How to Be a Sinner

Finding Yourself in the Language of Repentance

Peter Bouteneff
ST VLADIMIR’S SEMINARY PRESS
Yonkers, New York
 Copyright © 2018
St Vladimir’s Seminary Press
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For Brother John
 Preface

C
ommon to most religious life is the understanding that we human beings
are flawed, and that we are liable to think and do wrong. Classical
Christian tradition pulls no punches when it comes to expressing what
that means for me and for my plight as a human being. In our regular set
prayers, we call ourselves “sinners,” “wretched,” “pitiful,” and “worthy of
condemnation.” This language can sound odd or extreme to many sensibilities,
yet there it is, front and center. If we accept that we are sinners, how do we
understand that in a proper way? How does it help us heal and find
redemption?
I have been thinking on these themes for several years. I began putting them
to paper for a Lenten retreat I gave in 2015 at St Vladimir’s Seminary, where I
have taught for nearly twenty years. I am grateful to my colleagues, students,
and former teachers there, for their support and for all they continue to teach
me. Much of this book was written during several visits to New Skete, where I
gained immeasurably from the monks’ and nuns’ hospitality and my
conversations with them. I am grateful to my wife, Patricia, who to an ever-
increasing degree has been my inspiring conversation partner, challenging
sounding board, and generally humbling influence. She is also the best editor
I’ve ever had. If this book is of any use to you, it’s thanks to the people and
communities I’ve mentioned, together with many others whom I love and
esteem. Its faults are my own. Oh, and about those faults . . .
 Introduction

E
verybody sins. We all fall short of the glory of genuine human life—
sometimes in small ways, sometimes in larger ways, sometimes by
thinking, saying, and doing, truly terrible things. The Bible and every
church service remind us of this constantly. I may ask myself, “Am I really that
horrible?” I may think, “This is so negative and judgmental.” Or perhaps,
“Wait, am I beginning to like this language in a strange way?” Or else, “I’ve
had too many people in my life tell me I’m worthless. I don’t need a book and a
church to add to that hateful chorus.”
But if we are going to be part of the Church, we must face up to the sin
within us. In the New Testament, we hear St Paul saying, “None is righteous,
no, not one” (Rom 3:10). Later, we read, “If we say we are sinless we deceive
ourselves” (1 Jn 1:8). We are meant to acknowledge that everyone transgresses.
And that means that I sin. That I am a sinner. More starkly, as St Paul says in
another epistle, “I am the foremost of sinners” (1 Tim 1:15).
The idea goes back to the Old Testament. In prayer, we echo the psalmist,
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
Against you, you alone, have I sinned,
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence
and blameless when you pass judgment.
Indeed, I was born guilty,
a sinner when my mother conceived me.
(Ps 51:3–5)
Even though the language of sin can make us uncomfortable, it also
acknowledges the world as we know it. 1 It’s not a stretch for most of us to see
that the world is broken and that the root of the problem lies in our human
inclination toward the wrong. Reinhold Niebuhr famously remarked, “Original
sin is the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith.” People
may not accept Christianity or the existence of a personal God. But they
generally have little problem believing that our existential situation is dire.
 Where do we situate ourselves in that picture? In the 1930s, someone asked
the English writer and lay theologian G. K. Chesterton what was wrong with
the world. He answered, “I am.” The idea of each of us taking responsibility, of
locating societal sin with me, my own self, hasn’t exactly presented itself as
attractive in public discourse, however. Yet public opinion on these matters is
beginning to shift. An increasing number of social commentators and
psychologists, secular and religious, are drawing attention to the need for a
healthy understanding of sin.
Self-identifying as “a sinner” is tricky to get right. I can have healthy
reasons for avoiding that identity, as it has been known to perpetuate harmful
behavior or abusive relationships. Focusing on myself as a sinner risks
becoming maudlin or masochistic. Yet the “sinner identity” is useful—if only to
provoke us to ask ourselves some challenging questions. Am I reluctant to take
a deep, critical look at my thoughts and actions? Am I afraid of humility,
because it might set me back in my career ambitions? Am I just a pawn in a
dominant culture of self-gratification? These questions are neither simple nor
straightforward. But grappling with them can play a pivotal role in my
flourishing, my inner peace, my relationship with God and the world.
The thesis of this short book is that there are realistic, useful, and healthy
ways to understand ourselves within the dynamic of sin—just as there are also
destructive and unhelpful ways. The goal is to help us find and walk a well-
directed path through critical self-reflection, in freedom, joy, divine grace, and
mercy.
As a start, let me introduce you to some people, who might sound familiar.
The first two have trouble self-identifying as sinners. The third finds it too
easy.
John considers himself a basically decent person. He has never seriously
injured anyone. He is faithful to his wife. He goes to work, does his job,
and looks after his family. He is more-or-less honest in his financial
dealings. He doesn’t see the point of “confessing his sins.” Sure, he tells
the odd lie and sometimes stares at erotic images on the internet. But he
believes in God, and regards himself as a normal, reasonable person. He
sometimes quotes Homer Simpson, saying “I’m not a bad guy! I work
hard, and I love my kids. So why should I spend half my Sunday hearing
about how I’m going to hell?”
Joanne despises herself and her life. Her parents hadn’t wanted children
 and regularly reminded her that, if anything, they would have preferred
a son. They rarely called her by her name. Her father sometimes beat her,
though in other moods he was uncomfortably affectionate. Nothing that
Joanne did seemed to be good enough. Her efforts always fell short of
what her parents wanted. In fact, she couldn’t figure out what their
expectations were, given that they fluctuated between the unattainably
high and the pathetically low. She sometimes cuts herself. The idea of
calling herself a sinner makes her feel sick. Although she knows the term
well, it represents everything she’s trying to move beyond. Her therapist
has advised her to have as little to do with her family and her church as
possible.
Paisios joined the Church a year and a half ago. His name used to be
Jim, but he’s asked his friends and family to refer to him by his new
Christian name. He signs his emails, even if they contain nothing more
than the day’s shopping list, “+ The Wretch, Paisios.” He is participating
in an unacknowledged contest with others as to who is the worst sinner.
He dresses in black, reads ascetical literature, and has grown a
flourishing beard. He goes to confession, though not to his parish priest
but to a monk 250 miles away.
All of these examples represent instances of the sinner identity that need
some adjustment, so as not to lead either to self-destruction or hubris. In
addition, the Church’s reminders of our sinfulness are at loggerheads with our
current society, which encourages self-empowerment, accepting ourselves, and
abolishing negative thoughts or language about ourselves. This call to self-
affirmation begins early. Virtually every film aimed at children seems to
hammer at the theme, “Be true to yourself; love yourself exactly as you are.”
Every child in a sports or academic competition receives a trophy for showing
up. For people who grow up in such a culture, the Church’s fixation on
personal wretchedness may promise to stir up a cocktail of self-hatred,
masochism, abandoning success and fulfillment, or “humbly bragging” that you
are the greatest of offenders. As if it were a contest.
But society’s focus on self-affirmation can carry an important truth. Self-
acceptance can healthily lead us to a realistic appraisal of who we are, and
reveal what is and is not changeable within us. Learning self-affirmation can
be especially important if we if we have been told in our early years—by
parents, teachers, schoolmates—that we are pathetic or unwanted. Otherwise,
we are likely to make destructive life choices and project our self-loathing onto
others.
So how do we make sense of the Church’s language of sin and repentance,
its prayers for divine mercy on us as wretched sinners? How do some people
manage to find liberation, joy, and salvation in it—and how can we tap into
that? One thing is sure: God did not create us for self-hating misery. God did
not make us in his image so that we could spend our lives deploring ourselves,
or feeling guilty for not feeling guilty enough. He did not put us on this earth
to wallow. In the second century, St Irenaeus wrote, “The glory of God is a
living human being.” 2 By “living” he meant a person rightly alive to the vision
of God and all that is good.
Seeing ourselves as sinners means that we are also going to have to grapple
with humility. That is a concept that is alternately derided and praised in our
society. Some see the word as having negative connotations. They may fear
that being “poor in spirit” might stop them from achieving greatness. In that
light, the novelist Ayn Rand, for example, took an extreme view of humility as
the root of all evil. But when we meet someone who is truly self-effacing,
modest, and aware of their faults and their complete dependency on God, we
actually may find that person deeply compelling, wondering what it is that
gives them that freedom, confidence, and inner calm. We can sense that to be
genuinely humble can be liberating. Ironically, it can be a path to greatness, to
spectacular achievements. And such people are often the most peaceful,
joyous, and even strongest human beings we will ever know. That’s quite a
distance from the clichéd image of the “humble one” as the pathetic church-
mouse with bad posture and worse breath.
So my goals in this book revolve around reorienting our understanding of
how to “successfully” be a sinner:
To see a genuine “sinner identity” as realistic and healing, rather than
neurotic
To understand that identity as holistic, rather than divisive
To cultivate a self-love that is healthy, rather than narcissistic
To find self-acceptance that is realistic and constructive, rather than
libertine

