I crucified Jesus and I was glad I did it...and I also wept with the women as I watched him languish on the cross

Sin is nakedness.

Sin is knowing that our souls are not as they should be and therefore a rush to gorge them with anything that could possibly satisfy. But nothing can. For the only thing that can satisfy is our Father, as he created it to be.

Many think of sin as individual actions, moments in time where we do something ‘wrong’. But that is a human way of looking at sin. That is only to see the physical nakedness of ourselves. We are only able to see our physical nakedness because we are naked in our souls.

Sin is not so much an action as it is a state of being. We are Sin. We are so consumed by the torrents of Sin that we can no longer distinguish who we ever were apart from its poisonous grip. The physical manifestations are just the expected outcomes from a soul that does not understand why it feels so alone.  Is that not ruthless?

            And as Evil is the lack of Good, so Sin is the lack of God.

            Children with bulbous stomachs fade away with no one to remember them as their bodies literally eat their organs. And I watch them die. Young girls are being deceived with illusionary opportunities of work and are sold into slavery in order to satisfy sexual cravings of those who wish to feel the cold, orgasmic pleasure of subduing an inferior creature. I watch them be exploited…and I do nothing. I am so ashamed. For those starving children and dehumanized girls are my brothers and sisters and I am not protecting them. And those corrupt war lords who live in luxury and those individuals who buy these sex slaves are my brothers and sisters and I do not know what to do with them either.

The reality is that I whipped Jesus of Nazareth with incessant lashings. I split his flesh open with the nails. I pierced him and watched the blood and water flow from his side. I mocked him as he hung there on that unmoving tree and cried out in thirst. I laughed in his face. ‘Come down from that I cross,’ I sung mocking and malicious, ‘and then I will believe in you!’

I did all of that and I was glad I did it.

And I also wept with the women and his disciples on that terrible, gray day. I wept as one of his disciples, the new creation whom he was about to resurrect, broken in repentance and with illuminated life erupting inside my chest. And try as I might, I can never forget that as I stand free and alive watching my Savior die, I was the one who put him up there. So were you. It is ok. He knew that before he let us put him up there. And he is alive, still working, still redeeming...always bringing colorful flowers up from the bloody dirt of our broken world, of your shattered soul, of mine.

The twenty, in colors unimaginable, smiles flash that understand

They wear, firmly awake, fully complete
An unchanging place further up and further in!
Skip on dear children, the mountains beckon you forth
Where flowers bloom as dance and freedom is spent in righteousness.
It is finished and accomplished and shall never be taken away
Its center of his eyes never breached, complete lifetimes
To feast and climb and swim, oh dear twenty!
Swim now, for the waters are soft and sweet is their taste
Swim together, for you are free and in him,
In his eye’s center never breached.
It is yours, all yes and yours and mine and theirs,
To whoever will stand under judgment
And receive the divine pardon.
What pardon you say?
Yes, yes! Of course! He is our Father!
Yours and mine and theirs
Further up and further in to our Father.
Go ahead dear twenty, I will join you soon.
Press onward to forever and forever
And unchanging we shall be.
Our Father says it is so.
It is and you are and I AM and we shall be…says the Father

            The chapter of humanity’s fall is nothing more than choosing to be god of our own lives, to be in control of ourselves. We want to find our own satisfaction, our own joy, power, existence. But we were not created that way. This is the danger of religion. Religion can take our eyes off of this reality and place it on simple action steps, on a misunderstood morality. Read the Bible more. Pray harder. Stop cheating on your taxes. Don’t respond in anger. Stop looking at porn. Give money to charity. Be a better person. The danger of religion is that the temptation is to focus only on our physical nakedness; only on the physical, tangible way we understand sin.

Two beers is fine. Once the third is consumed, your neck loops, your sex drives revs up, and now you have crossed the line from purity to debauchery and God is disappointed. This is what we all think. We imagine there to be a rigid, dark, inflexible line which once breached, signals the end of God’s mercy, the point of no return. And we live our lives terrified that each little sin will have been our last chance and God will reject us finally, while we know that we should have been rejected a long time ago.

Each time we lie, or play out that fantasy in our mind, or curse our friend behind their back, each physical, tangible, able-to-be-labeled sin will be the one that finally takes us past that line into the bitter darkness where God will no longer love us.

‘You had your chance,’ he will say. ‘But that was the one that broke the camel’s back. I want no more part in your life.’ We are terrified of this moment occurring.

            
            But I am convinced that is not how God sees the problem. First off, he is infinite; so there can be no ‘one that broke the camel’s back.’ Infinity understands no other number but itself. There is no line for an infinite God. It either is or it is not. Either God is infinitely merciful or infinitely condemning.

And God has said he will show us mercy…so I guess the infinite line is in our favor.

But secondly, the problem is not with our actions but with our souls. That is the root of the issue. That is the spiritual nakedness which Adam and Eve saw and the dawning of the realization that they could not fix it.

 

One more prayer would not make them better.

   They had lost it, lost it all!

There was nothing they could do, no matter what it was, that would ever atone for the unrighteousness they just allowed into themselves.

Even if they lived lives of perfect morality here on out, that still would not alter in a completely remedying way the irreparable scar branded into their soul from the juice of that fruit. They were fallen and there was no hope because it was an affront against an infinite God.

Actions, good or bad, no longer mattered. For those actions would never restore them to the oneness they shared with the righteous God before they knew he was the righteous God. They would never, ever again, be able to look at God and see him solely and only as their Father. Now, every time they looked at him or thought about him, they will know that he is God…and only, a long time ago, was he their Father. If he will allow that still; it is yet to be known.

Therefore, the primary issue is not what you can do, or not do in the physical, visible realm of that which humanity sees and understands; but what you believe God is doing, or not doing in the deep, massive, dripping caves of your corrupted, infinite soul

That is the spiritual nakedness which none of us understands, save one. Jesus did not care about approval from men, for he knew what was in our hearts…be he still loved us enough to beg his Father to forgive us. And that is probably also why Jesus is constantly telling us not to judge. For wherever the line in the sand is drawn in which we tell people God cannot love them past that point, by that same line we will be condemned! Because there is no line for an infinite God. We are all hopelessly lost and can never atone.

But Jesus never drew a line in the sand.

He simply liked to make squiggles and shapes—like a child does.

And then he says, “Nor do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”

And he does this because he knows we are spiritually naked.

And he does this because he also knows why it is he came.