[0:05]The world is beautiful. It's quiet and calm and full of goodness. But when I drive the streets of LA, it is glaringly obvious that something is wrong with the world. I see beauty, the arts, architecture, culture, people doing life together. And I see poverty, inequality, addiction, loneliness and the breakdown of relationships. What if the city is a kind of parable for the soul? What if all of us are both beautiful and deeply broken at the same time?
[0:49]What if we need to be saved?
[1:15]The word used by Jesus and the writers of scripture to name what's wrong with the world is sin. Now, sin is an emotionally loaded word for a lot of people. You may hear it and instantly feel a kind of inner allergic reaction. But sin is just the word Jesus used to name a reality that all the brightest minds agree on. Ancient, modern, spiritual, scientific, Western, Eastern, pretty much everyone agrees that something is off in the human heart. It's not just that we do bad things. We gossip or lie or cheat on our taxes or have an affair. It's that we often want to do bad things. And even worse, when we don't want to do bad things, we often still end up doing them, like an addict caught in a self-destructive loop. Calling human beings sinful is no more judgmental than a doctor telling someone they have a heart condition. It's just true. But, there's good news. One of the opening lines about Jesus in Matthew's gospel, is the angel's word to Joseph in a dream about his soon to be born son. You are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. In Hebrew, the name Jesus is Yeshua or Joshua, which means God saves. And what does God save us from in Jesus? Our sins. And yet, I've been following Jesus for my entire life and honestly, I thought that by now I'd be pretty much done with this sin thing, or at least on the tail end. And while I'm not the man I was 20 years ago, I still have a long way to go. One of the reasons this confused me at first was because I did not realize that sin is far more multifaceted than I was led to believe. In biblical theology, there are three dimensions to sin. The first is sin done by us. This is the category we are most familiar with. We mess up. We are unkind. We shame our children. We tell white lies. We dishonor our parents. We add our toxicity to the collective pile of humanity. The theologian Cornelius Plantinga called this dimension of sin the culpable disturbance of shalom. The ripping apart of God's desired harmony and human flourishing. But that's only the first dimension. There's also sin done to us. We've all been sinned against, hurt, wounded, betrayed, slandered. We are both victim and perpetrator. And our woundedness is the cause of much of our wickedness. Hurt people hurt people, as the saying goes, and it's true. Starting in our earliest days, we accumulate a co of painful memories that we carry implicitly in our bodies. And tragically, against all our best intentions, we often pass them on to those closest to us. Cue the heart-wrenching stats on the number of abusers who were abused, cheaters who were cheated on, perfectionists who were raised by perfectionists, and so on. A key part of our spiritual journey's to wholeness is the healing of memories. Finally, there is sin done around us. Due to the radical individualism of the West, we often miss this last dimension. But Jesus and scripture are adamant. Our environment has a warping effect on our soul. All sin, even if it's not done by us or to us, but just around us, has a deformative effect. It's like breathing secondhand smoke. No one would hold you guilty in a court of law, but that doesn't make it any less deadly. The Orthodox Bishop Callistos Ware said, we are born into an environment where it's easy to do evil and hard to do good. Easy to hurt others and hard to heal their wounds. The cultural currents we swim in often push and pull us away from the way of Jesus. But the good news is, through apprenticeship to Jesus, we can be healed of sin in all three dimensions and made whole at every level of our being. You've made it over halfway through a course on apprenticeship to Jesus. Well done. But following Jesus is a lifelong journey. And trying to go on the spiritual journey without healing from sin is like trying to run a marathon with a broken leg. You're not going to get very far. So a key aspect of our spiritual formation is healing from sin done by us, to us, and around us. And I'm using the language of healing on purpose. In Mark chapter 2, Jesus said, It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Jesus' point here isn't that some people are healthy and other people are sick. But that all of us are sick and some of us know it. Notice that for Jesus, sin is like a disease and he is the doctor. Based on this story, ancient Christians called Jesus the doctor of the soul. And like any good doctor, he doesn't just want to deal with the symptoms, but the disease itself. It's so clear in the teachings of Jesus that he is interested in so much more than behavior modification. He's interested in our heart. The hard truth is, sin goes far deeper than most of us realize. This clicked for me when I came across a paradigm from Dr. Robert Mulholland on the four layers of sin. The first layer is what ancient Christians called gross sins. Not gross as in yucky, but as in major sins, like the saying, I made a gross mistake. Listen to the Apostle Paul's list of gross sins in Galatians 5. Sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