Some other goals are:

To help you direct your heart towards healthy and genuine compunction
 To help motivate positive change and correction of your life through love
To help make you aware of our total dependency on God
To help show you the breadth and depth of God’s love and mercy

One benefit of this reorientation (apart from the palpable experience of

salvation, freedom, and lightness!) is that we will gain an understanding of
ourselves before God that will make it impossible for us to judge or condemn
others. That means that we might reduce by at least one person—ourself—the
number of judgmental and resentful Christians, which is surely a worthy goal!

Who Is This Book For?

As I wrote this, I had in mind people of Christian faith who have had a niggling
question about the Church’s sinner language. It is also written for you if you
are looking for ways to intensify your experience of your faith—to make it
more real. As we repeat written prayers and psalms, sometimes we skim over
the bits that sound foreign or else we read them in a pro-forma way. What
would happen if we took that language seriously? The book is not going to
demand theological expertise, only a desire to go deeper.
This book is rooted in the life of the Orthodox Church. It draws on that
tradition and its sensibilities. As a result, it challenges some cherished
teachings from Reformed Christianity. Those include ideas about human total
depravity or predestination. The idea that a person can be saved only from the
moment of belief and confession in Jesus as Lord is likewise foreign to
Orthodox thinking. In our theology, humans rely completely on God for our
very existence as well as for our flourishing and salvation.
We do not view humans as totally depraved. The image of God propels us
to cooperate willingly in the process of our salvation and lies at our core
identity, however broken that may be. A central premise of this book is that we
human beings are innately good. But from the very beginning we distort this
goodness and must recover it. We are sinners who, even as we are constantly
being forgiven, must always be in the process of conversion and the correction
of our lives. But God’s grace and mercy reaches us precisely through our
brokenness. In this, we begin to see what lies at the heart of our joy, humility,
and inner liberty.
All Christian churches feature some form of public and/or private
confession of sin. This book sometimes will reference the different forms of
practice of private confession in the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and other
traditions. My hope is that wherever you stand within the spectrum of
spiritual life, experience, and teaching, you will find the following chapters
relatable and useful.

Notes
1 For a reflection on what we mean by the word “sin,” see the appendix “What is Sin?” at page 175.
2 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.20.7.
 1
Discovering Myself as “Sinner”
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
1 John 1.8
None is righteous, no, not one.
Romans 3.10
When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away.
Psalm 32.3

M
ost all of us are well aware that we have faults. What we do with that
knowledge is another matter. It is possible to make too little or too
much of our shortcomings. We may brush them off, saying “I’m only
human.” Conversely we might be shocked by our faults, as a matter of pride.
“How can someone as wonderful as I am get it so wrong?” Some of us will
experience real self-loathing and become disasters to ourselves as well as to
everyone around us. Any of us are liable to move along the spectrum between
these two extreme reactions at different points in our lives. But apart from the
emotional aspect of dealing with our faults, we need to try to take an objective
look at ourselves. Just as we need to diagnose an illness so that it can be
treated, we have to find a way to perceive our wrong-headedness, misdeeds,
and skewed priorities. We need to acknowledge and take responsibility for
them. This is crucial for our mental, physical, and spiritual health.
In this book we are going to devote considerable attention to the potential
pitfalls of sinner language, which can include toxic levels of guilt and shame.
They can also cause us to forget the innate glory of humanness. But probably
the more common phenomenon is the person who doesn’t believe that sinner
language relates to him, the “basically decent person” who cannot conceive
that he or she is in desperate need of divine healing, of reconciliation with
God, others, and the created world.
Knowledge of yourself—especially your sins—is vital to your health. A full
self-understanding is extremely rare, if not unattainable. According to St Isaac
the Syrian, seeing ourselves as we really are is a greater miracle than raising
the dead. 1 So in this chapter we will talk about how to discover ourselves as
sinners. This discovery, not surprisingly, is always a process. Ideally, we are
always growing into a deeper understanding of ourselves in relation to God
and each other. Self-discovery, including that of our sinner identity, is a
journey. Most of us don’t wake up one day crying out, as the psalmist does,
“For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me” (Ps 51.3). Most of
us are able to live into its words only gradually. This voyage, like any other,
will take us through peaks and valleys.

