Only Human

"There is none righteous, no, not one."—Romans 3:10

"For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God."—Romans 3:23

One thing I find interesting about how people view religion and faith is how the same thing can lead to such wildly different conclusions. For instance, one or both of those quotes above, or the summary of them, is frequently cited by people as a reason they have issues with Christianity. Yet, for me, they're one of the things that form the bedrock of my belief.

Leaving aside the latter half of the second quote, which obviously if one does not believe in God one cannot possibly agree with, the essence is this: all humans are imperfect. But something about the way they read makes people see them as accusation, rather than acknowledgement.

I understand this to some extent. There certainly are a number of Christians who do their best to make you feel like nothing you do on your own as a human being is even remotely good—that without God you can't do good. That there's no reason to be good unless you follow (their interpretation) of God. And obviously, that's not a message likely to make anyone particularly attracted to one's philosophy and beliefs.

But even absent that sort of strident preaching, there still seem to be people who react badly to the message. After giving it a lot of thought, I think I know at least one of the reasons why.

It's those two words: "righteous" and "sin".

Because these words are generally only used in a religious context, even though there are non-religious parallels, some people simply don't think the words could apply to them. And that's understandable. But with "righteous", I see another objection fairly frequently, one something along these lines: "None righteous? I hardly think I'm on the same level as a child abuser or a puppy kicker or a mother raper or a father raper. Compared to them I'm practically a saint."

The thing is, that really misses the point. The point is: you have almost certainly done bad things in your life. You may be able to point to someone else and say "Look, they're so much worse than me!", but that doesn't change your own behavior. You're human. You've probably lied to a boss or a parent, or said something harsh to someone meaning to hurt, or cheated on a test, or shoplifted a few times as a kid, or deliberately picked a fight, or failed to help someone you could've helped for no reason other than you didn't feel like it at the time... or any number of other venial acts that you probably would rather not remember.

The fact that you generally rise above that desire, or rarely do anything seriously harmful, doesn't change that. We make mistakes in judgement. We get angry and lash out. We get sad and stop caring for a while. We get selfish. We have a bad day and get the urge to spread the misery. It's human.

But what about that other word? "Sin." Sin is that thing that preachers talk about. Sin is some mystical offense against God. Right?

Except that an awful lot of offenses "against God" are actually offenses against your fellow human beings.

Look at the ten commandments. The first few are about God, sure, but most of them are about what people do to other people: don't dishonor your parents. Don't wrongly take a life. Don't lie about what someone else did. Don't take it on yourself to violate someone else's marriage vows.

All of those are sins for Christians, but I think most people would agree they're generally just Wrong Things.

Sin may mean "offense against God" to you, but I tend to read it as "harm against others" (although in my eyes, that's also an offense against God). And, again, we all do it sometimes, even if only in small ways, and even if we regret it soon afterwards.

Even absent the context of Christianity or religion in general, I think those verses have meaning. "We're all prone to doing harm. We all screw up sometimes. It's part of being human. No amount of finger-pointing at other people is going to change that." If you're trying to be a better person (and I think most people would like to be), it's important to remember that. To focus on yourself. To keep an eye out for that behavior. To try to minimize it.

So why does it figure into my belief, then? Why not just strive to be a good person without worrying about what some big invisible dude in the sky thinks?

It's a reasonable question. It's hard to explain the answer, but the whole reason I'm writing these things is to try to do that.

It's a lot of things for me.

It's the idea that, no matter how badly I screw up, there's someone who will love me unconditionally. I'm not saying I don't have love in this world, that I don't have friends that love me despite my flaws, that that isn't important to me. But it's comforting to think that there's a God that so full of love that it never, ever matters to Him how badly I screw up.

It's the idea that, when I'm done with this world, there's another one where, I think, humans will be past that. That someday I'll be in a place where it just isn't possible to casually hurt another person. That at some point, having striven to work past it... I will. Because that's part of what Heaven is to me. It's the place without pain. It's the place where I cannot cause it. Where love for everyone, myself included, is simply part of existence.

It's the belief that there's that better world that someday I hope to see... and hope to see everyone else in, as well.

If that's not a thought that's comforting to you... then it isn't, and I can't change that, though the idea makes me a little sad. But it's a thought that's very comforting to me.