Christian Zombies

Right now I’m reading James Joyce’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” and it has me thinking about sin. The semiautobiographical novel follows Joyce’s alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, as he comes of age in and around Dublin, spending most of his young life at various Jesuit boarding schools.

The reason it has me thinking about sin is that Dedalus, who in his teen years goes through a period of lustfulness in which his life is consumed by prostitutes, is obsessed with the subject. Every thought he has is tainted by guilt and despair. He pines for his lost innocence, he has no hope in salvation, he believes he is forsaken. It seems to me that most anyone raised in a religious home can relate to these feelings.

The church, in its efforts to maintain piety and devout followers, has made sin the central focus of the Christian community. We’ve been indoctrinated with the idea that it is the things we don’t do that make us Christian. We don’t drink, we don’t smoke, we don’t have premarital sex, so we must be the faithful.

I say it’s bullshit (oops, swearing is definitely something Christians don’t do). The thing that supposedly separates Christianity from all other religions is the New Testament (most other religions have a creation story, a flood story, etc.) Yet the New Testament isn’t about sin. It wasn’t written to tell us all the things we can’t do, but rather to show us a right way to live. Jesus Christ was not sent to enforce the letter of the law, and in fact rebuked the Pharisees for doing so. Jesus Christ came to show us how to live in love, in peace, and in humility. He came to absolve us of the very sin which we are now so obsessed with. I would say this preoccupation with avoiding sin actually demonstrates a lack of faith. By believing ourselves even capable of not sinning and spending our lives running from sin shows that we don’t believe that Jesus can do what he said could.

I’m not by any means extending a get out of morality free card. On the contrary, living life as I’m suggesting will actually hold us to a higher moral standard. If we truly devote our lives to seeking out love, truth and justice, morality will become unavoidable. If we strive to be true Christ followers by serving our neighbors and reaching for peace, we will find our lives incompatible with sin.

But as long as we keep defining ourselves by the sins we avoid we will find ourselves incapable of escaping sins’ clutch. We don’t have the strength to evade sin by our own will, and this idea that the “best” Christian is one who resists sin better than others is in defiance of everything taught in the New Testament, and is nonsensical. This mentality is a disease infecting the church, leaving in its wake an army of Christian zombies; men and women incapable of the love and compassion that Jesus championed. We are left bigoted and hypocritical, shunning those that we are called to love the most.

Remember, it’s “what would Jesus do?,” not “what wouldn’t Jesus do?”

Thanks for reading.