One Journey
Self-discovery by definition is a personal matter. It is private and it looks
different for everyone. That said, I thought it might be helpful to walk you
through my own, as an example.
I can’t point to the day and hour that I began to see myself as a sinner. But I
could narrow it down to about a five-year period in my youth, with a “before”
picture and an “after” picture. Part of the “before” was that once I turned
seven, there was never a time when I didn’t go to confession at least a few
times a year. I would typically confess that I lied, I fought with my sister, I got
angry, or whatever. I knew that these actions were “sins.” I never considered
myself a saint or a particularly good person. I had plenty of insecurities. I knew
I surely wasn’t getting things right. I knew in my core I believed in God, and
loved him and the Church, and that I fell short of being worthy of either.
Despite that, it didn’t occur to me to apply to call myself “a sinner.” I had no
clear concept for what that word meant, and no idea how to evaluate it as a
word that might describe myself. I pushed it to one side: “sinner” sounded too
negative, and perhaps a little too pious. Plus I figured that I was basically a
decent guy.
Then occurred a confession when I was in my early 20s. Very little had come
to me to say that day. I knew that it somehow wasn’t right to say so little—to
feel so little—about my wrongful thoughts, words, acts. I knew I had to be
erring more than I was conscious of. (Not to mention that other people’s
confessions always seem to take so much more time than mine!) So I said all of
that to the priest. He said, very matter-of-factly and without special portent,
“It’s all right, Peter. Sometimes God hides our sinfulness from us. He puts a
cloak over our sins. Especially when he knows we couldn’t bear to see them.”
As you can imagine, that got me thinking—for a few years.
My long transition period included two years living in Japan and traveling
throughout Asia. On my trek homeward, I spent several weeks in the
tumultuous tranquility of different monasteries in Greece and England that
daily recited the Jesus Prayer for hours at a time. “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of
God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The wording of that prayer varies from
community to community. Interestingly—and coincidentally—the monasteries
where I stayed the longest used a wording of the Jesus Prayer that omitted the
word “sinner.” I know that my sojourns in those communities profoundly
helped shape my understanding of myself as a sinner, though not by using that
word in that prayer. Maybe just asking for God’s mercy , over and over again,
presupposes that you need it pretty desperately.
Within months of those monastic stays, I started studying at seminary. By
that time the sinner language had somehow come together in a way that made
sense to me. After all those years, the penny finally dropped. But the journey
didn’t end there. It continues in what I hope is a constantly deepening
understanding of my fallen state and my utter dependence on God, his mercy,
forgiveness, and love.
* * *
Your story will be different from mine. Everyone’s is, and relatively few will
involve sojourns at monasteries and seminaries. But in reviewing my
experience and that of others, I can point to several factors that can help soften
our hearts and sharpen our self-perception. These might help bring you to the
discovery that you are a sinner—a forgiven sinner. Let’s look at what the
experience of beauty, purity, truth, and light can do.

Exposure
Have you ever found yourself in the presence of someone who fills you with
light and good? In that presence, have you perhaps simultaneously felt
somehow exposed and ashamed? You don’t even have to exchange words with
someone like that, to know that you are in the presence of holiness. People—or
places—that are pure, transparent, holy can simultaneously inspire and expose
us. They give us an inkling of what it might feel like to experience the presence
of God. Can we endure that degree of love and beauty?
St Paul tells us to think about whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely,
worthy of praise (Phil 4.8). Why? Because they are intimations of God. They
describe Jesus Christ. They are a window to his presence. They soften our
hearts. Their brilliance fills us and can act as a spotlight on our lowliness and
failings. St Paul challenges us: “Walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is
found in all that is good and right and true.” He continues, “When anything is
exposed by the light it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is
light” (Eph 5.8–13).
Our feelings when we encounter with beauty, truth, purity may describe
arcs of greater and lesser proportions, tracing heights and depths of feeling,
often simultaneously. “Lord, it is good to be here!” exclaims Peter upon seeing
Jesus clothed in uncreated Light, just before he is overcome by the sight. After
he and the others fall on their faces in awe, Jesus tells them to rise and stop
being afraid (Mt 17.2–7).
A crucial moment in the story of Mary of Egypt (4th–5th c.) came when she
put herself in the presence of the cross of Christ and an icon of the Virgin
Mary. As a far-gone sex addict standing in front of holiness, salvation, and
purity, she was brought to the stark recognition of how polluted her life was,
such that she couldn’t even enter the church. In her repentance, she began to
experience a feeling—not of divine judgment, but of mercy. And so she began
her decades-long odyssey to completely change her life.
The great 20th-century poet W. H. Auden reflected on his friendship with
the Christian writer Charles Williams in this way:
I had met many good people before who made me ashamed of my own
shortcomings, but in the presence of this man . . . I did not feel ashamed. I
felt transformed into a person who was incapable of doing or thinking
anything base or unloving. 2
He is describing what ideally happens when we place ourselves in front of
goodness: not destructive shame, but the sense of possibility. The built-in
potential for good is ultimately a sense of the true inner self. It contains the
sense of how sin is utterly contrary to that inner self.
Our exposure to anything that is really true, genuine, beautiful—or to
someone who loves us completely, to the core of our being—can be a terrifying
experience. We may want to turn tail and run, fast, because we know that to
withstand that exposure entails the changing our life. The pain of this
experience is only tolerable when we know that we are being “judged” by
someone who is pure love and mercy. And God is loving and merciful to an
extent that is beyond our comprehension.
Sometimes we needn’t travel far to experience that kind of exposure. In fact,
we can find something of this purity, joy, shaming, and unconditional love, in
our relationships with babies and young children. We can also perceive it in
our interaction with nature, and sometimes especially with animals. Even
there, together with the joy of such encounters, we might feel the pain of being
exposed by their un-self-conscious purity. The pain of the experience may be
one reason why some people abuse children and animals, whose purity and
simplicity can show us uncomfortable truths about ourselves.
There’s nothing new here. As we hear it in St John’s Gospel,
This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved
darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who
does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that
their deeds will be exposed. (Jn 3.19–20, NIV)
But if we can bear that defenselessness and the love and forgiveness that
accompanies it, we will gain insight into ourselves before God and each other.
We will be helped to understand our sin, and begin again on the path towards
purity.

Other Ways In
There are, of course, other potential landmarks along the route of our self-
discovery as sinners.
One obvious one is a big failure . Suddenly we wake up to the realization
that by saying something (or not), by taking a course of action (or not), we
have done great damage either to ourselves, to someone else, or to the world.
The mistake might have taken one second, perhaps when we impulsively press
“send” on a really bad e-mail. It might have taken years of festering in a toxic
relationship. But suddenly we realize that we have totally blundered, and are
filled with regret. Such failures can lead us into vain replayings of our mental
tape-loops, about how stupid I sounded when I made that remark about my
colleague. But compunction over our serious errors can sometimes serve as a
promising lead-in to a more thorough and constructive inventory of our lives.
Another entry can come from contemplating the fallenness of the world .
We can observe society’s subtle failures and mediocrities, or dwell on
especially horrible events, and find inklings of those tragedies in the depths of
our own hearts. Sometimes we step into a realization that—because we are all
so thoroughly interconnected—something exists within each of us that
contributes to the disastrous state of affairs. Once in the aftermath of a series
of arson attacks against black churches in the South, I was part of an
ecumenical committee drafting a prayer service. The other participants mostly
proposed prayers that lamented or condemned other people’s racism and
anger. I suggested a prayer of personal confession, identifying the anger,
pettiness, and prejudice that dwell in our own hearts. To which most of the
committee replied, “Why? We’re not the angry racists. They are.” But the ones
who took a deeper look inside themselves were markedly uncomfortable with
what they saw there. Taking responsibility for the ills of the world can seem
like sheer vanity—as if I am personally so consequential!—but it should actually
stems from a deep sense that we are all in this together. And wouldn’t it seem
that our primary duty should be amending our own lives rather than pointing
fingers of blame at others? After all, we can take total responsibility for and
actually change only ourselves.
A final entry point to consider is the thought of our mortality . We’re going
to die. The older we get, the idea of our death arrives more frequently as the
years speed up and our bodies and minds begin failing us more. We may have
to confront it after a near-death experience, an accident, a heart attack,
preparation for serious surgery, or the purchase of a burial plot. The realization
that we will inevitably die has a way of cutting through some of our self-
justification. It may even lead to a liberating spontaneity. There’s an
illustrative moment in, of all places, the musical Zorba :
He said, “I live every minute as if I would never die.” Think of that, Boss!
He lived as if he would never die. I live as if I would die any minute! For
that reason . . . just that reason, I am free!
Traditional ascetical literature encourages us to cultivate the remembrance
of our death. Memento mori— the recollection that you will die—can lead us to
a focused life, doing the things that bring meaning and improvement to
people’s lives, rather than wasting time on the inconsequential. Imagine the
sudden realization that you had just one more day, or one more hour, to live.
How would you hurry to prepare yourself? You might seek out pleasurable or
meaningful experiences. But you might instead seek to reconcile yourself with
others, with yourself, and with your God. You might take stock of all the ways
you’ve wronged people and seek to set them right. A realization of our
mortality will engender a more thoughtful setting of priorities. It should help
us ordering our lives so that we minimize harm, quickly seek people’s
forgiveness, and try to let go of their offenses against us. Our striving in this
direction may ultimately prevent us from taking offense at anything, or
resenting anyone, because, really, why bother if death is around the corner?
Why bother?
All of this sounds potentially liberating, doesn’t it? Let’s contemplate for a
moment the incalculable rewards that all of this self-awareness-as-sinner (
forgiven sinner) can bring. The Church encourages us to pray for the
recognition of our sins. During the Canon of Repentance 3 we pray “Give me
understanding, O Lord, that I may weep bitterly over my deeds.” The reason
we want this understanding so much that we pray for it, is that it constitutes
true perception of reality. That perception brings inner freedom, compassion,
and the freedom from judging others. These are incalculable gifts that we will
explore more thoroughly in the next chapter. They amount to an enlightenment
that is worth approaching God for and working towards for the whole of our
lives.