[7:52]These are the sins that mark so many of our lives before we come to Jesus. Gross sins are the first to go in our spiritual journey. Sometimes they disappear the day we are baptized. But then comes layer two, conscious sins. These are sins that are socially acceptable in our culture or even celebrated in our culture, yet are not the way of Jesus. Sins like materialism, bragging, watching dirty TV, gossip, or cussing. These are called conscious sins because even when we know they are contrary to Jesus' heart, we still choose to do them. The problem at this layer in our formation is an aspect of our will that is yet to be surrendered to Jesus. Over time, the Spirit gently convicts us of these sins and calls us to leave them behind. Then we face our unconscious sins. These are sins of omission, not commission. Meaning things we don't do rather than things we do. We don't call our friends when they are suffering, we don't speak up when we need to, we ignore the poor. Or they are sins of motivation, where we do the right thing, serve the poor, speak up for truth, practice the spiritual disciplines, but for the wrong reasons. Or it's dysfunctional relational patterns. How people emotionally experience us, as defensive, or moody, or negative, or judgmental, or overtly talkative. In layer three, we pass a kind of invisible line in our soul from the conscious to the unconscious, into what the psychologist Carl Jung called the shadow. Our shadow is murky and unclear and it's much harder to distinguish between vice and virtue. As our shadow is exposed by suffering, by our most intimate relationships and by prayer, it can feel humbling, humiliating even. But it's a key step in the process of healing. But we're still not at rock bottom. The final layer is our attachments. Or in more Christian language, our idols. Dr. Mulholland called them our trust structures. Father Thomas Keating called them our emotional programs for happiness. They are the things we believe we need to be happy and at peace. They usually aren't bad things at all. They are good things that we want in a bad way, just meaning we need them to be okay. Things like our health, or our marriage, or children, or job, or career. It's hard to believe, but all these good things, which are gifts from God, can become the source not of happiness, but of unhappiness. The problem is not the gifts themselves, it's our attachment to the gifts. As the Indian Jesuit Anthony DeMello put it, if you look carefully, you will see that there is one thing that causes unhappiness. The name of that thing is attachment. What is an attachment? An emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy. And it's in this last layer of sin that we are most in bondage and most in need of the salvation of Jesus. And it's here that Jesus' teachings are at their most radical. The great paradox of Jesus' message is, as long as you need your life to go a certain way to be happy and at peace, you will never be happy and at peace. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order, went as far as to define sin as unwillingness to trust that what God wants for me is only my deepest happiness. But to believe that, God must become our deepest happiness. It's in this stage in our formation where we begin to see all the areas in our heart where we do not look to our creator for our well-being, but to created things. All sin and all idolatry, at its root, is our soul's search for happiness and love, but by looking to the creation rather than to the creator. Which is why the end goal of spiritual formation is detachment from the things of this world and attachment to God. So, four levels. Let's take the sin of anger as a case study. The gross layer of sin would be murder, or violence, or domestic abuse, or road rage. The conscious layer would be things like name calling, yelling at our spouse, mouthing profanities. The unconscious layer would be coming to a place in our formation where we would never hit someone or even yell at them. Yet we're still passive aggressive, or we give people the cold shoulder, or we still feel the lace of contempt in our heart. And the final layer, our attachments, would be, say, for example, when my teenage son does poorly in school. And I mature to a place that I don't snap at him or shame him, but inside, I'm angry, or stressed out, because I emotionally need him to do well in school to live up to my plans for his life. I need this to be happy. I'm yet to be completely happy in God. As you can see, the spiritual journey traverses the ground from the worst kind of outward behavior to the most intimate, internal feelings of the heart. Where are you in your spiritual journey of healing? Jesus is the doctor of the soul, and his desire is to heal you, free you, and save you at every level of your being.
[14:25]This was possibly one of the most tender of all the sessions. We want to give you a few minutes right now, right where you are, to plot yourself in the continuum. So please open your guide to session six, where you'll find a page for short reflection. Take a few minutes in the quiet. We ask you not to talk, but to journal through the following reflection questions. The first, what do you honestly believe about how God sees you and your sin? Don't journal the right answers, but what you actually think and feel. Second, what came up for you as we talked about sin? For example, a sin you were convicted of, a habitual sin you struggled to break free from, a wound from your past, fear of confession and vulnerability. Third, is there anyone you need to forgive or ask for forgiveness from, including God?
[21:11]Fourth, in light of this teaching, what steps may God be inviting you to take towards healing?
