I was surprised today to get a call from a friend. I picked up the phone to hear, "I found your blog. I figured out it was you..." Our friends had been looking for a new church and were considering Milestone and somehow stumbled upon this blog. As we talked and she (very compassionately) offered to come give me a hug and profusely apologized that our family went through such an ordeal, I began to think about the problem of sin and our human response to it.
Orthodoxy teaches us that sin is a sickness that Christ came to heal. We are instructed repeatedly to be angry at the devil but that people in the spiritual hospital don't need anger....they need mercy and compassion. The medicine most needed for sin from our fellow man isn't anger...it's prayer, understanding, long-suffering, humility, patience, love, grace, more prayer and much more prayer. It's begging the Lord to help our fallen brother, even when it is US he/she is hurting. We may be suffering right alongside our spouse because of their sin, but our calling is to lay down our lives for that person just as our Lord laid down His life for us.
I was also reflecting upon something a friend of mine said the other day, "God had to pour out His wrath on Jesus on the cross because of sin." I asked her what she felt the problem of sin was (Why is sin a problem for mankind?) and how she felt that God pouring out wrath on an innocent was helpful in curing the problem of sin. She was, of course, citing the penal substitutionary model of atonement which, to my limited understanding, is a Calvinist doctrine believed by a plethora of Christians today. I am no scholar but I did begin to connect some dots.
How do you see sin? Does it require punishment or healing? If we believe sin requires punishment, we will very likely fall into being the "punisher," forgetting that we have likely done the same thing, if to a different degree. If we believe that sin requires healing...we can prayerfully become a "nurse" to an ailing friend and even to ourselves via prayer. Similarly, how do we see God? Do we agree with Jonathan Edwards and his famous sermon, in which we are presented a wrathful God who needs to pour out his overflow of anger on somebody? Or do we see Him as a merciful healer who laid down his life to keep his Image from disappearing from the human race altogether? (I recommend reading Saint Athanasius's On the Incarnation with a forward by C.S. Lewis for more on this imagery.)
What my family experienced at Milestone was a paradigm in which a perceived sin deserves grace "to a point" but then (mainly when I have lost my patience), needs to be punished and I just happen to be available to meet out the just desserts. Moreover, rather than seeing my lack of patience or grace or prayer or understanding as the problem, I get to see them as a helpful and loving "correction" for the sin I perceive in those around me. Did I live my life like this? You bet I did! I still struggle against this tendency daily.
The ethos or aura or aroma of deeply understanding that sin needs healing and that anger at people doesn't effect any healing was missing at Milestone. When we are angry or raging at someone, our anger is as sign that we are offended or wounded or embarrassed. It is a sign that we do not yet understand our purpose and our role in the kingdom. We aren't here for our comfort. We aren't here to look good. We aren't here to have an easy life. We are here to help one another through the sickness of our sin, and that entails suffering. When one among us is ill, we don't cast him/her out after an angry tirade. We don't manipulate or cajole, connive and scheme to "spin a narrative" so that we come out looking better. We take a deep breath and pray before we speak. We think first of how to help our brother heal (knowing we will suffer right along with him)...not of how to get rid of him so that he doesn't cause more problems for us. That's our calling.