Some Practical Suggestions

So how do we take the next step on that journey, of the proper discovery of
ourselves, of identifying our sinfulness? How do we pursue this gift, without
which we are in darkness?
Let me suggest four things:
1. Pray for the gift of self-perception—specifically for the gift of the
awareness of your own sins, of your particular passions. Asking God to
show you the extent of your sin may seem dreadful, dangerous. Can you
bear it? Yet you must trust God that he will give you only what you can
bear. All your prayer does is indicate to God and yourself your readiness
to take a tiny step closer to him. You are stepping infinitesimally closer to
an awareness of your brokenness, and your utter contingency upon God
and his mercy. “Lord, as you will, as you deem it fit, bring me to an
awareness of my sin.” If you are ready for a more sustained meditation,
read from The Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete, chanted during Great
Lent. Putting us before examples of sinners and saints, it is full of prayers
for the recognition of our countless sins, in the sureness of God’s loving
compassion.
 2. Examine yourself, consciously. This one is tricky, too, because looking at
yourself can become a kind of vainglory. What you might do is examine
yourself every day as if you were preparing for confession. I once asked a
monk how to prepare for the confession of sins. He advised me to set as a
goal to be prepared for confession at every moment of my life. That means
if someone were to say, in the middle of my morning coffee or while I’m
binge-watching a TV series, “Right now! Here’s your chance!” that I’d be
totally ready. Think of how it is with your physical health: attention,
diagnosis, and healing are most effective when they are ongoing practices,
not rare events set aside for once or twice a year. So examine yourself, as
a regular discipline. Know and name the passions that you struggle with. 4
3. As much as you can, be involved in the Church’s worship life, in its daily,
weekly, and annual rhythms. That would also include observing its cycles
of fasting, which are designed to aid in repentance, together with the
confession of sins. These disciplines have been tried and tested for ages,
guiding us by exposing our vulnerabilities and dependencies. Place
yourself consistently within these cycles, ideally without interruption:
regularity is important. If you have a bucket of dirty water, and keep a
constant, regular drip of pure water, the bucket will gradually become
purified. Keep showing up.
4. Put yourself in situations of purity , goodness, holiness. Read good books,
of all kinds. Put yourself in the presence of good people, especially ones
devoted to the pursuit of purity. Learn from time spent with young
children and animals, who in their absence of self-consciousness can be
profound truth-tellers. Behold beauty and goodness consciously. Expose
yourself to their benefits: edification, compunction, tears, love, joy,
gratitude.
5. Be alert in times of crisis. They may give you particular insight into your
shortcomings. The truism that “Our problems are actually opportunities,”
is not an empty one, if you use such challenges as times to reflect on
yourself, remembering too that you will die.

Whether or not these kinds of suggestions are new to you, take a moment
to consider them. It’s a classic Christian paradox: the greatest saints perceive
themselves as the worst sinners. We are always somewhere along the path of
discovering God’s greatness and our own lowliness. There is no time like the
present: let us covenant with ourselves and each other that we will take the
next steps on the journey to our own self-understanding.

Notes
1 See Homily 68 , in The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian (Boston, MA: Holy Transfiguration
Monastery, 1984), 334.
2 Modern Canterbury Pilgrims , ed. W. H. Auden and James A. Pike (New York: Morehouse-Gorham,
1956), 41.
3 This canon is probably by St Andrew of Crete, though not to be confused with the Great Canon that
is chanted during Great Lent.
4 We discuss these things later on in this book, in sections on knowing yourself and naming the
passions.
 2
Like I Need This?
The Sinner Identity and Its Gifts
How much joy, how much peace of soul would a person have wherever
he went . . . if he was one who habitually accused himself . . . that person
would have complete freedom from care.
Dorotheos of Gaza 1

I
n order to be able to see anything, the eye needs light. In order to see truths
about God, ourselves, the world, we require light of another kind. The
“enlightenment” of our minds depends on God. As the 20th-century
monastic elder Sophrony tells us, “To apprehend sin in oneself is a spiritual act,
impossible without grace, without the drawing near to us of divine Light. . . .” 2
Divine Light and the insight that it brings is a matter of gift; it is grace. My
access to it doesn’t depend entirely on me. I can’t will it into existence. For that
matter, I can’t save myself, I can’t have faith purely out of my own intellectual
acumen, I can’t become virtuous purely out of my own will-power, I can’t come
to a right understanding of myself and my sinfulness on my own. God grants
these gifts.
I have to seek divine Light, and cooperate with it. I have to earnestly desire
it. I have to pray about it and pray for it. I have to journey toward actually
wanting to perceive myself as sinner. Then I have to work with perceiving
myself that way. As St Isaac of Syria writes starkly,
At once rouse your soul, and with tears persuade him who saves all to
draw back the curtain from the door of your heart, to scatter the murk of
the passions’ storm from your inner sky, and to vouchsafe you to see a
ray of daylight, lest you be like one dead, sitting in darkness forever. 3
He means that we ignore our faults and our passions at our peril. But seeing
my true self is painful. Many of us spend a lot of our time and energy avoiding
genuine self-discovery. We take refuge in the world’s abundant noise,
distractions, and mediocrity because even a glimpse of our sins can be horribly
unpleasant. We so often “hate the light . . . lest our deeds should be exposed”
(Jn 3.20).
So we may ask, “Why go down that road?” Why petition God for this “gift”
of perception if it only shows us our own disease? Since the sinner language
and identity can evidently go wrong, why bother with it? Even if as some of
what we see in our interior depths isn’t pretty, there are benefits to seeing
ourselves more clearly. Let’s explore some of them.