[21:37]Confession, I feel like it's a life theme for me. It is, it's how I found Jesus. I had heard about him all my life, and I was 17, and I was sitting in front of the crosses at a camp. And for the first time I saw my own sin, and it changed my life. It wrecked me. I fell in love with Jesus, in love with him, and I just never fell out of love with him. I just love him, and it was because of seeing my own sin. I think I'd heard the truth of Jesus, but it wasn't until I saw my own sin and said it out loud that night when I was 17 that I, I came to an understanding saving faith. And so that's how my relationship with him began. And I just, I, I saw constantly a need for it in my own life. And I still do all the time. And I also have this desire to see people know God. And I spend a lot of my time helping people know God. That's what I do. And I've realized that people can know a lot about God and never feel close to him. And that makes me sad and that makes me think why, what, what are they missing? What's the missing thing? And, and I've seen over and over again that as people confess sin, all of a sudden they have this, this desire, just like I did at 17, to just come back to God. They want God again because they see their own need for him. It's not some ethereal religion that people should believe, it's all of a sudden, I need Jesus. I need his forgiveness. I was recently about to speak to a bunch of leaders and I remember um beforehand wanting to tell them about what I was reading and I'd been reading about the Lewis revivals. The island of Lewis had these revivals that ended up saving tens of thousands of people. They, they came to Jesus because of this little island and what happened on this little island. And of course I'm so curious, right? Because I want people to know God. How did that spread? How do all these people want God? And it started with these two little women that were, were blind and they began to pray together. And I'm getting up to speak to these leaders and they're global leaders. They represent hundreds of thousands of people that they lead and, and I'm a little intimidated because even in that room, I mean, I'm getting older but this still was a room of older leaders. And, and as I'm about to get up and I'm going to share with them about this revival, we're going to pray together for a revival. The Lord was like, Jenny, you need to confess sin first to them. This began with confession in Lewis. And you need to confess sin and you need to, you need to get up there and say it. And I'm just shaking because I'm already nervous. And I get up and I, I start with, um, the worst speaking event I ever did. And I was halfway through it and I just knew God wasn't in it, and I knew it was falling flat. And I left and went home, and the next morning I, I sincerely said, Lord, I want to know. And the next morning I woke up at 5:00 a.m. and I knew it was me. And it was unconfessed sin. It was unconfessed sin that I had that I knowingly sinned. Right? I mean, it wasn't a huge, massive sin, but I knew it was a sin and I did it on the day I got up and preached the word of God and asked them to confess their sin. And I shared that in front of 200 leaders. Crying and shaking just like I am now. And the spirit of God fell. And I wish it wasn't this way. I wish he had a better way where we look better. But he moves because of confession. He loves it. He loves it. Because I wasn't being impressive and I'm not now, I'm realizing.
[26:10]But, but it isn't about us looking good. I don't think confession can be confession without a little bit of humiliation. I just think it goes with the territory. And it's us saying I'll share the deepest, darkest sin, whether it's in thought or deed, I will share it because I want God more. And I'll risk it because I want God more. And I'll do whatever I have to do to be rightly related to God.
[28:49]For those of you reading the Practicing the Way book alongside this course, this week we are in the final section. The practice we are inviting you into this week is confession. When we feel guilt and shame because of something we've done or not done, confession is likely the last thing we feel like doing. But the path to being free from shame involves being open and transparent with someone we trust. In James 5:16, we read, confess your sins to one another and pray for each other that you may be healed. When we name our sin or shame or secret with a trusted person, we can experience healing. I meet weekly over Zoom with a trusted friend and we mutually confess our temptations, struggles, and sins, and then pray for each other. This may sound heavy, but in practice, it feels truly uplifting. I first began to see the value of confession years ago. I had done something to violate my code and conscience. A lot of people would say, it was no big deal. But I knew I had violated an important value and it sinned. And I was feeling guilt and shame. Not long after this, I confessed what I had done to a close friend and mentor. He was disappointed, but he also expressed his love for me, and I felt his deep care. After confessing and being received with love, I felt an enormous burden lifting from my shoulders. When we are able to confess something to someone we trust, whether it's a friend, pastor, spiritual director, or counselor, and they don't judge us, but reflect God's grace to us and say, I'm not going anywhere, or welcome to being human, or God has forgiven you, we experience healing and freedom. Another person can make the presence and forgiveness of Christ real to us. Our practice for this coming week is confession. This practice is difficult but powerful. To begin, identify someone you trust and ask them if they would be willing to listen to you as you practice confession. Make a plan to connect somewhere private where you feel at peace. Tell this trusted person what is on your heart. Name your sin. As you begin, you don't need to share every secret of your life. Perhaps begin with just one. And as you build trust with the person over time, you can become more transparent and vulnerable in your confession. Finally, invite them to respond and ask them to pray over you. Receive their love for you and fully accept the truth they speak and pray over you.
[31:51]Jesus, the doctor of the soul will bring healing to you as you open new layers of your life to him. God bless and keep you as you practice confession this week.
