Sin

We have stopped talking about sin, haven't we. We don't want to hear about our guilt. Give us amazing grace instead. Yet we recognize sin where we see it in others. Maybe others see it in us. So we should think about it and try to do better. 

Previously I wrote about white noise that obscures meaning when we want to hear. Then there is the ordinary noise of too much information within which important detail gets lost. Then again there is willful deafness ignoring what one doesn't want to hear. Finally there is denial of what we have heard and understood to be true. I am using hearing as a metaphor for all ways of knowing and not knowing, a continuum of ignorance, which I think defines the dimension of sin that extends from blameless naivety to culpable denial of truth. 

Knowing and acting as if we don't know, that is sin at its worst. Not knowing and believing that we know makes us foolish sinners rather than willful sinners. Still the wages of sin are not what we want to leave as a legacy. We can be better than foolish sinners. Maybe this is the sense of Matthew 18:3, "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." Children are aware they don't know and are therefore curious and receptive, until they mature into willfulness or foolishness or wisdom.

Enough philosophizing. If you are still reading, I will describe what brought this on. 

It was in the local news: "County council told it should deliver land acknowledgment every two years for now. Indigenous Advisory Committee chair explained county staff need to be further educated before land acknowledgements can be delivered at every county meeting." To be clear, we do not know the history of our relationship to the indigenous community well enough to undertake appropriate reconciliation. It took some five hundred years of willful and ignorant domination by settlers and their descendants to bring us to this moment. It's going to take a few years to learn how to resolve injustice.

The further back we look, the less we can identify with the spirit of the ancestors. So much has changed in custom, law and governance. In the mid fifteenth century, the so-called discovery doctrine encouraged European adventurers to invade and claim possession of remote regions. This was done with the approval of kings and the Christian church, which profited from the plunder. We are just beginning to deal with this bloody legacy of what we now recognize as crime and genocide. How can we do better? 

Apparently we will start by admitting that we don't know what we are doing and then listen to each other respectfully. Not enough of that to go around.

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photo credit: © Can Stock Photo / Jesser