Sin As A Threefold Alienation
I. The Threefold Alienation of Sin
1. Alienation From Self:
(A) estrangement of sinful will from will to
do what is right
(B) setting up oneself as an idol
2. Alienation From Others:
(A) If I am the "Absolute," the highest and
only true value, then I cannot accept my neighbors as equals: Others become
threats to my power or "things" to be manipulated.
(B) Threat to the environment
3. Alienation From God:
(A) If I am the "Absolute," the highest and
only true value, then I cannot accept God as an authority over me: "God"
is seen as an arbitrary and tyrannic power from which man must be set free.
(B) Inability to view "God" as "Father"
II. The Contaminating Influence of Sin
1. Effects in the Person:
(A) In the body and the passions
(B) Created goods become one's end, not spiritual
goods – one loses sight of higher goods; captivated by goods of this world
(cf. Thomas Merton on "the web of illusion")
(C) In other words, slavery to the goods of
this world, slavery to sin, disintegration of the person as a free agent,
emotional and physical pain, feeling of not really being alive, not really
being "who" one is meant to be (no pride, no selfhood; semi-conscious; not
living one's own life)
2. Effects with regard to Others:
(A) violence begets counter-violence
(B) arrogance begets hatred and jealousy
(C) promiscuity or infidelity promotes more
of the same
(D) extended and reinforced through the structures
of society: curtails the range of action and makes some semi-conscious
or unconscious appropriation and imitation of the sins of others almost inevitable
i) effects
of sinful parents, neighborhood or society on you as you develop
ii) developing a persona
or mask, which covers up our true selves
iii) institutionalized economic
exploitation and political oppression create a climate in which individuals
become unconscious (unknowing) or half-conscious instruments of injustice
(e.g., the ramifications of impersonal trading on the stock market and through
mutual funds: moral decisions are made in your name and for your benefit
from which you are effectively shielded and about which you know little or
nothing)
III. The Punishment of Sin
General Point: The punishment man receives for his sin is
not something extrinsic to sin itself.
(A) Not like the application of a penal code
extrinsic to the act
(B) By sinning, man distorts his own reality
and thereby his relationship to his neighbor and to God: God allows this
freely chosen distortion to take effect
(C) The punishment of sin, then, is its necessary,
"natural" consequence
(D) And yet, the suffering that comes from
this estrangement (from self and others) can also be a gift: it gives man
a powerful incentive to change his ways and seek the reversal of his state
1. Punishment with respect to God:
(A) In refusing to accept himself as a gift
from God, the sinner is trying to be independent from God, and attempting
to become what he is not – an absolute in and of himself.
(B) By cutting himself off from Being Itself
– from the Source of all that is Good – he necessarily experiences the fragility
of his own being, which borders on nothingness and is threatened by nothingness.
(C) The result: a heightened sense of anxiety
and dread (even if masked by other "diversions" in the "web of illusion"),
which may finally result in a sense of meaninglessness, purposelessness and
sense of futility and lack of fulfillment
2. Punishment with respect to others:
(A) In refusing to accept his neighbor as a
person with a dignity on par with his own, and by refusing to enter into
relationships of shared dignity and worth, the sinner isolates himself from
everyone.
(B) He ends up with nothing but alliances and
enmities based on self-interest.
(C) Never experiences the "rest," the "truth,"
and the enrichment of an authentic, selfless and loving friendship
3. Punishment of the Self:
(A) In refusing to obey his conscience, the
sinner negates his own true being and lives in a state of falsehood and self-deception.
Hence the experience of self-alienation.
(B) Diminished self-worth and diminution of
one's own sense of identity: nagging suspicion of worthlessness; that one
is "nobody" or at least nobody important or worthwhile
(C) Attempts to compensate for this by inflating
one's ego or by exaggerating one's self-importance or buying a persona or
losing one's identity by agglomerating with a group
(D) Slavery to the passions and to the goods
of this world: one is no longer free, because he is no longer a "self" that
determines himself. One or several of the internal/external forces
that operate on him, of which each and all are less than the person himself,
pressure his decisions and actions.
4. Death as the Final Punishment:
(A) Just as sin expresses itself and acquires
power and influence through the body, so does the punishment for sin: the
suffering, which results from man's threefold alienation and from his conflict
with the material universe, affects him through his body. Indeed, it
is in the death of the human body that the process of alienation and the
suffering caused by alienation comes to a climax.
(B) The human soul and human body constitute
one being, one person. Thus, when man dies, directly only his body
dies, but since man is his body, the dying person experience the disintegration
of his body as something not external to himself; rather he experiences himself
dying (even though the very "core" of the person will survive). Thus
death may well be experienced as the disintegration and annihilation into
nothingness of the person who had originally been created for eternal life.
(C) Dying is experienced as separation – from:
i. From the body: the body
fails you and breaks down; the material universe too becomes alien and no
longer gives much joy
ii. From others: they are
finally slipping out of your control; they cannot experience this for you;
your status is of no use or value; the material goods fail to satisfy
iii.
From God: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" –
Has He?
IV. But What If We Had Not So Alienated Ourselves?: The Possibility
of Understanding Even Death as a Gift. (What if death helps us by motivating
us to overcome the alienation?)
What if we had viewed our lives and our relationships differently?
1. A different relationship with our body:
(A) What if our body had been a servant, not
the master? What if we had seen it as an instrument of love?
Not as a symbol of strength or status or vanity?
(B) What if we had faith in the bodily resurrection
as something that would come, but only by moving past the limits of our earthly
bodies.
2. A different relationship with others:
What if, instead of manipulating or diminishing
others, we had searched for true companionship and closeness? What
if we had searched for a further union, a deeper communion of equals?
3. A different relationship with God:
What if I had not sought to be my own god?
What if I could truly say, having gone through the experience of "My God,
my God, why have you forsaken me?" – what if could then say: "Into your hands,
O Lord, I commend my spirit"? What if union with God (and with others
and with my true self) had always been my goal?
How then would I experience death?
If we did not experience death, we might suffer from the threefold
alienation for eternity? Indeed, that is always a possibility.
But doesn't the experience of death help us as much as anything in this life
to wean us away from our foolish attachment to things that will not last
and cannot satisfy our deepest longings for wholeness, happiness, and satisfaction?