THE REDEMPTIVE POSSIBILITIES OF IMPERFECTION

“Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear"  (Is. 59:2)

“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Rom. 3:23)

     If there is one sentence in the Bible that expresses an absolute universal truth it is in this third chapter of Romans. "All have sinned," says the Apostle Paul. "All have fallen short of God's glory." "(God) makes the sun to shine on the just and the unjust," says the writer of Mattherw 5:45. No one has been born perfect or has lived a perfect life. Each of us has known the tugs of temptation to lust, to covet, to walk away from God, to dishonor our parents. Each of us has grown angry, hateful, revengeful, argumentative. We may pat ourselves on the back and say there are things we have not participated in, but there have been moments in each of our lives when we were not walking with God and to not walk with God is to be separated from God. Theologian Paul Tillich echoed the words of Isaiah that headline this post when he reminds us that "separation" from God is the very definition of "sin."

      Physical defects aside, each of us was born a perfect human child. However, each of us have our own unique story to tell regarding our growth and the cultural and emotional environment in which we were raised. Too much discipline, or the lack of it; love, or the lack of it; a value system that included a cultural emersion in politics and religion, or the lack of it, produced certain character traits that influenced who we would become as adolescents that would carry over into adulthood. The intense influence of "peer pressure" from those whose upbringing may have been totally different from our own cannot be discounted. For example, my former wife and I did not smoke and yet all our children's friends smoked. The result was that they, too, were smoking by the time they became young adults.

     I've known people who never allowed alcohol into their homes, yet their children grew up to become alcohol or drug addicts. No one is immune from heartache and tragedy. And that includes families of faith who have known the heartbreak of their teenage daughter telling them that she is pregnant, or a son calling them from a jail cell after having been arrested for rape or murder or some other crime. How many wives or husbands suffer under the heartache of a spouse who left them for another? In the midst of such turmoil and darkness parents, children and spouses cry out, "Where did I go wrong?" All of these very human encounters with the world serve to illustrate how truly imperfect we humans are. Nothing can be made right unless something has been made wrong.    

     "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death," the author of Proverbs wrote (14:12). And the Prophet Isaiah reminded us that, "We, like sheep, have all gone astray; we have turned -- every one -- to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (53:6). 

      I once met a man who made the amazing claim that he "had never done a wrong thing in his entire life." I have heard preachers declare that they have "always walked in righteousness," and, who hasn't heard those whose lies are so clearly evident yet are steadfast in their claim that they are not lying? 

    All of us, you and me, are perfectly born but we develop imperfectly. Whether it's biology, sociology or psychology, the vagaries of this life lead us astray and, yet, it is those same vagaraies that help us to find our way back to God. Once cast out of the metaphorical "Garden of Eden," humankind has spent eons trying to find its way back. And, I happen to think that is precisely how our God, who is the very Ground of our Being planned it. How can we find our way back to God if we are not at first lost? How can there be redemption if there is nothing to be redeemed from?

    "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own" (Phil. 3:22)

     I confess that I am not much of a fan of the Apostle Paul, although he intrigues me greatly; mostly because of his forthrightness. Paul is a sinner. He makes no bones of it. He freely admits that he has sinned and that he continues to sin. What that sin is never made clear, and has been the source of specultation for two-thousand years. What he says, in Romans 7:19, is that "the good I wish to do I don't do, but the bad that I do not wish to do, I do." Speculation on what the "bad" is, is irrelevant and a waste of time. The important thing is Paul presses on in his quest for righteousness in Christ, continually fighting against whatever demons plagued his soul in order to bring his message of the risen Christ to the world. Without struggle there can be no revival. Without imperfection there can be no redemption.

     And, where do we find such redemption? In church? Certainly the church should provide a nurturing environment for such redemption. Yet, I have known churches that do not welcome someone whose sins have become public. Other churches disallow participation in communion unless you are a member of that particular congregation. What about the community, can we find redemption there? Perhaps, however many communities across America have placed those convicted of certain misdemeanors or felonies on registries that ban them from housing or living in certain areas, and from even going to church without announcing their registered status, and even then they must receive the church's permission before they can worship. Separating people out, putting them in niches to be watched, prohibiting them from freely participating hardly seems the way to any kind of redemption. We are all sinners we must remind ourselves. Thinking that we are better than "that" person, whoever "that" person is, should give us all pause to rethink our belief and our relationship with our Lord.

      My maternal grandfather often said that redemption "is found on our knees." It is there, on our knees that we confess our wrongs, our mistakes, our sins. It is on our knees, where we are forgiven and where we promise to try -- and I emphasize 'try' -- to go forward and live a sin-free life through a reunion with our God. Jesus told the woman taken in adultery and about to be stoned to, "Go, and sin no more." What happened to her we do not know. But, I can tell you what will happen to the woman if she does sin again and is brought to the stoning ground and Jesus isn't there. Once redeemed from our sins we must not return to our sinful ways. We have been given a great gift when Jesus says, "Neither do I condemn you." It is this totality of love for the other that flows from God through Christ that restores us. This is at the core of the redemptive possibilities of imperfection.  

   But forgiveness requires us to forgive and forgiveness means we reach out and embrace the "other" whose only sin -- though it hurt us and offended us -- is that they, too, have been separated from God. "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," the Apostle reminds us. We are all in need of redemption and there can be no redemption without imperfection and it is in the midst of our imperfection, our falleness, that we discover the love of God that leads us away from our imperfections and into the possibility of redemption. It comes when God offers us his hand; a hand that holds untold possibilities for  redemption to us all.