Thought for the Day: A Thought on Sin

 Delivered on the Today programme, BBC Radio 4, March 4th 2022.

It’s now three days into the season of lent. The ash cross on my forehead is gone, but the thought of it is a reminder of the things that I regret and feel sorry for. It tells me I am sometimes selfish; I think too much of myself or sometimes too little. I lose my temper unnecessarily or indulge hateful thoughts about people who have annoyed me. I have hurt people and I have hurt myself. Lent reminds me of this but also of the faithfulness of God’s love. To quote Charles Wesley, ‘Tis mercy all, immense and free; for, O my God, it found out me.

As the invasion of Ukraine rages terribly on, I’m reminded that while the Christian concept of sin can include the mundane and minor, like a bad seed it can metastasize into something so awful only God can understand. It’s tempting to imagine that we are living in uniquely dreadful and sinful times; but of course, we’re not. For as long as there has been a human story, sin has been part of it. It’s one of the tragedies of being human, and for Christians, it helps explain the redemptive joy of the cross.

I’ve just done some safeguarding training, a crucial and lifelong process of learning that will hopefully make me part of a church which has a healthy culture of protecting the vulnerable and resisting harmful power dynamics. To do that, I need – as every Christian does – to take sin seriously. This doesn’t just mean being aware of the sin in others but accepting that each of us has the capacity to do wrong. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in the Church of England found that abusers escaped justice because others weren’t willing to believe someone they respected could be capable of such a thing. We need to accept the unwelcome possibility that everyone can sin.

It can also be very uncomfortable to acknowledge that people who commit terrible crimes might also be capable of doing good. Lent is the leveller which forces us to confront the truth that if we diminish the effect of sin on ourselves, we also risk turning away when we see it emerge in people we love. This is the risk of simplistic thinking which sorts people into good and bad. The reality is that we are all somewhere in the middle.  We are all as grey as the dust.