The crack in the glass

Earlier today, D and I were bickering about something unimportant, and she drew a distinction between "sin" and "guilt". I asked what she meant, and she just replied airily that if I didn't know the difference then I must be very lucky.

I was slightly annoyed at being answered (or non-answered) so cavalierly, so I wrote back, "I tried typing 'What is the difference between sin and guilt?' into Ask.com but none of the links looked very useful. Sometime when you have the leisure you can enlighten me. (smile)" Memo: that was probably the wrong thing to say.

D's reply, several hours later, was slow and quiet and thoughtful. And it gave me a lot to wonder about. She wrote as follows:

I am made very quiet and still by your flippant handling of the difference between sin and guilt. Teary, in a way that other matters [the stuff we were bickering over] cannot begin to reach. This isn't a matter of enlightenment. Rather of experience, of knowing the price we pay for sin. A story? Maybe that will make it clear. Imagine a woman caught in an affair, someone like myself, whose husband is kind and loves her, and yet the person she's involved with is so much more exciting and stimulating. They meet after work, they go on brief holidays, they have a wonderful time. She considers leaving her husband, but there are two small children and she hesitates. She agonizes over the relationship, and finally decides to end it. The man she was seeing becomes a friend and nothing more, and her marriage, paradoxically is better than ever. Her husband never finds out and she is able to rejoin the family. The sin is over.

Yet she is unable to go on some days. The guilt she feels after betraying her most cherished ideals leaves her no peace, no consolation to be found. She is made miserable by guilt, guilt that remains hidden from the rest of the world, but the guilt that makes her feel like her entire life has been a lie. She realizes that the crack in the glass will not cause the vessel to shatter, but it can never be what it once was, as she can never be what she once was. The changes are real and she does not know how to live with them.

I think the crux of sin is right here. It's the damage within that threatens to disfigure us, and the ultimate challenge, it seems to me, is to understand this is precisely where God meets you. To hold on and agonize over the past is completely destructive and a denial of God's power to forgive and His ability to restore a person. It's not that we forget the sin; we don't. But we accept the changes and become someone different because of them. We find compassion, we stop judging so harshly, we do something extraordinary to make up for the sin we committed. We adopt children, we start foundations, we follow Jesus, understanding at last what he offers.

You might want to look at this distinction more carefully. You might not find it online, but you don't have to go far.

All my love,
D.