I have never been able to relate to salvation in a personal way. Belonging, in contrast, is a state of being that I can feel in my bones. Anytime I’m part of a group, I sense whether I belong or not. And when the family gathers around the table for Thanksgiving dinner, we cannot help sensing whether we feel we belong to the family or feel alienated from it.

What causes the sense of alienation? Little acts of course. Things we shouldn’t have done, but did. Or things we should have done and didn’t. The little lie we told causes our state of being to change We feel it in our bones as we transition from sensing that we belong to feeling alienated by our actions. How do we restore the felt-sense of belonging if we are feeling alienated? We do so through little acts that repair our relationships. I think this holds for both human relationships and our relationship with Ultimate Reality.

Cleo “helping” me rethink my work/life balance

The air is full of springtime birdsong as midday leans into mid-afternoon. I am relaxing into a sense of ease as the weekend approaches. I sense a subtle connection to the trees outside my window – and to the birds. We are all related. We belong together. Then, just for a moment, all is at peace and I feel deeply in tune with all life. I belong. We all belong. Life is beautiful. All is as it should be.

Do you resonate with my musings on sin? What do you think of alienation as an alternative way to speak of sin? Are there other Christian theological concepts that you find problematic?

My hope is that through explorations like these that we can slowly transform Christian language and with it, some of the expressions of Christianity which no longer serve us. Perhaps this process can bring new life to Christianity and inject it with a new sense of love and forgiveness – two qualities which I think we can all agree are at its very core.

Here’s to your ongoing awakening!

Bill