What's Really Wrong With All of Us? 

Is it possible to recover from, say, sin? And besides, what does that mean in today's world?

To say with St. Paul, that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God..." (Romans 3:23) is to admit that all people have a problem.  What is it?

Many of those whose emotional or psychological problems come to the attention of a therapist are people who believe all their problems are external.They believe they have been hurt or wounded or damaged or taken advantage of, bilked or cheated, unfairly hated or rejected by others. Their M.O., their personality disorder is typically to blame others for their own failures.

Gay and lesbian people can fall into this trap. In many cases, we really have been hurt by others who were homophobic, and therefore rejective, angry and even violent toward us. But we’ve been around long enough to know that internalized homophobia is a major problem. We have accepted, "bought into" the rejection and hatred of others and made it our own. We have become our own worst enemy by internalizing the fear, contempt and rejection of others until they became our fear, our self-contempt, our interior rejection. As we recover from the damage that we’ve allowed or accepted, we must first begin with the wounds which are most internal — even before we attempt to fend off the blows and assaults of others.

No one can do this inner work for us – simply fix what’s wrong with us from a lifetime of wounds and assaults, and then hand us back to ourselves all healed! We must do our own homework, make our own bandages, bind our own wounds, and chart our own path of recovery. People can help one another in this work, but it cannot be "outsourced"!

So, rather than reject the word of St. Paul above, we recognize in his voice another wounded individual who spoke out of his own deep interior experience.  If we were to paraphrase this famous saying, it would be, "I have sinned, and I fall short of God’s glory."

Now, that’s somewhat better, but it may still be a bitter pill to swallow. Probably, the sticking point in our souls is that word "sin." I’ve recently begun to wonder what Christians would say if we did not have the word "sin" to describe that stuff that burdens us, hurts others, and holds everyone back from our full human/godly potential.  What other words could we use to talk about the same reality, if we can’t use the "s" word?

In the biblical passage here, Paul provides the very paraphrase that might answer that. He does not speak of evil intent, iniquities, transgressions or debts. He does not warn, like Fred Phelps, of dire consequences. But he says it is "falling short" of God’s glory.

Well, of course, I try to argue back.   I am finite. God is infinite.  I am "only human," but God is God.  How could I not fall short of God’s glory?

Let’s not split hairs. Paul is speaking out of his own spiritual turmoil and experience as someone who literally abandoned the religious faith of his young adulthood, and accepted an entirely different point of view about God, about Jesus of Nazareth, about himself and about all other human beings.  Now he had to make room in his thinking for pagans, Gentiles, those "outside the law."  (I’m not using the "s" word.) Paul went through a huge "paradigm shift," and as he wrestled with its implications, he put himself on the same plane as all the "outsiders" – Gentiles – to say that "all   . . . fall short."

So, we "fall short" of God’s glory. Could that mean we fall short of God’s expectations for us? Or that we fall short of our own potential to participate in, and be a part of, God’s glory?

Good questions but, hey, who cares?  A lot of Christians don’t ever ask such lofty and theoretical questions. Instead, they fall into the trap of criticizing one another, of pointing the finger at other people whom they are sure are in bigger trouble than themselves. (This is one thing at which televangelists have come to excel!) It is as if, in self-righteousness, they say "Well, yes, all of us have fallen short, but I  have really only stepped off the curb, and quite unintentionally. YOU, on the other hand, HAVE FALLEN INTO HELL, andyou will NEVER be able to pull yourself out! Ha, ha, ha!"

If "all have fallen short"—however that is finally understood—in God’s eyes it doesn't matter to God what the distance is that each of us may have "fallen"—whether off a curb or off a cliff. And of course, to "fall" is only a metaphor.  It does not matter whether our wounds are self-inflicted, or were caused by the injury of others, by self-neglect, internalized self-contempt, or whether we accidentally or stupidly have wandered off the right path.

Remember the story in Luke 15 about "the lost sheep"? Jesus also tells the story there of the lost coin. The coin cannot be blamed for rolling under something or out of reach. The story is about the joy of finding what was lost. So by implication we are to regard the story of the lost sheep, and even of the lost (prodigal) son with the same interpretive rule: It doesn’t matter whether the sheep inadvertently or willfully wandered off. It doesn’t help for the prodigal son to blame himself, and when he returns home, his well-rehearsed speech of contrition is almost ignored. And it doesn’t matter that the other brother is itching to blame him. What truly matters is that the lost coin, the lost sheep, the lost son are found!

So self-examination, contrition, sorrow for our fallen-ness and our failures, have some value, but not much, in God’s eyes. What is central is being found, coming home, recovering from those things which have wounded us or alienated us.  All have fallen.  All in some way have become lost.  All are welcome when we come home. All of us are in recovery.

The true and helpful spiritual path, then, is not one which prods us to feel shame for our situation or our lostness.  It is one that invites and beckons us to pick ourselves up out of the spiritual hole we’re in, or the spiritual curb we’ve stepped off of.  It invites us to simply come home, to awaken, to begin again (be born again).  It strengthens us to heal and grow and live again.

Recovery is the most powerful metaphor of our times.  It is well said that Alcoholics Anonymous (and the 12-Step programs which have grown from it) was the most important spiritual movement of the 20th Century.  The reason I find it an important metaphor is not only that the 12 Steps are a valuable spiritual tool for recovering from substance abuse or other addictions.  It is because they are a valuable spiritual tool for recovering from spiritual abuse or spiritual addictions— whether they were self-inflicted abuses or the result of wounds and attacks by others, the unfortunate result of circumstances, or from inadvertently wandering off the good path of life.  We all need to understand ourselves as falling short yet redeemed by God, as wanderers yet welcomed home, as full of internalized self-hatred, yet loved by God.

Perhaps you will find your self on this page. I will pray for you.

The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.  Thee have been adapted for many other recovery programs ! they're not just for alcohol.

I am very aware of the damage done to good people who have come under the heavy and controlling influence of religious cults.  For years I drove by a pretty brick church in Los Angeles on the way to my office at the University of Southern California, before I realized it was the church from which Jim Jones and his cult departed on their way to the mass suicide in the jungles of South America.