1. Perception of Reality
Being able to view our faults, passions, misdirected thoughts and deeds
unclouds our perception, not just of ourselves, but of everything. To continue
the quote by Fr Sophrony above: “True contemplation begins the moment we
become aware of sin.” True contemplation, that is, of other people, of the
created world, and of God—of everything—is contingent upon our awareness of
sin in ourselves. We cannot see things as they are if we don’t see ourselves as
we are.
St John’s First Epistle states unequivocally, “If we say we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. . . . If we say we have not sinned,
we make [God] a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 Jn 1.8–10). Our sinfulness is
a fact. If we deny that, we are denying God—an overwhelming thought.
Perhaps more accessible is the notion that we are deceiving ourselves. Much as
we don’t want to deny God, we also might be leery of deceiving ourselves. The
underlying proposition here is that truth exists, as does falsehood. To propose
that I am completely sinless is essentially a guaranteed falsehood, a denial of
reality, even in a relativistic and “post-factual” culture.
The claim, then, is that a genuine, uncluttered understanding of other
people and of the world around us is predicated on the clearest possible
perception of ourselves. This premise operates at many empirical levels,
including science. This doesn’t mean that every astute scientist is a paragon of
personal humility. But good science depends on a realistic assessment of an
inquiry’s preconceptions and methodological weaknesses. To the extent we are
also true to reality, we have a clearer relationship with ourselves, others, and
God. And we are then positioned to work to correct our lives.
2. Freedom
I was standing outside a church many years ago when a boy who had just
been to confession came out the door. He immediately started running, waving
his arms, calling, “I’m flying! I’m flying!” He embodied the purpose of
confession, the unburdening of the soul so that it may fly. Would that our
every confession of sin had that effect upon us! But we are all familiar with the
feeling—sometimes even physiologically—of the lifting of burdens when we
have acknowledged a wrong, whether before a friend, a spouse, an authority,
or a child. The problems don’t necessarily evaporate. There may still be
reparative work to do, behavior to change, and feelings to heal. But we can
now address these with a clearer conscience, possibly with the committed
cooperation of the person we trespassed against.
This dynamic can run very deep. I remember a priest who told me about a
stooped, elderly woman who came to him for confession. After it felt like
everything was wrapping up, it came to him to ask, “Is there anything, even
from a very long time ago, that’s on your heart to bring here in confession?”
After a long silence, she began sobbing and revealed that she had had an
abortion in her youth. She had never before confessed it. The priest, who began
weeping with her, somehow managed to convey to her the boundless love of
God, whose saints and angels were rejoicing that she had come to this
confession. She departed a more upright person, liberated of the burden that
she had kept inside herself for so long. She experienced the forgiveness of God
and now could begin to forgive herself.
Conscience is powerful. If we know we’ve done something wrong—we lied,
we cheated, we wounded someone with words deliberately—acknowledging
that and asking forgiveness may change everything. We can look people in the
eye again! Other times, our misdirected thoughts, words, or deeds may be
invisible to us. But our conscience causes us to suffer nonetheless. Our
ignorance of such sins, our inability to see or articulate them can’t shield us
from the physical and psychological suffering they cause. Deep inside, they
muck up our physical, emotional, spiritual lives.
The liberation of our conscience, through admitting our sins, is linked to a
kind of surrender. As we become increasingly aware of our distorted passions,
compulsions, addictions, and brokenness, we become increasingly able to yield
them to God. We admit our powerlessness over these things and give him
charge. We admit the limitations of our own reason and the deceptiveness of
our cleverness. We then free ourselves from a slavish obedience to them. What
an incredible, unmeasurable relief that is. Because God is limitlessly powerful,
good-beyond-good, and endlessly loving.
Oddly enough, some might assume that considering yourself “a sinner”
leads to personal weakness, ineffectiveness, and sniveling mousiness. But isn’t
it the other way around? The people who are most in-touch with themselves
tend to be the happiest. They recognize their sins as well as their gifts. They
take responsibility for the former and are grateful for the latter, and they work
on each. The freest, least self-conscious people are usually those who know full
well that they are broken, that they are sinners, and that they depend on a
higher power for their very life. That mentality is common to religious ascetics,
to recovering addicts (religious or otherwise), and to courageously self-honest
people from all walks of life. They know that—left entirely to their own devices
—they would be lying in the gutter. Self-knowledge and surrender to God’s
immeasurable love and strength don’t turn you into a church mouse. Quite the
opposite: you become fully alive, sure-footed, and truly free.

3. Assurance
This freedom is also liberty from fear. Once we perceive and acknowledge our
faults and surrender them to God, we have the deepened assurance of being
loved and forgiven. This is not a simple dynamic. Rowan Williams expresses it
well in describing the ancient desert monastics:
The desert fathers and mothers are [ . . . ] sure that God will forgive, but
they know with equal certainty that for us to receive that forgiveness in
such a way that our lives will be changed is a lifetime’s work requiring
the most relentless monitoring of our selfish and lazy habits of thinking
and reacting. 4
You may think that, well, everyone desires love, and mercy, and forgiveness.
What’s not to love about love and mercy? But it is not so simple. Living with
and living into another’s total love—especially God’s—is painfully humbling.
Strangely, we may prefer the feeling of being hated to the exposed and
shameful feeling of being totally loved. It is indeed a lifetime’s work to receive
God’s love and forgiveness. But even as we undertake that work, we are
already experiencing the “blessed assurance” that God has saved the world,
and that God loves and saves even me. To the extent that I have made an
inventory of myself and submitted it to the loving God, I no longer obsess over
what people think of me, whether others esteem me. Whether people treat me
like gold or like dirt, I will always recall that I am known and loved, and that
my life is taken up in the living God. I can walk sure-footedly, confident, fully
alive. In God.
Williams writes further about the ancient desert ascetics: “They know with
utter seriousness the cost to them of their sin and selfishness and vanity, yet
know that God will heal and accept.” Divine acceptance doesn’t soften the
intensity with which they know their sinfulness. But it has implications for
relationships with other people, as “their knowledge of [their sins] is what
gives them their almost shocking tenderness towards other sinners.” 5

