Confronting Sin

" If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector." [Matthew 18: 15-17]

I hate sin. Sometimes I wonder, if everyone had a bumper sticker on their vehicle, or a sign by their front door saying, "I hate sin", would it banish sin forever? Somehow I do not think this would work, but I sure wish it would!

I hate sinfulness in myself. I hate it when I get angry, impatient, selfish etc. I actually get mad at myself for these errors. But I work hard to forgive myself. I do not think that God made us to condemn ourselves. He only wants us to learn and grow, not fall into depair.

I hate to see sin in others. I do not judge others for their sins, so much as I wish that the sin and suffering had never happened at all!

A young man is in emotional pain or perhaps he merely suffers the recklessness of youth. He goes out drinking, and in the darkness of night, he falls, in his incoherence, into the road. A speeding car or truck hits him and he suffers trauma. I cannot even get to the point of blaming the young man for his drinking or judging the driver of the vehicle for proceeding recklessly. I am sick at  heart that this has occurred at all.

A young father cannot get steady work. His wife is pregnant with yet another baby. The father becomes ashamed that he cannot support his family, and extremely anxious about their financial future. Will they have food to eat and a place to live? He begins to yell at his family and even hit his wife and children. I am sick at heart that this has occurred at all.

I believe that when we sin, and we suffer for our sin, God cries. He mourns for us because He hates to see any of His children hurt.

When I was a child, others sinned against me. If I was cold, I was denied a sweater; I was told I was just trying to get attention. When I was hungry, I was not given something to eat; this was not out of poverty, it was out of spite. I was told I was a failure, I was called names and I was physically hit.

As a child, I could not confront sin. I was tiny and dependent. If I confronted the abuse, the backlash would have been much worse. I was also afraid to tell anyone, for the same reason. And so I "hid". I hid in my room, I stopped speaking. I became invisible. I would leave the house, but the neighborhood kids would torment me with name calling as well. There was nowhere to hide.

I learned that sin is inescapable. This is a sad lesson for a young child to learn.

Currently, I am reading a book called The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything/ A Spirituality for Real Life by James Martin, SJ. In his book, Fr. Martin describes three approaches to sin and suffering that do NOT work: Accommodation, Annihilation and Abandonment.

When I was very young, I saw and felt the suffering that sin brings. I could not accommodate it. That is, I could not excuse it, or justify it or even attempt a watered down version of sin myself. I saw sin as the Enemy even then. I could discern even at such a young age that accommodation easily leads to becoming sinful in one's own right.

Neither could I annihilate the sin. I was the baby in the family, the daughter. I had no power. If I rejected the sinners in my life by brutally attacking them, I would be injured further by them. And would I be any less a sinner myself if I lashed out?

For some reason, even as I became an adult, neither could I abandon my family. I did not have to like their sins ( accommodate), I did not have to decimate my family with vitriolic hate (annihilate). But when my mother became elderly and bereft after the death of my father, I did not have it in my heart to abandon her. In fact, I brought her to live near me, and I cared for her until the end of her days.

In the Scripture in Matthew 18, we are asked as adult Christians, in the company of two or three companions, to confront sin in others. I see this as an act of love, not as an act of rejection or condemnation.  We all need some good advice, some redirection, some clearer perspective from time to time. In essence, we all need to be rescued, to be saved.  In other words, as Christians, out of Love, we are responsible for each other!

If our loving advice does not work, we are asked to bring the sinner to church. This could be as simple as quoting Scripture, or lending a book, or saying a prayer over the person.

And if the sinner in our life does not listen? Then we are counseled to walk away. This saves us from an ugly confrontation (annihilation). It also saves us from becoming so involved that we begin to accommodate the sin, to take it on. I did walk away as a child. I escaped to save myself. I hid, I left the house. I did not accommodate sin and let myself slide into sinful ways. I left my father and my mother, and I got married and moved away.

For me, the most uplifting part of this week's Scripture is in Matthew 18:30-- Jesus says: "For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them!" This means that, even if we hate sin, or if we nervously confront sin, or despair that sin even exists, as Christians, we are never alone. We have each other and in that communion, we have Jesus. Fighting sin-- in ourselves, in others-- is not a lonely battle, like it was when I was a child. It is a collaborative effort, it is a collective prayer.


In 1 Corinthians 13, St. Paul says, "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  When I became an adult, I put childish ways behind me."  As an adult today, I can not -- and must not-- hide from evil any longer. St. Paul also says, in Ephesians 5:11, "Have nothing to do with fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them." In other words, as a Christian, I must remain silent no longer about evil and sin. I must speak of evil and expose it, or it will continue to flourish in the darkness.

God, may I accept hardship as the pathway to peace. May I take, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it. And may I always shine my light against the evil.
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