Sin is a dirty word in today’s culture. To say that someone sinned is considered superstitious, puritanical, theocratic, and oppressive. And to confess your own sins is regarded as internalizing your oppression.
Even secular forms of fault-finding have been driven outside of acceptable discourse. To say that someone is indulging in a vice is—or even worse, to say they should feel guilt or shame about it—is itself, it sometimes seems, the last remaining vice. To be “viciously judgmental” is now the only way to be vicious.
It is thought even more egregious to draw any causal connection between a person’s sins or vices and that person’s outcomes in life.
For example, it was once widely acknowledged that overeating and obesity were unhealthy, potentially debilitating, and could put you in an early grave. Gluttony was considered one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and, as the Bible cautioned, “The wages of sin are death.”
Now the word “gluttony” is barely in circulation. And to trace a person’s health outcomes to her obesity and her obesity to her bad diet is denounced as a form of bigotry: i.e., “body shaming” or “fat shaming.”
Depending on the background of the obese person, one may also be accused of “victim blaming” or even racism. Obesity-related illnesses may be a matter of “health disparities,” which can be blamed on disparities in access to health care (by which is usually meant pills and procedures), which can in turn be blamed on systemic racism. But illness must never be blamed on an individual’s lifestyle choices.
Such coddling does its recipients a huge disservice. Human physiology and the structure of reality in general do not change with political and cultural agendas. Whether it is politically correct to say so or not, certain lifestyle choices have fairly predictable impacts on one’s health outcomes and life outcomes in general. Virtues tend to yield good outcomes and vices (or sins) tend to yield bad outcomes, regardless of whether we find such a notion offensive. And we deny the laws of God’s creation at our own peril.
As I mentioned in Sunday’s post, in the Book of Matthew, Jesus tells a paralyzed man that his sins are forgiven and then instructs him to rise, take up his bed, and walk home. The man does so.
Again, 21st-century culture recoils at the association of sickness with sin and healing with repentance and forgiveness. But sin does make us sick. When we are gluttonous, physically slothful, and generally neglectful of how we treat our bodies and minds, that results in physiological and psychological imbalances. And those imbalances in turn make us more prone to getting sick, and especially to developing chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
As someone said:
“Illnesses do not come upon us out of the blue. They are developed from small daily sins against Nature. When enough sins have accumulated, illnesses will suddenly appear.”
(The internet attributes this quote to Hippocrates. I doubt the ancient Greeks said “out of the blue,” and I haven’t been able to locate a source. But the message is a true and good one nonethless.)
As a non-smoker with lung cancer, one might expect me especially to deny any culpability for my disease and regard myself as a victim of happenstance, sheer bad luck, or a cruel twist of divine providence. But I refuse to play the victim. And I know the only path to the betterment of being is the path of personal responsibility.
Even though I have never smoked, I have neglected my health in myriad other ways. Although I have long believed in the ketogenic diet in theory, I never got serious about it in practice until after my cancer diagnosis. I have been slightly overweight for most of my adult life (although I am now trim since going keto after my diagnosis). And I have not been conscientious about exercise, avoiding processed foods, or making sure I’m getting enough of all the vitamins and nutrients that my body needs from my food.
Had I done all those things, I might have prevented enough of whatever imbalances contributed to my cancer developing, or my body’s defenses might have been able to nip it in the bud before it could start proliferating.
Refusing to face that reality for the sake of protecting my short-term feelings wouldn’t do me any good in the medium- to long-term. So I fully admit and confess that I myself have accumulated a litany of “small daily sins” against the physiological nature that God gave me. I take full responsibility for that, not only because it reflects the truth, but because acknowledging that truth and that responsibility is the first step toward doing whatever I can to make myself healthier.
Treating my cancer as a blaring wake-up call is helping me to change my thinking and reform my habits. And that will hopefully lead me down the path of healing.
Confessing one’s sins is necessary for repentance. Repenting one’s sins is necessary for penitence: i.e., stopping and remedying those sins. And penitence is necessary for improved outcomes. Our culture has rejected these moral and spiritual concepts as “antiquated” to our own detriment.
Sin makes us sick. But reconciling ourselves with God and the structure of His creation (including the nature of our bodies) can heal us both spiritually and physically.
If you would like to help me and my family cover the costs of my cancer treatment, you can make a donation to this GiveSendGo campaign. I am deeply grateful for the support.