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?