12/22/2019
God Never Condemned Us: Two Readings and a Sermon
Reading: "Gabriella's Song" from the movie, "As It Is in Heaven," lyrics by Py Bäckman
It is now that my life is mine.
I’ve got this short time on earth
and my longing has brought me here
all I lacked and all I gained
And yet it’s the way that I chose
my trust was far beyond words
that has shown me a little bit
of the heaven I’ve never found
I want to feel I’m alive
all my living days
I will live as I desire
I want to feel I’m alive
knowing I was good enough.
I have never lost who I was
I have only felt it sleeping
maybe I never had a choice
just the will to stay alive
All I want is to be happy
being who I am
to be strong and to be free
to see day arise from night
I am here
and my life is only mine
and the heaven I thought was there
I’ll discover it there somewhere
I want to feel
that I’ve lived my life.
Reading: Inger’s Declaration, from the Swedish movie, “As It Is in Heaven,” written by Kay Pollak, Anders Nyberg, Ola Olsson, Carin Pollak, Margaretha Pollak
Stig: I know it all!
Inger: - You know it all?
- Yes!
- Nothing’s happened.
You expose your breasts in the congregation hall and this is nothing?
I was a bit tipsy, dancing…
- Sin has descended.
- Stop it!
Inger, you have sinned!
On church premises!
Now I’m going to say something I’ve wanted to say for a long time.
Something that’s plagued me for 20 years. There is no sin.
All this damn talk about sin!
It only exists in your head!
-What?
- There is no sin!
- “There is no sin?” - Think of what you’re saying.
I have thought. The church invented sin.
Handing out guilt with one hand then offering redemption with the other.
It’s all a lie, hot air, to suppress people, to gain power.
Silence! Ask for God’s forgiveness!
God doesn’t forgive, don’t you get that! Because he’s never condemned.
- Silence!
- Try to be humble, Stig.
I am humble!
You think I don’t know about it?
For years I’ve known you’ve had your pictures here.
You’ve come out here before we’ve made love…
To have a look…
Black stockings, high boots, bottoms…
To get stimulated. It’s all right, Stig.
But don’t condemn others.
Inger, God hears you.
He hears and he smiles, you can bet on it.
The church has made a sin of sexuality. God hasn’t.
You’ve had a need, you haven’t hurt anybody by it.
There have been a few times in bed we’ve enjoyed…
Even if we’ve never reached Heaven together, not yet.
Stop it…
Stig, I love you.
I always have. I’ve kept everything inside.
But not anymore.
I’ve kept my mouth shut, repressed everything I’ve felt…
…and seen, and heard and thought.
God Never Condemned Us
Sermon by Rev. Brian P. Clougherty, 15 December 2019
The title comes from a line in a Swedish movie, “As It Is in Heaven,” released in 2004. The wife of an uptight, stern minister tells him, “There is no sin!… I have thought. The church invented sin. Handing out guilt with one hand then offering redemption with the other. It’s all a lie, hot air, to suppress people, to gain power…. God doesn’t forgive, don’t you get that! Because he’s never condemned.” Let’s look at this startling claim in light of the Universalist belief that there is no eternal Hell since God is Love, and, as I believe, Love wins in the end.
I thought of calling this talk, “There Is No Sin!” which is the startling statement of Inger in the movie. That would be a provocative title. Maybe too provocative. It certainly was provocative to Stig, the minister in the movie. What makes the title so provocative is that word, “sin.” For some it conjures some ominous, evil influence lurking in the dark corners of life – or in dark corners of the mind. For some others, like Inger in the movie, it symbolizes the cruel manipulation of the believers with ominous threats of eternal condemnation and everlasting torture, which folks claim is ecclesiastical or religious bullying. I agree, it is.
All this intensity about the word, “sin,” comes from a wrong understanding of sin. I am saying that the traditional understanding of “sin” is wrong. Sin is not some rebellion against God which merits eternal torture. Sin is poor judgment. Sin is making a mistake. If I’m wrong and God condemns sin as rebellion and punishes it with eternal torture unless the sinner “repents” and bows to God as all-powerful, then I’ll stand with the condemned. I don’t want to be in a heaven with such a cruel and insecure God. Like Jesus did, at least as it says in the Apostles’ Creed, I’ll stand with the condemned. According to the Apostles’ Creed, Jesus descended into Hell. I’ll go where Jesus went. Whether or not Jesus will rescue me, I’ll leave that up to those who claim to know the mind of Jesus. The God I see Jesus following would not punish weak human nature forever.
The problem with “sin” is it is used to inflict shame, and shame is dangerously harmful to people, to relationships. Some may argue that sin it self inflicts the shame, but that is not so. Condemning people for being human, for making mistakes, condemning people causes shame. Shame destroys people’s capacity to do better. Shame says you are fundamentally flawed, no good. It gives no message that you can do better next time. It gives no encouragement. It just condemns and damns us.
Sin supposedly began with Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden, with something called the “Original Sin.” There is no original sin. Eve and Adam made a decision in the garden, about eating a fruit Adam was told not to eat. Some say it was inevitable. Some say the Garden of Eden story is a description of the loss of innocence we all pass through as we become adults. That is a valid view. There are many ways to view that story. I’ll address that in my next sermon, “There Is No Original Sin.” This topic of sin is big enough for two sermons, to be sure. Even three, because I have a presentation focusing on how damaging shame really is and what to do about it.
If sin didn’t begin in the Garden of Eden, then advocates for the certainty of sin will say it certainly showed up in the next chapter, when Cain kills his brother, Abel. As sins go, murder belongs at the top of the list, to be sure. It’s the worst because it is permanent. It cannot be repaired or made right. It most violates the precious connections, the relationships in our lives. It is the worst because it destroys so many relationships, all the murdered person had with those they loved and cared about.
