War post 1: Sin as disease

It's a heavy subject for my first series of blog posts, but lately I've been immersed in portrayals of war. Besides the reality of the inner city where drug and gang related shootings are common, I visited one of the largest WWI museums in the world here in K.C., we've been watching the series Band of Brothers which chronicles the experience of a company of paratroopers in WWII, and I'm reading a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who spiritually and practically led a resistance movement to Hitler's Nazi regime and was eventually killed in a concentration camp.

In trying to grasp the reality and depravity of war, it's impossible not to ask the question of God, "Where were you?"  One insight from Bonhoeffer that has meant a lot to me is how he describes war like time-lapse photography, which highlights movements which otherwise might've gone unnoticed. "War makes manifest in a particularly drastic and unshrouded form that which for years has become ever more dreadfully clear to us as the essence of the 'world.'"  Injustice, abuse, violence and death all exist before and outside of war, but when they occur in such a concentrated and horrendous way, we can no longer pretend they don't exist and that we and the world are getting along just fine.

A Christian concept of sin is that of a disease which is present in all of us. Though I haven't committed a wartime atrocity, I see the very same self-serving tendency to satisfy my desires (even if it's to cover up my fear or pain) at the expense of others play out in my everyday life. The good news is that Jesus says “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.”  Only when I acknowledge my sickness, can I hear the call of the One who truly heals. And instead of beating myself up when sin surfaces in my life, I can confess it immediately to God, stand in Christ's complete forgiveness, and be surprised that in my diseased condition, it's only by God's mercy that I don't sin more than I actually do.


C.S. Lewis describes the Holy Spirit as a "good infection" which over time spreads in us to heal the ways our identity, mind, and ability to relate to others are affected by the disease of sin. Rather than just treating symptoms of the disease by trying to make ourselves stop doing specific sinful actions, we can spend time with God asking him to do healing work in those deeper parts of us that He brings up, which is usually one area at a time.  This process continues until we are no longer in these diseased bodies, and are made new and perfect with Him.


The next time you hear of wars and abuses, may you be reminded of our spiritually diseased condition, and remember the promise of healing from a God who loves us.