Most Christians are captive to the notion that what God requires of them is that they be good, which is generally understood to involve conformity to ideals or communal expectations.

The Myth of Perfection

This myth is associated with the no less seductive myth of perfection, which is almost universal in Western society and which is reflected in the compulsive behaviour of people espousing a diverse range of beliefs.

The myth of perfection is partially a consequence, in childhood, of our parents apportioning love on the basis of our conformity to required behaviours. If we were good, if we exhibited correct manners and designed our lives around parental ambitions, we were affirmed. Because of our need for affirmation, this conditioning generated a desperate compulsiveness, a striving for perfection. It also fostered an underlying malaise, resulting from the feeling that we always fell short of the ideal and were, therefore, unacceptable. Those whose response was to revolt against such expectations, in spite of their defiance, were no less free of the parental conditioning, which wedded them to the perpetuation of behaviours that flouted parental values. The fact that they could not break away from this pattern was indicative of a lack of self-esteem. These were not as centred in themselves as they wanted us to believe.

For children and young people growing up in Christian homes and communities, this process is reinforced by the values and behavioural repertoires of the local church, which enlists the support of a heavenly Father, who cannot tolerate imperfection. In pathological circumstances, this God is brought in to threaten, not only recalcitrants, but also the faithful.

It is in the context of such cultural and theological mythologies that Christians have castigated themselves for their sin, or sins, their shortcomings.

The Nature of Sin

The concept of sin, in the Christian Scriptures, however, is more subtly nuanced and is associated, not with an impossible perfectionism, but with the arrest of positive potentialities and the hurtful living out of their distorted shadow essences. The quest for perfection is self-serving, and, because it results in a repression of painful, and socially unacceptable energies, that are inconsistent with our image of perfection, it energises the very energies it represses. [75]

The Greek New Testament uses a number of words to probe the meaning of "sin."

The meaning of the most commonly used word, hamartia, is captured by the cameo of an archer aiming at a target and missing. It speaks of our failure to realize the potential of our humanity, to live fulfillingly and for others.

Another of these words, adikia, is translated "unrighteousness." A righteous community was a peaceful and just community, where every person played their part for the benefit of the whole and in which there was no abuse of power or trust. The righteous individual was someone whose whole being functioned healthily, an integrated person, free of guile or duplicity, someone whose life benefited others. An unrighteous person was someone who was internally out of kilter with themselves, that is, controlled by perverse elements in the unconscious.

A third word, anomia, reflected a state of lawlessness, the condition of someone lacking self-control, who disregarded social or religious norms. This word also reflects a lack of integration or centredness.

Then there was kakia, or badness, the opposite of goodness. This word reflects, not so much the process of sin, as its consequence. It describes the condition of the person who is missing the mark, who is falling short of their capacity, who is torn between the conflicting dictates of the many inner personalities. It describes the person, who, to use Luther's definition of sin, is curved in upon themselves, someone who is unavoidably pre-occupied with themselves, with keeping the lid on the unconscious, with doomed attempts at eliciting praise and building self-esteem. It describes someone desperately in need of love and acceptance.

In essence, the notion of sin, that one finds in the Christian Scriptures, refers to our falling short of Grace-gifted potentialities, together with the deleterious effects of this on ourselves, others and society.

Reconceptualising Sin

I want to argue, at this point, that sin, human sinfulness, is an inevitable manifestation of our humanity.

Sin as Inevitable

It is inevitable because of the powerful influence upon us of the unconscious factors in the shadow self, which result from socialization and the temporarily healthful repression of pain that is too intense to bear or that is beyond our current ability to resolve.

Without often being aware of what is happening, we find ourselves under the dominion of complexes, knots of emotional energy that are found in the unconscious, that part of the self with which we have no direct contact. [76] These complexes are the nuclei of alternative personal structures that constellate in the shadow self. Jesus comment that sin originates within,¹ and Paul's confession in Romans 7 about their being an alien law in his being, refer to this phenomenon.

We cannot deal with these complexes by denying them or by seeking to suppress them, because, if we attempt either, we bring ourselves more under their dominion. Ironically, the more we try to be "good", in the sense of exhibiting communal ideals and expectations, the greater the repression the body/self endures, and, therefore, the more likely it is that we will be overtaken by the vices we are trying to avoid. In forcibly repressing parts of ourselves, we not only lose control of them, but we energise them. We also energise their quest for healing, which, because this healing does not occur in a conscious, healthy environment, but in one laden with distortion, attempts at healing will express themselves perversely. This phenomenon is clearly evident in our repression of anger and sexuality, two critical, interconnected, inalienable human energies.

Sin is also inevitable because we cannot avoid being scarred and incapacitated by the guilt of others, the sins of the parents, or previous generations. This is evident, not only in situations of gross abuse, but in every aspect of our being and doing. For example, if boys have not been effectively fathered, they may go through their lives unconsciously "soning" other men, seeking to put other men in the position of fathering them. It is also possible, if we have not healthily negotiated our relationships with our fathers, that we will transfer negative feelings, like anger, even rage, onto male authority figures, with whom, however inappropriately, we will seek to work through the unresolved father-son relationship. Sin is inevitable by virtue of the fact that we are born into a world in which we are the unwitting victims of the guilt of others, others who are, themselves, no less the victims of individuals and cultural pattern that preceded them.