4. Non-Judgment
“People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” This old adage points
out that if I am aware of the depth of my vulnerability and weakness—my glass
house—I will be less likely to denounce others. After all, as we sometimes say
casually, “Who am I to judge?” Or more seriously, “How can I condemn
someone else when I myself do worse?”
This can be taken to extremes. I once went to confession to a priest who, at
every wrongdoing that I mentioned, would say, “Don’t worry, I do that too!” A
sweet and kind person, maybe his pastoral sensibilities dictated that this was
what I needed to hear in the moment, as a comfort. But in principle his good
nature misapplied the sin/confession dynamic. The commandment not to judge
any person (Mt 7.1; Rom 2.1, etc.) doesn’t mean that we should not call out sin
for what it is, in ourselves and in others. This is true especially if we’re in the
role of hearing out people’s faults and helping guide them. We are supposed to
discern sin as part of a genuine perception of reality. Sin exists. Evil exists.
When someone does evil, it may be entirely appropriate to hold them
responsible. But we are not to judge the person, or worse, condemn the person
—only the actions. We cannot claim to know the inner reality that compelled
them to act wrongly. Friend or foe, we can only entrust them to the loving,
merciful God: “God loves your enemies as much as he loves you.” 6
We are supposed to be occupied exclusively with our own sin, to the extent
that we rightly condemn ourselves. But self-condemnation is not self-hatred. It
means seeing ourselves as unworthy of salvation or, in other words, dependent
entirely on God’s mercy. But condemning others as unworthy of God’s salvation
is wrong. The extent to which we are aware of our own depravity, contrasted
with God’s holiness and mercy, is the extent to which it becomes unthinkable
for us to stand in judgment of another person.
Some of the great Christian writers warn against censuring others. St
Dorotheos of Gaza writes, “It is part of humility to scrutinize severely one’s
own wrongdoing and to be sympathetic and forbearing towards one’s
neighbor,” 7 citing two sides of the spiritual coin. Fr Seraphim Rose, a stern
monastic of the 20th century, writes in one of his letters of spiritual guidance,
“Don’t criticize or judge other people—regard everyone else as an angel, justify
their mistakes and weaknesses, and condemn only yourself as the worst
sinner.” 8 There is thus an inextricable connection between knowing one’s own
faults and the refusal or even inability to judge another person. One ascetic,
Moses the Black, put it in terms of time management: “If one is carrying his
[own] sins he does not see his neighbor’s.” 9 Another wrote about the absurdity
of disparaging others’ messiness when your own house is disordered: “If you
want to find repose both here and there, say in every situation: ‘I, who am I?’
and do not pass judgment on anybody.” 10 But the connection becomes
something still deeper than non-judgment. It has to do with the softening of
your heart, remaining open to the other. It has to do with compassion.

5. Compassion
We should not judge others. If we see ourselves as we are, we will find it
simply impossible to. Self-understanding yields mercy, empathy, tolerance, love
of the other. St Seraphim of Sarov, who lived at the turn of the 19th century,
observed, “We condemn others only because we shun knowing ourselves.” Our
deepening realization of our own sin coupled with our increasing experience of
God’s mercy will fill us with compassion for others. We will begin to realize
that no one is beyond redemption. We will rejoice in people’s small and great
acts of kindness. We will cheer their successes. We will experience empathetic
sorrow at their struggles and failings. We will not pretend to know or fully
understand the intricacies of the internal and external factors in their hearts.
We will fervently wish for them nothing but God’s abundant grace, blessing,
and love. We will pray that they increasingly come to a conscious knowledge
of that love.
* * *
Living in reality, free and fearless, judging no one, with true compassion
towards all, even as you work toward the correction of your life—these are the
repercussions of a healthy knowledge of yourself, realistically acknowledge
your sins and your total dependency on our loving God. These are gifts, which
may give you an inkling of why it might be worth embarking on the journey to
seeing yourself as a sinner. We will hear more about them in the pages to
come.

Notes
1 Dorotheus of Gaza, Dorotheos of Gaza: Discourses and Sayings (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian
Publications, 1977), 141. St Dorotheus refers this teaching to Abba Poemen.
2 Archimandrite Sophrony, His Life is Mine , 41.
3 Homily 68. REFERENCE?
4 Silence and Honey Cakes: The Wisdom of the Desert (Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2003), 35.
5 Ibid., 36.
6 See “Mother Gavrilia: All-Pervading Love for Everyone,” The Wheel 9/10 (2017): 56.
7 Dorotheos of Gaza, Discourses and Sayings , 161.
8 Reproduced two years after Fr Seraphim’s death, in the Jan.-Feb. 1984 issue of the journal Living
Orthodoxy.
9 Moses the Black, Saying 16 (Moses to Poemen 3), in Give Me a Word: The Alphabetical Sayings of the
Desert Fathers , trans. John Wortley, Popular Patristics Series 52 (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 2014), 197.
10 Joseph of Panepho, Saying 2, in Give Me a Word , 150.
 3
Am I Really the Worst?
Spare even me, though by defying your commands I am the worst sinner
in the world.
Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete
I believe, O Lord . . . that you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God,
who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first.
Prayers said before Holy Communion (attributed to St John
Chrysostom)

S
t Paul, one of the Church’s greatest saints, writes “I am the foremost of
sinners” (1 Tim 1.15). Before he became “St Paul,” indeed before he even
became “Paul,” he was “Saul,” who hunted down, persecuted, and killed
Christians. So, you might be tempted to say, “Well, maybe he actually was the
worst!” But he doesn’t write in the past tense that “I was the foremost of
sinners.” He makes his statement in the present tense. The saint who sailed
from city to city to preach of Christ and lay the foundations of the Church
through his letters, along the way getting shipwrecked, publicly whipped, and
imprisoned, considers himself the chief of transgressors. We find this pattern
throughout Christian history: the greatest of our saints consider themselves
the worst of sinners.
But the Church invites each and every one of us to think of ourselves as the
lowest of sinners. Which is obviously illogical. How can each of us be the
worst? It’s just as unreasonable as thinking each can be the best. If the playing
field is level, the ranks of “worst” or “best” are meaningless.
Furthermore, isn’t it potentially prideful to boast, even to yourself, that you
are the worst? Especially if we equate awareness of sinfulness with virtue,
well, what happens when you call yourself the worst? Doesn’t that effectively
make you the best ? Can you really blame the whole world’s malaise on your
transgressions? Take a deep breath: your sins are likely not so remarkable.
They’re probably quite banal.
 “I am the foremost of sinners.” How can I make sense of this statement as I
strive to make it my own? To date, I haven’t launched any genocides. I haven’t
physically tortured or murdered anyone. Surely there are worse sinners than
me.
All fair enough. But this superlatively dire self-assessment is also entirely
right in several critically important ways.
For one, to the best of my knowledge, it is actually true. I can’t fully know
the misdeeds, circumstances, external strictures, inner struggles, or repentance
of other people. It is not mine to analyze other people’s shortcomings or their
motivations. Doing so will not benefit me. Plus, their failings are fully known
only to God. I have access to and control over only myself. I can bring only
myself before God’s judgment. And I will tell you that the picture is not very
pretty. Given the circumstances in which I was raised, my education and life in
the Church, what I have seen and what I know, for me to harbor the kind of
thoughts I have, to speak the words I say, and do the deeds I do is utterly
inexcusable. As for the state of my repentance? The quality of my prayer?
Forget it. I can’t say how it goes for anyone else. I honestly have no idea. But
there’s a really good chance they are doing this all better than I do, thanks be
to God.
I don’t know the hearts of others, but I do know something of my heart. So I
suspect that, if I were actually in a position of totalitarian control and found
myself threatened, who knows the evils I might commit? While I was living in
Japan in the 1980s, I visited Hiroshima. I spent hours wandering through the
memorials and exhibits that recount the events and aftermath of August 6,
1945, when the US dropped an atom bomb on the city in one of the last events
of World War II. I came across a life-sized replica of the bomb that laid waste
to the city and destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives. As I looked at that
murderous piece of metal, I had a sudden, momentary vision of that bomb, in a
tiny form, inside my own heart. I saw this specter as a gift from God, a
fledgling insight that there is no sin that I am not capable of doing or
rationalizing. There is no sin that I am not capable of committing within the
recesses of my heart or potentially in reality. It is still hard for me to say, with
complete commitment, that I am the foremost of all sinners. But I know how it
is possible to say it and mean it.

