It is not that sin is not sin. It is simply that sin is not the end of the world—and, in fact, may actually be the beginning of a number of things that can hardly be gained any other way in life, but without which life is a pitiful place. A bout with greed may be precisely what teaches us the freedom of poverty. A struggle with lust may well be what, in the end, teaches us about the real nature of love. A strong dose of anger may be what it takes to teach us the beauty of gentleness.
There are, in other words, a number of things to be learned from sin. One is compassion. The other is understanding. The third is humility. The fourth is perception. Without the ability to own our own sins, these qualities are all hard to come by indeed.
Sin gears us to suffer with those who suffer from the folly of their weaknesses because we have smarted from the folly of our own. Once we can admit our own sins, once we face those things in ourselves that, if ever brought to light, would be our social downfall, we can companion those for whom the darkness of night has not been so kind. Sin enables us to understand the murderer, to deal justly with the criminal, to control the passion for blood that masks the sins of the righteous with a patina
of virtue.
In the end, however, it may be humility and perception that are the best consequences—the intended consequences—of the surfeit of sin. Humility not only identifies us with the human race and confirms the earthiness of the human condition, but it erodes the very basis for hierarchy as well. Humility knows that there are no lords-of-the-manor at all; no ones of us at all entitled to subject the rest of us; nobody at all good enough or pure enough to evaluate the rest of us. We are all in struggle…. We are all at the mercy of the God of mercy. We can all learn something from one another.
From Joan Chittister: In My Own Words, compiled and edited by Mary Lou Kownacki (817533). Available from Liguori Publications. To order, visit Liguori.org or call 800-325-9521.