Falling into the Trap

I have never understood the draw of escape rooms. They seem to be quite popular. I recently even saw Joanna Gaines post a photo of herself stuck in an escape room (she didn't look very happy about it, either). It's not my thing. I don't like the idea of being trapped. 

Even last week, standing in the midst of an hour-long line waiting for an amusement park ride, made me nervous. I felt stuck. Trapped. If there was an emergency, what would I do? I couldn't escape.

I wrote recently about the trappings of religion. Oftentimes, these rituals and rites overtake our faith, becoming more central or more of a focus than God. This can be very dangerous. We get stuck in a trap we can't escape. Maybe it's a belief, or a lie, or false sense of security. But it does not breed life. It breeds death.

One such trapping of religion, is diminishing sin.

I saw it just the other day. Someone posted on an apologetics site I follow, is sin really that bad? She qualified her question by stating she understood certain people who committed grave sins, like murder or armed robbery or war crimes or something, certainly in those cases sin was bad. But for people like her, she said, who hadn't ever done anything that bad, did she truly need a Savior? Did Jesus truly need to die?

I thought it was extremely brave of her to ask such an honest question. I suspect many of us have had that same question at one time or another but have been unwilling to say it out loud. In general, I think most of us believe we are essentially good people. We even say it about one another - most people are good. What do we mean by that?

Perhaps we mean we believe we have good intentions and yes, we may mess up now and then, but overall, it’s not like we’re mass murderers or anything. We're certainly not like those people. The sinners. In comparison to them, we're practically saints.  So, sin isn't truly that big of a deal, right? Not our sin, at least. We barely even need a savior, or maybe we don't need one at all.

Maybe we think we are good enough on our own to earn our way to heaven. Or maybe, we just can’t imagine that God would send people to hell over things as little as what we've done, like white lies or gossip or taking office supplies home from work or not giving to the poor. Sure, we've occasionally had a lustful thought or said hurtful words in anger or been prideful, but God will overlook those things, won't He? It's not like they're big sins.

This is a trapping of religion because it is precisely religion which makes us (falsely) believe we are good. We go to church (sometimes, at least) and recite the prayers and sing the songs. We may even listen to Christian music and send our kids to Sunday school and pray at dinner. We don't swear (at least not out loud). Are we really that bad?

Part of this falsehood is because we compare ourselves with our "others". Whoever the "sinners" are. Maybe it's the other political party or activists or immigrants or people campaigning causes we don't believe in. Maybe it's people from other religions - or no religion at all. Religion often teaches us who are enemies are, even if it's not true. And when we compare ourselves to them, the others, the sinners and the unclean, we feel like we come out looking pretty good.

Ironically, Jesus spent much more time in His ministry with the people the religious of His day considered the "enemies", the "others", and "sinners" and the "unclean". He had some strong words for the religious.

Maybe we need to stop comparing ourselves to others to make ourselves feel better.

(In all truth, we need to stop vilifying others as well, but that's another post.)

After all, when we stand in front of God one day, the "at least I'm better than" fill-in-the-blank is not going to be a sufficient accounting of our life. The only sin we should concern ourselves about - is our own.

I am reminded of a classic novel written by Irish author Oscar Wilde back in 1891 called, "The Picture of Dorian Gray." In the story, Dorian makes a deal, where no matter what he does, his outward appearance stays young and beautiful and healthy. As the years pass, all his deeds and words change a portrait that was done of him when he was actually young and beautiful and healthy. Every act takes a toll on his image. In the portrait, he becomes withered, yellowed, scarred, and blemished. When he actually sees his portrait, revealing what his choices have done to him, he is so horrified, he dies.

In real life, twin studies which examine twins with differing behaviors show a similar story. If one twin smokes, and the other doesn't, for example, over time there's a marked difference between them - even though they started out identical. The one who smokes looks older, more worn, with yellowed teeth and sometimes more wrinkled skin. 

That’s what sin does to us. It scars us, marks us, stains us, blemishes us. Even the little things we think don’t matter take their toll. Little things often become bigger things because we have rationalized them away as though they don't matter, making it then easier to rationalize the next thing away, too. People who are living in what we would call “big sins" didn’t just go from 0 to 60 - there were lots of little steps towards that big sin along the way.

It should be noted God doesn't judge sin the same way we do. Sin is sin. It makes all of us unclean. It takes our eyes off of God. I've heard people say sin is "missing the mark". True enough, but think of it this way: sin is putting ourselves in front of God. Our wants. Our wishes. Our desires. Our way. And God doesn't want anything to be in front of Him. In Exodus 34:14, God says, "For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God". He will not share His glory with anyone or anything. 

One might think something negative about God because of that, but, honestly, what can we say? He's GOD. Creator of all things. The One who was and is and is to come. Doesn't He deserve to get all the glory? Doesn't He deserve to have all of our focus?

And, God, who deserves it all, didn't have to make a way for us. He could have simply required perfection and we would have all failed. In the Old Testament, He required perfect lambs for sacrifice. Lambs who were white as snow with no blemish or flaw or stain or injury. Who among us could say we are perfect? Who among us could say we have never sinned, never "missed the mark", never lost our focus?

Who, indeed. Not a one.

If perfection was God's requirement and He left it at that, He would be a very cruel god. It would be like trapping us inside of an escape room that has no exit, no matter what we do. But God didn't leave us like that. He Himself provided a way, a means, for redemption. He didn’t have to, He is God after all, but he did, out of His great love for us.

Consider the words of Paul in Romans, "God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:25-36).

God is not some gaslighting narcissist, who makes us do everything His way or else. He made it really simple. I am the way, he says. Choose me.

If we don't, C.S. Lewis states, we are choosing hell. It is not that God sends us there as much as we send ourselves there, seeking once again our own way, instead of His.

Yet, so many times, we do not choose Him. We fall into the trap of thinking we don’t need him. We fall into the trap of thinking if we just do these things or follow this religion or look nice on the outside, that will be sufficient. We fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to "others" and deciding we're doing okay.

But that is not the path He is laid out for us. It is, as Jesus said, the wide and easy path. But the wide and easy path leads to destruction. Submitting, relinquishing our lives to God, is not always easy. It is the harder path. But it is the only one that will truly lead to life.

Sin is a trap, too. Seeking our own way, is a trap. It's like an escape room, with no clear way on how to get out, drawing us deeper and deeper inside until we're stuck.

Thank God, when we call on Him, He provides us the way out - because He Himself is the way.

“Turn to me and be saved,
    all you ends of the earth;
    for I am God, and there is no other.
By myself I have sworn,
    my mouth has uttered in all integrity
    a word that will not be revoked:
Before me every knee will bow;
    by me every tongue will swear.
They will say of me, ‘In the Lord alone
    are deliverance and strength.’"

- Isaiah 45:22-24