The Door to Mercy

Recognizing ourselves as the lowest of all opens us to God’s mercy. As St Paul
writes,
The grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are
in Christ Jesus. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the
foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the
foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example
to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. (1 Tim 1.14–16)
We are sinners surrounded by sinners. The paragraph above follows a
catalogue of “murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,
sexually immoral persons, kidnapers, liars . . .” (vv. 9–10). But this human
condition, in all its depravity, is what Christ came to save. St Paul, identifying
himself as worse even than the manslayers and “sodomites,” sets himself up as
the paradigm of God’s mercy and forbearance with people. St Paul seems to be
saying, “If God is patient with me—the worst of the lot—then we have to
believe he will be merciful to everyone. If someone like me can be saved, then
there’s hope for us all.”
I wrote in an earlier chapter that an awareness of the world’s brokenness
may lead to the realization that I myself play a consequential role in that
brokenness. It’s easy to follow this idea down the wrong path. For example, I
might delude myself into thinking I am personally the most important factor in
the world’s destiny. Better that it create in me a sense of my own
responsibility before the world, which can lead me through faith in God into
holiness of life, peace of soul, and joy of heart. Dostoevsky captures this
concept in The Brothers Karamazov, when the Elder Zosima recounts a
conversation between his dying brother Markel and his mother:
“[I] tell you, dear mother, that each of us is guilty in everything before
everyone, and I most of all.” . . . “How can it be . . . that you are the most
guilty before everyone? There are murderers and robbers, and how have
you managed to sin so that you should accuse yourself most of all?”
“Dear mother, heart of my heart . . . you must know that verily each of us
is guilty before everyone, for everyone and everything! I do not know
how to explain it to you, but I feel it so strongly that it pains me. And
how could we have lived before, getting angry, and not knowing
anything?” Thus he awoke every day with more and more tenderness,
rejoicing and all atremble with love. 1
 Imminent death sharpens Markel’s self-understanding, before God and the
world. He acutely perceives the fall of humanity and his own particular place
within this total picture. In this, Markel also perceives the deep
interconnectivity of all people and things. The dividing line between himself
and “the other” is being erased. In this way, his perception of his deep
fallenness brings him neither maudlin wailing, nor pathos, nor self-loathing.
Instead he experiences joy, compassion, and love. Having come to this
awareness, he can’t comprehend how he ever lost his temper with anyone. The
call to understand ourselves as “chief of sinners” entails making a practice of
understanding ourselves the way Markel does. Staretz Sophrony (Sakharov),
one of the great spiritual elders of our age, used to say that when anyone
sought his spiritual counsel or confession, he would in his heart locate himself
beneath that person in his spiritual stature. His counsel to others was therefore
imbued with genuine humility, which in turn creates clarity of perception. It
also leads to saying less, rather than more, another habit the ascetics
recommend as a matter of course.
Placing ourselves beneath everyone, whatever their deeds, demeanor, or
status in life is of course a challenge. But it is feasible. It does not entail
allowing ourselves to get walked over, treated unfairly, or cheated. Just
because I’m a worse sinner than my plumber doesn’t mean he gets to
overcharge me, or install leaky pipes. Being “lower” than my employees does
not mitigate their accountability to me. Putting myself spiritually beneath my
boss does not entail that I surrender my prerogative to being treated and
compensated fairly. It does mean, though, that I am able to say that my
plumber, employees, and boss will be in heaven ahead of me.
It behooves us, in all this, to recall that self-knowledge, and even self-
abasement before others, are not a destination that we ever fully attain. They
are something to be constantly sought. Nor are they ends in themselves, but a
means to a genuine and liberating humility. The process is in no way
automatic. In fact, it is something of a mystery. Dorotheos of Gaza sums the
matter up perfectly:,
Seeking to know oneself and to put oneself below everyone else and
praying to God about everything: this is the road to humility, but
humility itself is something divine and incomprehensible. 2
As we have observed, seeing ourselves as sinners, the worst of sinners, can
be neurotic, destructive, or prideful; or it can be part of our journey towards
enlightenment in God, part of our receiving his mercy. We have seen above,
and in the previous chapter, the barometers of a healthy and true self-
perception: an increase in compassion, mercy, love, and the inconceivability of
judging others.
As St Dorotheos has reminded us, attaining that sensibility of genuine,
consistent humility is both a divine gift and a human process. Neither is fully
comprehensible to us, as if it were an assembly manual. It is a matter of
seeking. We may pray to God, to grant us greater humility, in the ability to see
ourselves as less worthy than anyone else . This may be a frightening prayer to
speak, because such lessons are often taught us by means of challenge;
humility often comes through humiliation. Or sometimes, more refreshingly, by
a surprising revelation about someone we had always thought to be a bad
person, showing her in fact to be capable of sheer selfless compassion.
Our prayer for humility therefore is both a sign and a builder of an inner
readiness to be shown such truths, about ourselves and about others whom we
judge. May God reveal to us these truths, as he wishes, and in such time as he
discerns that we are able to receive them.

Notes
1 Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov , trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New
York: Quartet, 1990), 289.
2 Discourses and Sayings , p. 101.
 4
Reflections on the Self
“Take pains to enter your innermost chamber and you will see the
chamber of heaven, for they are one and the same, and in entering one
you behold them both.”
Tito Colliander 1
“My testimony is valid because I know where I have come from and
where I am going.”
John 8.14
“Enter into yourself, dwell within your heart, for God is there.”
Ephrem the Syrian 2

W
e’ve been discussing recognizing ourselves as sinners, seeing this as a
gift that God gives for our enlightenment and our emancipation. This
recognition is a process, perpetually growing in understanding
ourselves and how we relate to God and the world. We now need to look more
comprehensively at the implications of the discovery of self. Self-knowledge
has long been considered a virtue. In the sixth century BC, “Know thyself” was
inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, in Greece. But our conception of
“the self” has changed over the centuries. In this chapter, we will talk about
coming to know it as we define it today, naming it, and wrestling with it.

