When It's Nobodies and Everybody's Fault

Sin can be very beguiling. It tempts and taunts and entices. It lies and corrupts and forces us to turn our hearts over to self-justification. It lies within us in ways we don't always see and can't always explain. It shows up in many ways.

We tell ourselves that the little white lie told to protect someone isn’t that bad. Or we decide the extra percentage given towards retirement on earth and not treasures in heaven is wise investment. The cold shoulder and long standing family feud started for reasons no longer remembered. These behaviors and sins settle in to our hearts in often inconspicuous ways.

Not so big in the beginning. Perhaps not even sinful. But over time sin does what it does and these things can consume us. Its no longer the white lies but the secondary ones told to cover the first. The “glory” of a retirement you’ve “earned” becomes a driving force behind stingy and calculated “generosity”. The family feud becomes a prideful grudge match with each party waiting for the other to apologize first.

Sin certainly can entangle itself with our hearts and minds in innumerable ways.

But sometimes in this fallen world sin isn’t just working from within your heart to steal, corrupt, and destroy. Sometimes sin works outside of us in this world to crush and mangle and tear apart our hearts and to rob us of joy or love or hope or faith.

Many times we fail to call some of these realities for what they are: sin.

Cancer is sin

Miscarriage is sin

Anxiety and depression are sin

Failed crops are sin

Corrupt systems and processes are sin

Each is a product of a sinful and broken world with no clear or single “culprit”. It is sin that just is because of original sin and the curse put on humanity and the world. It is why all creation groans in longful expectation of redemption.

But we don’t often call these kinds of things sin. We call them unfortunate. Tragic. Natural disasters. “The way things go.”

The problem lies in how we view sin. We tend to only ever view it as personal and consequential and in being in need of a person at fault.

Except sin isn’t just that. Who is at fault for someone’s cancer? Or depression? Or a lost child?

There are some that will press in on the “this is your fault in some way” mode of thinking. We do it to ourselves, examining motives and actions or long ago patterns of life and then imagining some way in which God might be judging us for some misdeed. We wonder what hidden or un-confessed sins a lie behind a persons suffering. We are as likely to play the role of Job's friends as we are to play Job. What tragic, self-inflicted soul-wounds  we give ourselves when we think in this way.

Sin is. While the Lord tarries and we await his return sin plainly and simply is at work in myriad ways to steal, kill, and destroy. While sin is human it isn’t always the sin of a specific human that is to be blamed when we see sorrows and tragedies.

A particular problem of our current age is that we like to see heads roll. We want someone to blame, often in the process excusing or justifying ourselves. It makes such a neat and tidy solution to blame an individual or group. That sense of justice often fails because it is vindictive and short term in its view or sin.

Scripture tells us that all of creation is groaning under the weight of sin. Not just human souls. Not just human systems or governments. ALL of creation. Which means that in many cases sin just is. It is at work outside of any particular action or motive or malfeasance that humans can contrive of.

And so we have cancer. And children lost too young. And anxiety and depression. And so many other things. It is everyone’s fault and no ones fault. Sin has a life and trajectory and uses beyond those which we put it too.

In His Word, God gives us a corrective to our “this is your fault” kind of thinking about sin. John 9 gives us a story that reveals greater purposes that make our simplistic, fault-finding thinking about sin quite difficult to hold on to:

“As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’”

Jesus doesn’t give blame in this situation. He also doesn’t say there isn’t sin. Rather, he points towards the reality that there is work to be done in bringing about life and light and righteousness in a sinful world. There is a need for a Redeemer and Savior.

To spend all our time looking for someone or something to blame can distract us from the far more positive call on our lives to work for good, for healing, and for flourishing. The work of uncovering unrighteousness is one aspect of Christian living. Currently it is a popular one that mirrors our broader culture’s divisive atmosphere. However, as Christians we see just as many admonitions (maybe more, I didn’t count) for us to pursue righteousness, to seek the things of God, and to live lives as God’s holy ones. Simplistic categories of oppressed and oppressor are far to stunted and faulty in their views of the complexity of sin in us and the world.

We ought not simply take an adversarial stance towards the world, even with all its horrible realities. Sin really is everywhere but protest only gets us part way to moving towards righteousness. We ought to zealously and persistently work together as the people of God to build and create and enjoy lives and families and cultures of righteousness reflective of the God we serve. The call of God for Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and to have dominion and to bring order and to live in submission still stand. We are not just holding out for a better day or a change in culture or for heaven. We are striving to build outposts of righteousness in our hearts and lives, families, and anywhere else we have influence.

We should be thinking far more on what righteousness and light and life we might bring to the sinful world around us. Sin is real and it is everywhere but we are ambassadors of one who has overcome death and sin and we ought to busy ourselves the work of helping others in the same way as God calls and equips each one of us. We are to be holy as He is holy. 

So when cancer strikes, when injustice appears, when disaster and tragedy spring up around you, lament and grieve the sin in each. And then, bit by bit, start the hard road of obedience to bring righteousness, and grace and mercy to the situation.