What Went Wrong: Sin and the Fracturing of the Human Soul
Theology for Pilgrims, Part 5: Hamartiology
What’s wrong with the world…what’s really wrong? People mistreat, belittle, enslave, assault, and kill one another. Earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, mudslides, and volcanic eruptions cause the creation to groan and languish under the disasters they cause. We sabotage and destroy what we love, or at least what we claim to love. The logical questions that should follow from witnessing and experiencing these things are: why do they happen and what’s wrong with us? While the Scriptures have an answer to these questions, it isn’t simple or pleasant. The Scriptures’ translations often name the problem as “sin,” and many Christians use that word freely and often. But just what is sin, because it is more than simply “bad behavior;” sin is rupture in relationship and a rebellious expression of freedom against love that leads to a distortion of YHWH’s perfectly intended design. As we dive into what theologians call hamartiology, I’ll do my best to explain what I mean by this.
YHWH is love, which means everything He does, He does with and in love. This includes creation; when YHWH Elohim created humans, He created us with freedom. This is because love requires freedom; love under compulsion is not love, and YHWH has always desired a reciprocation of His love. Therefore, we had a choice: to love and trust YHWH or seize autonomy. Adam and Eve (literally Land and Life) chose self-rule, rejecting YHWH (Gen. 3:6); sin, then, entered the world not through arbitrary rule-breaking, but through a relational breach of the divine-human union. The result was shame, hiding, blame, and disconnection (Gen. 3:7-10, 24). YHWH’s original intent for creating humans was that we commune with Him, with one another, and with the created world, but the evil of sin ruptured this communion.
So, what does sin actually mean? The Greek word hamartia (and its Hebrew equivalent chata’) means “to miss” in the way that an archer might shoot an arrow and miss the bullseye. In this way it is easy to see and understand how sin is not simply just about behavior but about trajectory. Because we have decided to autonomously govern ourselves, we aim at the wrong things and miss the bullseye of God’s love, wisdom, justice, and goodness.
One connected word is the Hebrew word pesha` which is often translated as “transgression.” This is the idea of breaching trust by rebelling or turning against someone; humans can transgress against other humans and nations against other nations, but of course, humans first transgressed against God. While we were created to be stewards over the Earth under His authority, we consciously refuse to follow or obey YHWH; we have rebelled against the rightful and true King and have now set up a dark and disastrous empire.
Sin is both a power and a choice, and this wayward trajectory and conscious rebellion have resulted in a distortion in our humanity, which is reflected in our minds and our affections. We have dethroned God in our hearts, which causes us to reject the right order of things and leads to a cascade of damage which we see every time we walk out the door or turn on the news.
There are many ways to think about the effects of sin, but this is how I categorize it: sin leads to death, disintegration, and distance, personally, relationally, and cosmically. Death is now a part of existence on Earth; each of us will biologically die and from the moments we are pulled from our mothers’ bodies, this process of death begins. However, we are all also born with a relational death; as humans we rebelled against YHWH and set up a counter kingdom, which means that our relationship with Him is broken—this is what theologians call “spiritual death.” If death can simply mean separation (such as the soul/mind’s separation from the body being biological death), then our conscious separation from our Creator and our Breath is a deeper and truer death than even our biological one. When we are separated from the Living God, we are no longer truly alive, we are merely the walking dead. As I referenced earlier, the very Earth itself is killing us, and as we consistently make the wrong choices, we are also killing the Earth. Just because the Earth doesn’t have a consciousness to speak of, does not make it an inanimate object untouched or unaffected by our rebellion—the cosmic consequences are clear for those with eyes to see (and sometimes even for those without eyes to see). Cosmic doesn’t just refer to nature, human systems are also affected by death. This is true when kingdoms and empires fall, but it is also true when kingdoms rise up against one another in war and when nations kill their own citizens, no matter how quickly or slowly they do it.
Sin also brings about a disintegration of the person. Many times, disintegration precedes death, but not always. Genetic mutations and maladies, physical ailments, mental illnesses, and addictions are all examples of the disintegration of the person that sin causes. While many of these problems can cause an isolation from ourselves (dissociation and/or self-loathing) and others, there is relational disintegration that can be completely unrelated. No one has to be mentally ill or differently abled for families to fracture, for trust to be eroded, or for people to experience a loss of harmony in themselves, with other individuals, between nations, or with the creation itself. Like death, disintegration is true at the cosmic level; no matter how pure or good a system is drafted on paper to be, or even how good it starts, all systems—be they political, economic, or religious—corrode and begin to disintegrate. Everything begins to unravel: our bodies, our relationships, and even the land.