Sin as Necessary

I have argued that sin, human sinfulness, is inevitable. I also want to contend that it is necessary to the process of human development.

Edward Edinger, influenced by Jung, argues that human development involves the emergence of the conscious ego out of an unconscious matrix, the separation of the ego from the unconscious and the re-relating of the one to the other.

The child begins life in a symbiotic relationship with its mother, only gradually emerging as a separate centre of consciousness. With the separation of the fragile egoic self from its unconscious ground, the individual, through childhood and young adulthood, loses contact with the unconscious matrix out of which it emerged. This separation was necessary for a conscious relating to take place. In a healthy family, where there is an interplay of love and discipline, the reconnection is effected through insights [77] deriving from introspective reflection. This reflection is fostered by a spiral-like, continuous process of inflation, crisis, repentance and re- connection, a process involving hurt and pain for the individual and for those on whom their behaviour impacts. For example, a young child, acting under inflation, puts on a tantrum. A crisis occurs when he is arrested in his tracks by a parents, who recognizes that it is time to call a halt to this behaviour. The child then feels alienated. When

he has had sufficient time to reflect on what has happened, and he is comfortable rejoining the family, he is re-embraced by them. Where this re-connection is not made, the ego will further inflate and spin out of control.²

Sin is also necessary because maturity is the long-term consequence of the painful engagement with and integration of the shadow aspects of our reality. Shadow distortions, the inner matrix out of which our dysfunctional behaviours arise, is the "stuff" we have to work with, in concert with the grace of God, to effect change and significant inner development. This maturational perspective is implicit in the biblical account of human beginnings in Genesis 2 and 3, especially when interpreted from an Irenaean point of view. Irenaeus, in contrast to Augustine, who interpreted the Genesis myth as a fall from perfection, considered that the story encapsulated the progress of humanity from an original, untried innocence to a life rich in exploration, creativity and experience--a painful, but inevitable journey.

Christian Theology

This perspective is consistent with the essence of Christian theology.

It is clear that God does not want us to be dependent and colourless, for such an outcome would deny the maturational potential and life-energy that is built into us as our essence. Furthermore, there is no way for us to avoid error, as Paul indicted in the early chapters of his Letter to the Romans. It is also of interest that the people Jesus closely related to, Mary Magdalene, Peter, James and John, were far from anaemic and far from perfect. True to themselves, they were in touch with their life-energy. It was those, regarded as sinners, that Jesus was able to engage, not those trying, so desperately, to be good. Pre-occupation with our own perfection is self-defeating, because it is selfish and because it relegates part of our reality to the shadow-side of our existence, to the unconscious. Jesus comment on the different behaviours of the Pharisee and the Publican in the temple and his Parable of the Prodigal Son, reflects the same understanding.

Avoiding Confusion

In considering the nature of the life to which God calls us, there are two phenomena that often confuse us.

Light and Darkness

First, we are seduced by the Johannine dichotomy between light and darkness into making unhealthy assumptions. This dichotomy can lead us to further repress aspects of ourselves that have already been relegated to the unconscious and which, because of the initial repression, are expressing themselves perversely, rather than healthily, facets of ourself that we need to re-own and reclaim in order to become healthy and whole. Furthermore, some of the hymns we sing, which ask God to rid us of our dark side, [79] reinforce repressions and are equivalent to our asking God to take from us that which is essential to our humanity. To exclusively and powerfully emphasise one pole of a dichotomy, and to live it, will result in its replacement by its opposite. Nietzsche argued this point, which was illustrated by Jung, who described the psychological process as enantiodromia. This phenomenon is evident, not only in the lives of individuals, but also of societies.³ It is interesting that Christian revivals, over the past few centuries, have been preceded by times of spiritual aridity when the church was written off as an irrelevant anachronism.

The Beginning and the End

The second tendency is to confuse the end with the beginning.

We cannot reach an end other than through a process. This is particularly evident in a range of maturational dynamics.

1. In the confusion of pre-personal existence with transpersonal existence.⁴
2. In the fact that we must possess ourselves before we can discover that there is no substantial self apart from our being an expression of a larger Self, or Consciousness, that we call God and experience as Grace.
3. In the fact that before we can deny ourselves we have to give attention to ourselves in order to come to ourselves, to discover and integrate ourselves.
4. In the fact that it is by denying ourselves that we gain the whole world, or, to put it in other words, we possess all things only by reaching the stage where we possess nothing.

"Sin Vigorously"

It is little wonder that Luther advised us to sin vigorously, or, in other words, not to pussy-foot round. This is not an excuse, as Paul put it, to sin that grace may abound,⁵ but rather an urging of us to plunge into life, in whatever manner is appropriate to us at this stage in our development. [80]

[SFM 75-80]