Flesh and Forgiveness

Christianity tells us God will forgive and receive us through belief in Jesus as God. This is mated with a wide variety of strictures on behavior, some from the Old testament and others from Paul. The general expression of this, at least in public, is exhortations for sinners to end their sinful ways, and so to be acceptable to God. A distinction is made between being acceptable to God through personal goodness, said to be impossible, and the goodness that naturally flows from belief in Jesus and giving one's life to him.


Jesus, in the recorded interactions with people, commonly teaches by examples in parables how we should behave. In more personal interactions, he commonly tells people their faith has cured them or their relatives. In some stories he tells people to stop sinning, like the woman at the well. In Matthew particularly he makes clear he is not there to overturn the law but to complete it. Various statements suggest he supported the Old Testament Jewish law.

Other acts and statements by Jesus suggest an acceptance of law that is intent rather than letter based. The story of Jesus and the disciples eating grain they picked on the Sabbath is one example. So are the various healings that take place on the Sabbath. In one of these Jesus gets into a conversation about the legality of healing on the Sabbath.

Christians show a remarkable variation in what they will and will not accept as sinful. Alcohol is forbidden among Baptists and fundamentalists, despite the clear story of Jesus' conversion of water into wine. Despite this, many Christians smoke, and a significant fraction are fat. There are many Christian based programs for drug rehabilitation, even though the Bible mentions nothing at all about drugs. We have then the odd situation where a drink Jesus clearly approved of is forbidden, while one behavior Jesus never saw, cigarettes, is OK and another, drugs, is not.

Adultery and premarital sex are frowned upon. The only sexuality universally accepted is heterosexual, marital sex for procreation. Yet in objective studies of sex behavior (not Kinsey, a study of range rather than a statistical survey of the frequency of sex behaviors), premarital and extramarital sex are of equal frequency regardless of religious beliefs.

It seems to me, based on data and personal observation, that nominal status as a Christian does not give people the strength to resist temptation. Despite condemning various acts, and vociferously condemning others, Christians indulge in all the fleshly vices.

This is my real issue today. What if we can not stop what we do? What if, despite great effort, we still overeat? What do we do in a marriage emptied of sex? What if we can not reduce stress without cigarettes, alcohol and drugs? Does this make us unacceptable to God? So many Christians can not stop these behaviors any better than anyone else. Are they justified before God by their belief in Jesus?

What if you just can't do it? The pleasures of the flesh are just irresistible; they are for so many. They are for me. Is it possible to be spiritual while still being fleshly? Does the pork barbecue consumed by many massively obese Christians on a Sunday afternoon lunch separate them from God?

I submit that it does not. I believe in a creator God. We were made as we are. Most of us try to do as best as we can. Some do better than others, but this is not a basis to condemn, nor is it a basis to be rejected by God. For those who are given over to indulgence at the expense of their soul, at the cost of their human relationships, their work, their minds, these people are destroying themselves. In a different argot, one could say their souls are possessed on earth.

For those who try and fail, I feel it is to them in particular that Jesus speaks. All of us are the equivalent of ritually unclean. We smoke, drink, lose our tempers, compromise ourselves for money, lust for others' bodies. For me, the message of Jesus is not so much 'be pure and believe in me and God will accept you', but rather 'even though your bodies are filthy and you roll in the filth, yet you can be clean before God'. The stories about lepers in particular touch me this way.

One may argue that lepers are unclean through no fault of their own, while alcohol, sex, drugs and food are voluntary choices. There is of course truth to that, but perhaps it is the soul that is being cleansed. The Jews of Jesus' period believed that leprosy, blindness and other diseases were a result of sinfulness. Is there a difference then in Jesus healing a leper believed to be sinful, and in God accepting a person who is sinful in ways our society condemns today?

The miracle of faith is not the resurrection of a man. It is the ability of all spirit to transcend all flesh, for God to find and revive our spirits when our flesh is weak, dying, even dead. It is in this sense that Jesus is truly the first fruit of those that sleep. We are all asleep in our flesh, drowning our souls in indulgences. We should not condemn those who do no worse than ourselves. We should implore God to forgive our own failings, and accept us, naked and imperfect as we are.

Ted