Sin

Most who know me know that I am a religious person. I am not the type of person who claims their religion to attend only on Christmas and Easter and then have no one know me in the church. I am an active member of my church and attend most Sundays. Many would say that attending church does not make you religious, and they are right. However, I am not one to say I am a religious person and then spend my Sundays cleaning my house and doing laundry.
To that end, I am also a sinner. Many years ago I use to belong to a church that was non-denominational in belief. It encouraged you to constantly perfect yourself. Sermons were based on, "This is your sin, and here are the three steps to rid yourself of it." Morality was the measured by peers and watched by everyone. It was a constant, almost contest of who could one-up the next person. "I don't listen to secular music."
"Oh, well I don't listen to secular music, and I don't watch TV."
"I stopped doing that years ago, now I pray for an hour every day, and I no longer wear jewelry, makeup."
"Yes, I know how close that brings you to God! When I did that I also started to only wear skirts and began homeschooling my children."
"Homeschooling my children has changed my relationship with God, and since that time I have also started canning all my own food and grinding my own wheatberries to make bread....."

And on it went. It was insanity. It may seem as though I am mocking, but I actually did sit in on conversations with women like this....and I admired them...and worse, I envied them.

Here is the truth. I am a sinner. A flawed individual. I am loud, I talk too much. I tend to focus on myself too much. I am disorganized in my thoughts and many times in my actions. I get nervous very easily. I am argumentative. I swear like a sailor. I have never met a carb I didn't like...nor, for that matter a sweet. I am a procrastinator and I am not always very good at self motivation.

Now don't get me wrong...I have a lot of very good things about me too...but, above is me, laid out and truthful....you could probably find more, if you asked my family. But in the end we are all, every last one of us like this. Flawed, imperfect creatures.

Use to be I tried from the get go to fix all of those problems right here...right now. Be good, be perfect! It wasn't until I truly understood St. Paul that I truly understood sin. He bemoaned his desire to be rid of sin, to try to be perfect for God. God basically said, "That's nice son, that you want to do this, be all perfect and such...but, ah...no. Keep your sin for a while...it is what keeps you humble."

What? God wants us to sin? Get out? No, of course God does not want us to sin. He never desires for us to sin. But God also has a timeline...it is his timeline and not our timeline. We are like impatient 4 year olds wanting to go to the park, we want what we want and we want it now. On the other hand God, has goals in mind. We find that as we grow older, we grow closer to him, and those sins seem to fall away in their own time. We are being perfected in Christ. It is not a past tense sort of thing. It is a past/present/future sort of thing. I have been perfected in Christ. I am being perfected in Christ. I will be perfected in Christ.

So I wear my sin like an ugly dress. I hate it, I know what it is, and I wish it gone. I attempt to quell it and restrain it and to become more diligent day by day. But you know what? It is no longer something I use as a measuring stick with others, I need not strip my life down to a monastic existence to become more holy. God works with what he has.

He works with me...flawed as I am.