Shame Tax

“What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person."

~ Jesus, in Mark 7:20-23

Sin.

This word has become a 3-letter "4-letter word" in our culture today. We feel judged when people throw this word at us, and the way certain churches or people claiming to be Christian have handled this word has been nothing short of spiritual abuse, causing "ex-vangelicals" to leave the church in droves.

But that doesn't mean it's an evil word. Sometimes it is used evilly, to be sure, and sometimes it's used lovingly and truthfully but received as evil by a culture (a world culture or a church culture) that does not want light and love shining upon its darkness and hatred.

I have heard many definitions of sin by many authors and preachers, but there are two that win the day for me. First, Jonathan Merritt calls sin "anything we do to rob ourselves of the fullness of life, or anything we do to rob another person of the fulness of life." What I like about this definition is that it points out how God's ultimate purpose for humanity is to flourish (in every sense of the word and in every realm of life), and sin is the decisions we make that move us away from the flourishing God wants to bring into our lives.

Second, I also like James Houston's definition of sin as "the refusal to be human." This definition points to God's original plan for humanity to experience shalom in every key relationship (with him, with others, with ourselves, and with creation), and when we declare our independence in knowing what is good and evil for these relationships, we are actually refusing to be fully human as we were created to be (which includes dependence on God), and that is sin.

The bible contains many practical examples and lists of what sin is, such as the one at the top of this page, but our culture interprets and orders these lists very poorly.

The Shame Tax

All sin fractures and hurts, but our culture places a "shame tax" on every sin (how we feel about certain sins compared to others. See note below)*. Think of the sins most likely and least likely to be confessed to a group of people. For example, pride, or greed, or anger are “safe” sins to confess to one another. They have a low shame tax. Sexual sin, however, has a high shame tax and is much less likely to be confessed to others. As a pastor, I would not get fired for having pride (at least not right away), but I would for adultery.

(In fact, if you want to know how messed up our church culture is, nine of the Ten Commandments would likely lead to my dismissal as a pastor. But if I break the fourth commandment [honour the Sabbath] I am likely to end of being praised for my hard work and "sacrifice for the church").

I’m not saying things like adultery are ok - I’m just pointing out the reality of things. In one sense, this reality has logic. Stealing an office pen vs stealing a pension fund, although both theft, are two very different things. So understandably different sins have different weight.

However, our weighing system is very different from Jesus’. According to the number of times Jesus brings it up, the number one biblical sin is pride (in part because pride prevents repentance). In fact, according to Cortney Whiting, the ten sins Jesus addresses most in the gospel are: selfishness, pride, unbelief, hypocrisy, greed, unforgiveness, hatred, disobedience, judging others, and impurity.

Think of Jesus’ interactions with people. He seemed to be quite gentle to those who committed sexual sin, but he did not mince words with those who were full of pride. With the woman caught in adultery (John 8), he addresses her sexual sin that was robbing her of the fullness of life, but only after he addresses the religious leaders' crushing pride and hypocrisy. This tells me that morality is very important to Jesus, but in the "weighing" of things, justice is more important. (Again, I'm not excusing sexual sin, I'm simply pointing out that how we compare it to other sins like pride or anger is very different to how Jesus does).

PAUSE and REFLECT

If you had to truthfully confess a present-day sin to others (not one from the distant past, which are also "safe" sins to confess), what would you say? My guess is it would be something with a low "shame tax". 

It is understandable why we'd make that choice. Vulnerability is very, very risky. But, weirdly, it would also likely be one of Jesus' top ten list of those he spoke most against. It is a strange thing that we live in a church culture where we tend to feel less shame about the "weightier" sins according to Jesus.

There may be some thinking right now, "But all sin is sin. All sin pulls us away from God's flourishing," and you are absolutely correct. I am by no means saying that any "refusal to be human" is OK or should be winked at. As mentioned above, all sin fractures and hurts. Further, all sin needs the cleansing that comes from God's forgiveness freely given through the Cross, which is where Jesus also paid every penny of the shame tax.

Perhaps, though, we ought to pay attention to the "sins of the heart" that Jesus so frequently addresses. How could we think to shame another person for their sin while we live with pride, arrogance, or greed? This attitude is anathema to Jesus. 

So let us look inward. Let us look at those broken ways in our our own heart that we or culture think are "not such a big deal," and let us humbly align our view of sin with Jesus' view. In him is life, as he is the only one who never refused to be fully human, and that life is light for all humanity.

* N.B. I'm pretty sure I heard this concept of "shame tax" from somewhere else, but I do not remember where and thus cannot give due credit to anyone for this