Yet I dare to call murder a mistake rather than a sin deserving of condemnation to Hell. I do not mean to minimize murder. It’s horrible because it’s permanent. It’s horrible because it tears up so many more lives than just one. Yet I still call it a mistake. Why? Because if the murderer knew, really understood, actually could feel the damage they would cause, they would not murder. If a crime of passion or rage, if they felt the pain they would cause it would be greater than the pain driving their passion or rage, and shut them down. If the murder is a crime of opportunity or to gain advantage, the murderer has already murdered their own precious capacity to connect to the true beauty within others. Or someone murdered it within them, through abuse, assault, persistent shame or brain damage.
I understand that some people are born or grow without the ability to understand the effect of their behaviors on others, a congenital or fetal brain damage of some kind. Fetal alcohol syndrome can cause a child to seem to have no conscience, no awareness of their effect on others and possibly no capacity to become aware. Usually, if we have a healthy, supportive community, we can train most children to learn to respect and value life. Usually, if we have a healthy, supportive community, we can train the others to respect the consequences of violating laws. But, unfortunately, not all children are raised in healthy homes and not all communities are healthy and supportive of kindly nurturing children. The hard truth is that there ARE people who treat life as trivial. We use laws and consequences to try to deter such people. Some people have no respect for life and also contempt for the law and consequences. Society must work even harder to contain these people.
Sometimes society fails on these fronts. Society failed the murderer of my brother, my brother who died when he was 23 years old. That murderer seemed to hold no regard for human life, molesting and killing several men in several states until he was caught and imprisoned for life. You can call such a person evil. I understand that. I do not call him evil. He did evil, but I call him broken. I think of him as no more evil than a wild animal that kills. He made decisions. He liked being like wild instead of human. He earned his consequences. Still, I argue, he could not understand the effect of his action. But maybe I am wrong and he did understand the effect he would have on so many lives. Then, I argue, someone taught him that is what life is about – hurting others. Some one taught him that hurting is better than caring. Shame can do that, teach someone that hurting others is all your are good at. One can only learn this by being abused, violated, abusively shamed, or brain damaged.
The decision that mattered in the death of my brother happened a lot earlier, in the murderer’s childhood. And that decision was a mistake, an eventually murderous mistake. They did not understand how they were damaging that child. Someone or something, perhaps drugs, perhaps alcohol, perhaps heaps of shame in their own life taught them not to notice how they were damaging that child.
I work with children, in their homes, trying to heal psychological wounds so they can feel valued. I work to help them understand that everyone, just as their own self, deserves to be valued. I see how our society fails to provide safe, nurturing homes and communities for these children. Some of this is due to structural racism. Our society values less the black lives and the brown lives and the “different” lives in the impoverished homes where I work. I see it daily. Some of this wounding is due to addiction eroding parental judgment. Some is due to our culture of acquisition, with its foundational culture of scarcity. Our culture judges and punishes the poor as bad. All this is more mistaken thinking. Is it sin? Our culture of acquisition and scarcity demonstrates a lack of understanding and awareness of the effects of what we say and do. Is it sin? In church language, it qualifies as sin. But I say let’s stop condemning each other with this sin-word and help each other heal from all these mistakes. Let’s build more understanding, more nurturing, and more compassion. Let’s stop beating each other up with the sin-word and all that shame.
In my work, I try to teach more understanding, nurturing and compassion. It’s tough work. It’s work I believe in. In my mind, I call it evangelism. The good news is this: we are all lovable, although we can deny it and try disprove it with bad behavior; but we are all born lovable. In our core, we are all lovable. This is the good news: Because we are lovable, we can love one another. That’s the good news: you are lovable, you are loved, you can love one another. That will heal. My evangelism is not in words, except here in sermons. My evangelism is in teaching families to show their children they love and care, to teach their children how to show they care.
Some parents think they need to raise mean children for a mean world. They think bullying their children will toughen them for a tough world. I don’t argue their view. I’m not raising their children and I probably would not survive in the mean world they have to face. Maybe I don’t know how to teach their children how to survive in the mean world where they live. Instead, I just give the family an option. I give the option of care and compassion within the family. I show how to do that and express it so they can know what it feels like. I stress that the family can be a safe place were people strengthen each other with love so they can face the world that wants to tear them down. I say, “Don’t tear each other down; that gives the world a head start. Lift each other up and the world can’t hook you as easily.”
The reason I say that “sin” just means “mistake” is this: We all make mistakes. Sometimes we make doozies. We can recover from mistakes. But sin? With all that judgment and condemnation? How do we recover from that? Confess to a priest? Confess to God? Confessing to God is identifying what we did wrong and making up our mind to do better, with God as a witness if you are a believer. Some churches involve a priest to add some accountability, or to add the guilt-to-forgiveness dynamic which Inger, in the movie, rejected as a manipulative power play.
Guilt is real. It’s a healthy sense that we have fallen short of our own values. It’s healthy as motivation to do better. If you try to pass out guilt, what people get is shame, which amounts to religious bullying. Guilt doesn’t work unless the person believes they did wrong, and in that case the guilt does not need to be passed out. Judgment and shaming do not help a person change.
Shame comes close to evil. Shame threatens human connection. Shame says you are not good enough. Shame says you are fundamentally flawed. It is so painful that it can destroy relationships. If shaming is persistent, it destroys hope and the person’s humanity. That’s as close to a soul as I can identify. Shame is what condemnation to Hell feels like. That’s why I advocate for sin to be understood as making a mistake. Mistakes don’t deserve condemnation to Hell. Mistakes deserve guidance, support, education, and compassion. Let’s build a world without shame and without the Hell it causes. Let’s build a world of understanding, nurture and compassion.
