Camouflage Sin

I don’t know if this happens to you, but when God is trying to get my attention, He sends the message in lots of different ways.

I might read something that catches my attention, and the next thing I know, I’m hearing the same “theme” in a song, in something a friend says, in a sermon or blog.  Finally, I tell God, “Okay, okay, I’m listening!”

Right now, I keep getting this recurring theme about attention.  In a number of different ways, I keep hearing that, basically, you become what you pay attention to.  It hit me the hardest in a book I read recently called The Secret Thoughts of An Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Butterfield, who says “. . . repentance requires greater intimacy with God than our sin.”

Ouch.

I struggle with all sorts of sins, but I don’t like to think of being intimate with them.  I like to think that sin is something “out there” that I’m keeping out by being a “good Christian.”  But that’s the danger of sin.  Anytime we think it’s “out there,” we won’t recognize that the most destructive sins come from within and go unrecognized.

Somehow, it seems that our internal, hidden sins are masters of disguise, with an incredible capacity for camouflage.  They can “blend in” with good things and with all our good intentions.  Without God’s help, we are blind to them.

(Useless detail:  The kids spotted this spider in a potted flower arrangement at the gym last year, so I snapped a picture with my cell phone.  It’s both beautiful and dangerous . . .  just like sin.)

The quote above was a timely reminder that sin and temptation look good.  If all sin looked evil and dark, then it would be easy to avoid.  But real temptation is not being coerced into doing something you don’t want to do – real temptation is being enticed to do something you WANT to do.

One of my favorite country songs when I was a kid was called “Somebody’s Knocking” by Terri Gibbs and I think she captures temptation in these lyrics:

“Somebody’s knocking.  Should I let him in?

Lord, it’s the devil.  Would you look at him?

I heard about him, but I never dreamed

He’d have blue eyes and blue jeans.”

I think we’d all be surprised at what “the devil” really looks like.  It’s easy to get intimate with our sins because they don’t “look” like sins and certainly they don’t “feel” like sins – how can it be bad if it makes me feel good?

“Did anyone ever tell you that the name Lucifer literally means the “light bearer”?  The evil one always makes darkness look like light – and makes light look like darkness.”   (Richard Rohr, Falling Upward)

This idea of intimacy of sin got me thinking about my greatest capacity for sin and how absurd (and true) it is.  Richard Rohr says that “our gift and our sin are two sides of the same coin.” (The Enneagram) If this is true, then our greatest capacity for sin is definitely something intimate because it’s closely linked to our strength and our “best self.”

You might not believe in the Enneagram – frankly, I don’t understand it, (some sort of ancient system that outlines personality types that can help lead to spiritual awakening – blah, blah, mystical stuff), but once you find your “personality type,” it’s scary how on-point it is.  After digging into a book about the Enneagram and reading it with great skepticism, I found my “type” and read the chapter with wide-eyed shock at how closely it described me.

I won’t go into all the details of my Enneagram type or number, but I will tell you that supposedly my greatest gift is “joy” and my root sin is “intemperance.”  People like me just want to enjoy life and do not want our joy all screwed up by difficulty and pain.  We don’t like restrictions and tend to do things to excess.  With other people, I might be in danger of being glib or rushing them through a painful experience.  With myself, I have trouble accepting the discipline that real life requires.

Now that I know these things, they are easier to recognize in myself, but still very difficult to manage.  It does not come naturally for me to embrace pain, to trade short-term enjoyment for long-term maturity.  It’s good to be joyful, but I also want to be teachable, and our hardest life lessons usually come from pain and difficulty.  If I avoid pain, then I also avoid maturity.

I love to play the “comparison game.”  In the areas of my life where I’m “lacking,” I like to find a worse example to make myself feel better.  Some people play the comparison game by finding better examples and making themselves feel worse, but I tend to do the opposite (I’m a joyful pain avoider, remember?).  Either extreme is stupid and sets us up for camouflage sin.

Here’s a simple example that most women can probably relate to.  Hanging out at the pool, you are feeling not-so-great about being in a bathing suit.  Some might find the most fit mom in the place and feel inferior and begin some self-loathing inner dialogue (but the justification is that this self-loathing will be motivation to work out and eat healthier).  People like me will find the fattest person in the joint and begin a congratulatory inner dialogue (and if I’m the fattest person in the joint, I still find a way to spin it – I just tell myself that God can use my “abundant” bathing suit display to make everyone else feel better about their bodies.  You are welcome, skinny people.  I am an EXPERT pain avoider!).

But whether you are self-loathing or pain-avoiding (or both!), it’s unhealthy.

It’s easy to recognize pure evil (ISIS, for example); it’s easy to recognize something that’s wrong (cheating, stealing, etc.); it’s easy to recognize sin in others (laziness, gossip, worry – things they might not be able to see in themselves).  But it’s SO hard to see our own sin.

“How can I know all the sins lurking in my heart?  Cleanse me from these hidden faults.”  Psalm 19:12

And it can be especially difficult to recognize the sins of “omission” (not doing something that we should be doing).  Many of us think that if we just keep to ourselves, mind our own business and don’t hurt anyone, then we are not doing anything wrong.  But God doesn’t see it that way.  “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”  James 4:17

I’m not telling you all this to make you feel bad about yourself or make you paranoid about sin.  It’s actually good news!  Once you realize that our greatest gift and our greatest sin are two sides of the same coin, it can be a freeing (albeit painful and humbling) experience.  I don’t like seeing my faults, but it makes me more dependent on God because I know, without Him, I’ll never fully recognize my sin and I’ll never fully live out my gift.  And it forces me to acknowledge, yet again, that without the love and mercy and grace of God, I would be a hopeless cause, without reason for real joy.

I will always struggle with camouflage sin because I’m human, but I’m grateful that God can see what I cannot.  And if I am willing to be more intimate with Him than with my sin, then He will help me break free to fully live His amazing gift!

“The Lord’s light penetrates the human spirit, exposing every hidden motive.”  Proverbs 20:27

“I have come as a light to shine in this dark world, so that all who put their trust in me will no longer remain in the dark.”  John 12:46