Not defined by sin
The story behind verse two in my Confession
I’m continuing my series on the story behind the lyrics in Confession, a song I’ve been writing. This is part three; you can find part one here and part two here. Also, grammatical disclaimer: there are going to be some errors. We’ve had almost 40 days of sickness amongst our four kids, and I’ve partially lost my mind.
Confession, verse 2
Our hands that sow
the fruit of pain,
and fail to offer peace.
Of bitter talk and pride,
and hurts that harvest grief.
Lord have mercy,
here in our strife,
renew our lives.
with full redemption.
A couple of years before I made a break from evangelical churches, I had a pastor who was fond of one of Tim Keller’s gospel summaries,
The gospel says you are simultaneously more sinful and flawed than you ever dared believe, yet more loved and accepted than you ever dared hope.
I remember the peaceful, faraway look he would get in his eyes (my pastor, not Tim Keller) when he reminded the congregation of this. Those words were good and precious to him. But they made me want to hang my head in defeat- if this is the best way to put the gospel, I have no hope of ever feeling that it is good. I kept this to myself until the period of deconstruction helped me discover different ways of defining sin and the gospel.
However, when I began to diverge from the view of personal sin being central to the gospel message, I committed some logical fallacies of my own. One of those was overcompensating: I was so averse to seeing myself and others through a sinful lens that I mostly dropped the word from my spiritual vocabulary. Unintentionally (or with the best of intentions?), I began undervaluing the weight of personal sin.
Since those initial years of deconstruction, I’ve worked backwards to a more balanced focus on sin. I no longer see my identity primarily as a sinner, nor do I see sin as the starting point for creation. But I’ve had to start letting sin back into my life. Not by having a sinful free-for-all, but by attitudes and actions like the following:
Regularly meditating on and lamenting the weight and importance of sin.
Helping my kids explicitly recognize their own sin, but keeping their sin separate from their personhood.
Not running away from that three-letter word, but finding different language and metaphors for thinking about it theologically. The First Nations Version of the New Testament has been a beautiful resource in this way.
Sin has worked back into my theology, and I’m better for it. Verse two of my song Confession seeks to encompass this reworking, but still keep it separate from identity. We commit sin, but we are not defined by it. We are creations and redemptions of the living God.
It also seeks to capture the aspect of relationship rupture. Our sins don’t just accumulate tallies in the “naughty” category or cast a shadow upon our individual holiness, they rupture our relationship with each other. Pastor Rich Villodas describes it this way in his book The Deeply Formed Life, “All sin is a failure to love.” Think about that for a second. It’s incredibly different than just thinking “I’ve messed up.” Personal cannot be separate from relational.
In writing verse two of Confession, it was so easy to fall into old, total-depravity metaphors. It’s hard to find language for the line between sinning-but-not-defined-by-sin, as figurative language lends itself to extremes. But the words below are my best shot at it. Again, you can go back to find parts one and two. My final post of the series will discuss verse three, and I’m really looking forward to it! The melody exists but is still forthcoming.
Our hands that sow
the fruit of pain,
and fail to offer peace,
Of bitter talk and pride
and hurts that harvest grief.
Lord have mercy,
here in our strife,
renew our lives.
with full redemption.