Over the last two weeks or so I have been stalked online. Virtually every time I opened a website, an advert was popping up nagging me to “get your red nose”. I knew of two ways to get it done. The first one requires remaining in freezing conditions for a while but that’s hard to achieve, even in the infamous cold of Aberdeen; the other way to get your nose red is anecdotal (so it might be complete nonsense) and comes about as a side effect of excessive and prolonged consumption of alcohol – not my thing, really. It turns out that there is a third way: wearing a ball-shaped, clown-style synthetic red nose. This online nagging is about the latter way, without the risk of exposing myself to harsh weather conditions or the abuse of toxic substances. The call to wear a red plastic ball on your nose is a symbol of a regular charity event called Red Nose Day that raises money “to help people through the toughest times of their lives”, as the dedicated website states. The event is famous for its Friday night TV show, a mix of comedy sketches, live music, appeals for donations and celebrities doing or finishing various challenges or visiting places where people struggle and need help, and so on. Skilfully produced and performed, the hours-long show tries to pull strings in our hearts in order to loosen strings in our purses and lead us to donate money for good causes. In a way, it’s a battle to make our hearts win over our heads. Don’t get me wrong, I am not criticising the event or the way it’s conducted. Emotional manipulation is a mechanism widely deployed by most of us on a regular basis, even if we don’t realise it. Emotions play an extremely important role in our lives and guide our actions far more often than we are ready to admit. Jokes can make us laugh while insults can make us angry or dejected. We can well up when watching heartbreaking reports or moving scenes in films. I could go on and on to give more and more examples of how we emotionally react to virtually every situation in life.
Paradoxically, while emotions play an indispensable and vital role in our lives, we have very little control over them. For example, a good and well-told joke causes us to burst into laughter. We cannot start or stop our emotions at will; they are instinctive reactions of our mind to certain situations and actions. In a way it makes us dangerously exposed to possible emotional manipulation by skilful operators. Secondly, the inability to “feel at will” can lead to accusations that we are not “genuinely” sorry when we apologise but don’t show any emotional signs that we mean it. There are many more situations where people gauge the honesty of actions or utterances by their emotional attachment or lack of it. In the context of our Lenten series on “Five Steps to a Good Confession”, its second requirement – “be sorry for your sins” – often makes people question the veracity of their sorrow as they cannot whip up any emotions of remorse, contrition or shame. They doubt whether they have met the supposed criteria of this step and stop there. That’s wrong! We are going to have a closer look at what it means to “be sorry for your sins” and hopefully make it work for us.
Let’s start with the wider context of the origins of sin. Last Sunday we heard an excerpt of the story of the first fall, the consumption of the forbidden fruit. That fictional story was the biblical author’s meditation on the deficient condition of humankind and was very perceptive in that respect. In the course of the conversation between the serpent (“more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made” – Genesis 3:1) and the woman, she changed her judgement regarding the ban on the specific tree. Initially, she was so fearful of transgression that she made the ban harsher: “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.” (Genesis 3:3) She added the bit about not touching the tree. The serpent dismissed the notion and presented the ban, not as the means to protect the man and his wife but to protect God’s power and authority: “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4-5) As a result, “the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise.” (Genesis 3:6) In other words, her needs and desires could be fulfilled by the fruit of the tree. The lesson of this story is that sin is an incorrect way of fulfilling our rightful needs. There are a few practical aspects at play here. In fact, they apply to breaking any sensible law, not just the Christian moral code.
Firstly, the law, rules or commandments are seen as a means of limiting or denying access to certain goods, not something to protect me and others from harm. For example, a low-speed limit in the residential area is set to allow drivers’ quick reaction and emergency braking in case of unexpected events, like a child running into the road or another vehicle emerging from a concealed drive. For speeding drivers, it’s just a stupid limitation of their featherbrained “need for speed”. That leads us to the second aspect – my need or desire is more important than anyone else’s. Consequently, if in the process of fulfilling my desire, others must be harmed, so be it. At the same time, I try to avoid at all cost bearing the consequences of such harm – it’s the affected people’s problem, not mine. Generally speaking, it’s all about me; others count only as a means to achieve my goals, fulfil my needs and satisfy my desires. Sin is an incorrect way of fulfilling my rightful needs.
When we do “the examination of conscience” correctly (as explained last Sunday) it should lead to a fitting perception of our attitudes and subsequent actions as morally wrong. Because of the nature of sin, deceitfully appearing as pleasant, nice or good, sometimes it’s impossible to detach or forget such sensations and to feel sorry. However, this step appeals to our heads, not our hearts. To “be sorry for your sins” is a way of recognising and acknowledging the harm done to yourself and others. This has practical consequences, but that’s the subject for the fourth and fifth instalments in two- and three-weeks’ time, respectively. Stay tuned!