Finally, we experience distance. This distance might look like cognitive dissonance as our actions become incongruent with what we claim to value. It might look like avoidance with mirrors because we hate what we see in reflection. This personal distance usually leads to relational distance with others, but it is our spiritual death that creates the distance we have with God; sin hides God’s presence from us. Even those who seek for and long for God feel distant from Him. This isn’t psychological, it’s spiritual—it’s an effect of sin. Our wayward trajectory has led us to creating a distance from the rest of creation that wasn’t intended, even if it can be argued that because of death and disintegration, it’s now necessary. Likewise, our choice to rule ourselves has led to distance between people groups and nations. We are not the human community we were created to be and every day the distance between peoples seems to grow rather than shrink.
As can be noted above, sin is universal, but it is not uniform. All of us do not sin, or experience the effects of sin, in the same ways or in equal measure. However, we all participate in the missing of the bullseye and in the rebellion against the King (Rom. 3:9-18, 23; cf., Isa. 53:6a).
Sin is personal; you have missed the mark of YHWH’s perfect love, goodness, justice, and wisdom today, either actively and consciously or passively and subconsciously. You have rejected YHWH’s good, perfect, and holy order at some point today, either actively or passively. However, sin is also communal; we all sinned in Adam, inheriting his guilt and the consequences of it (Rom. 5:12). We all passively participate in the structural sin of the systems we belong to, be that system our family, our country, or our religion.[1] In the worst-case scenarios, we inherit the brokenness of these systems and then actively keep the sin alive.
Even as I type this, I am struck by the amount of waste I produce, and how I often fail to recycle or use biodegradable products. I am actively and passively participating in a waste management system that is hurting the planet YHWH created me to protect and cultivate, and just because I am often numb or blind to how I am missing the mark of God’s bullseye and transgressing against the created world around me, does not mean I escape culpability—no one does.
There are those within Christianity and without that believe American Christians focus too much or talk too much about sin. I am generally inclined to agree with them, but I believe many American Christians are onto something true: naming sin matters and minimizing sin does not heal it, it hides it. And like a fungus, sin grows and becomes more potent in the dark. If we are to find healing for the waywardness, brokenness, and rebellion within and around us, we must begin with lament and confession.
Lament means to genuinely express sorrow or grief. Biblically, to lament is to honestly express one’s pain to God with trust and hope in His character. To confess means to honestly admit one’s guilt. Biblically, this is still true; one honestly acknowledges and admits their sin to God. So, to lament and confess sin is to feel and express sincere sorrow over one’s waywardness and transgressions against God, against others, and against the creation, naming the sin and rebellion for what it is, trusting that YHWH is a compassionate and gracious God who delights in the truth (Exod. 34:6). Sin is named, not to bring to shame, but to open the door for grace to enter in; as Yeshua said, He did not come for people who believe they are morally perfect, but for those who know and accept that they are dead, disintegrating, and distant from God (Mark 2:17).
Even all the way back in Genesis 3, which chronicles the introduction of sin into the world, sin does not have the last word—YHWH Elohim is the first and the last (Rev. 22:13). Without waiting for us to offer an invitation, YHWH promised that His grace and love would enter the ruins we had created and bring restoration. The last Word came to the world we had broken and lived with us among the brokenness, not merely to experience it, but to lead and lift us up out of it. Next time, we’ll discuss the rescue, restoration, and (re)adoption of humanity through Yeshua of Nazareth—the one who met us at the crossroads of God’s justice and gracious mercy.
[1] In Daniel 9:4-14, young Daniel, whom the Scriptures portray as a righteous man, confesses the sin of Israel to YHWH. In it, he uses first-person pronouns when referring to those who disobeyed God because he identifies himself with his people and his nation. He does this because he knows that YHWH associates a person with their family, people, and country and vice versa (Exod. 34:7; Deut. 28), so that they participate in the blessings of obedience and the consequences of sin.