Self-Knowledge
There has been a great deal of attention paid to the self at all levels of
contemporary society. The advent of psychoanalysis in the 20th century
spawned a new interest in and respect for the practice of a person’s internal
exploration, and has evolved through diverse schools of psychology and
psychiatry.
As a part of self-exploration, the 20th century also got people thinking in
new ways about collective identities, such as those related to nationality,
gender, race, socioeconomics, and others. What does it mean to be a man or a
woman? A member of the middle class in North America? How does the color
of your skin affect your place in the world? The matrix of all these different
sub-distinctions has led to the idea that identity itself is a cultural construct.
That is, identity as such doesn’t biologically exist. We ourselves, and those in
our surroundings (either with us or against us) invent and shape it. So we can
speak of a “self,” but the characteristics by which that self is known are
arbitrary and therefore malleable.
The fundamental insight that we play a role in constructing our identity can
be helpful in our exploration of self. Putting a stop to the habitual negatives we
may bombard ourselves with that help form our sense of ourselves (“I stink at
math,” “I’m too fat”) can release us from artificial limitations. But beware of
concluding that the self or identity does not exist. Christian tradition has it
that God has bestowed on each of us a unique self, an identity, a name. That is
one reason that our forebears in the Church place such great stock on the
knowledge of the self.
Take St Basil the Great, the fourth-century spiritual giant from Caesarea in
Asia Minor. The “self” in his day wasn’t considered a construct. In a homily
called “Take Heed to Yourself,” 3 St Basil doesn’t tell people to “think of
themselves in new ways.” He doesn’t tell them to “transcend stereotypes about
class and gender.” Instead he describes the practical benefits and spiritual
importance of self-knowledge. Those benefits include healthier relationships
and a right life, he writes, but true knowledge of self leads to something far
greater: access to the knowledge of God.
So, we may ask, how do you come to know your inner self? St Basil is
realistic about the limits of what we can learn. A significant part of his career
as a theologian was devoted to arguing against people who believed that God
was perfectly comprehensible. His theological insight had shown that idea to
be outrageous. Aetius of Antioch, a follower of the Arian heresy, had written: “I
know God with such perfect clarity and I understand and know him to such a
degree, that I understand God better than I understand myself.” 4 To which St
Basil replied, “I do not even know myself! How can I presume to know the
unknowable God?” Both viewpoints suggest that knowing ourselves is
somehow related to knowing God. St Basil, however, rightly sees that we can
attain only partial apprehension of either .
How, then, do we come to an even partial knowledge of God? By his
“energies,” says St Basil (or “activities,” from the Greek energeia ). 5 In other
words, we know who God is by what God does. We can apply the same
principle to ourselves. By which I mean that knowing ourselves is likewise
achieved partly through perceiving our own “energies”: we learn about
ourselves by observing what we do, what we want—from our actions, our
deeds, our will.
What does that mean practically? In many ways, knowing yourself is like
knowing anything. A lot of it comes naturally, just by living an increasing
number of days. Some might be deliberate and cultivated, in the sense that you
might make a conscious decision to study your inner patterns and tendencies.
Some might involve discussing your impressions with a trusted adviser.
Different kinds of insights, perhaps overlapping, may come from intentional
(and possibly confessional) conversations with a friend, a spiritual
father/mother, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or even a child. I wouldn’t
necessarily place these all on a par with each other. But each in its way has the
potential to yield powerful insight. “Advisors” to avoid are those who claim
spiritual or psychic powers, especially through Tarot, crystals, or other such
means, as their insights may be deceitful, even demonic.
Here we should return to this book’s main theme. A searching reflection on
ourselves will result in many observations, one of which, inevitably, is that we
sin. We think, say, and do things that are contrary to the God whom we claim
to know and love. We think and act contrary to God’s way and to his law. It is
hard to imagine that we might emerge from a probing self-reflection saying,
“You know, I’m actually sinless! I’ve fulfilled every commandment, and my
heart is always set upon God, and I have never grieved anyone.” Narcissists are
liable to think like this. One of Jesus’s inquirers, more likely naïve than
narcissistic, tells Jesus that, yes he has fulfilled the commandments: “Teacher,
all these I have observed from my youth” (Mk 10.20). How does Jesus react? He
looks at him and loves him (v. 21). Then he raises the criteria substantially (and
here I paraphrase): You think you are sinless because you didn’t kill anyone or
sleep with your neighbor? That’s a good start. Now you have to have to detach
yourself from your riches. You have to consider other people and even devote
your life to them, especially the poor.
Virtually nobody with a healthy psyche can truthfully say, on reflection, “I
have always done well by God and by neighbor.” Genuine self-examination
will show how we sin and fall short of the glory of God. We are sinners.
Naming that fact and owning that identity are indispensable to our spiritual
journey. Now it is time to ask some legitimate questions about naming
ourselves “sinners.” I may understand that “I am a sinner” is a true statement.
But could it also potentially be harmful?

The Power of Naming

One question on that score has to do with the power of the name. There are
many different ways of naming. There are common names we give people
(Peter, Patricia, Michael, Elizabeth), as well as designations we bestow
according to function (teacher, musician, plumber), to condition or state
(cancer patient, alcoholic, army veteran) or to perceived behavior or status
(savior, liar, fool, renaissance man). When we identify someone, in any of these
different ways, we may be doing two things. On the one hand, we are
identifying an evident reality—someone is a professional, a mother, a
schizophrenic, maybe all these at once. But in many cases, we are pre scribing
a reality, for good or for ill. I recall how, once I started naming or identifying
myself as a musician, I felt empowered to create music with greater purpose.
But what about the kid whose parents constantly identified her as “bad at
sports” and “good at math”? Perhaps these qualities were demonstrable by her
grades, but as these became part of her identity, they would increasingly shape
her reality. So what does it mean, in this context, for me to identify myself as a
sinner? Would that—should that—contribute to the shaping of my reality?
Recognizing myself as a “musician” licensed and encouraged me to flourish
artistically, so would recognizing myself as a “sinner” license me to sin with
greater purpose and élan?
Naming things is a way of expressing a certain authority over them. When
God gives Adam charge to name all the animals, he is also conferring on the
human person the stewardship of the natural world (Gen 2.19). It is a powerful
thing: when we name someone or something, we are helping to shape its
destiny. Jesus names Peter to express his destiny of being the rock ( petros ) on
which the Church would be built (Mt 16.18). God sees fit to change people’s
names in order to reflect changes in their functions/destinies: Abram becomes
Abraham, Saul becomes Paul. Jesus, which means “God saves” is “the name by
which we are saved,” 6 and each of the many appellations by which Jesus is
known (Lord, Door, Redeemer, Peace) has a precise meaning, indicating
aspects of his identity as savior. 7
Think for a moment of how we name our children and the ways this might
affect our perception of them. We might baptize our child after a saint, family
member, or important friend. Some of us christen our children for significant
historical or cultural figures; some may even tag them with aspirational
qualities, such as Justice, Felicity, or Serena. But how we name them will not
only reflect but also affect our relationship with them. 8
The capacity of personal names both to identify and to shape reality carries
over into the other words that we use to describe ourselves. Such as “sinner.”
What effect does that “name” have on me? Let’s imagine that during the
formative years of my life, my family regularly referred to me as a mistake.
What if my parents hit me or assaulted me and blamed me for their actions?
What if I have been systematically degraded in my society because of my skin
color, gender, or social status? If that is my context, then designating myself as
a sinner (or one of its variants, such as “a wretch”) could potentially feed into
harmful, self-destructive tendencies that I have already established. However,
within the total context of the Church, and the deep-level healing and love it
ideally embodies, the epithet “sinner” can play a crucial part in the healing of
my memories of abuse and in my coming clean. This is complex stuff, and if
you do find myself in this situation, it is imperative to seek out the guidance of
a wise, compassionate, and experienced spiritual guide, as not every confessor
is qualified to help.
But even for those who do not carry such painful associations, the wider
question remains. If I dub myself a sinner, am I giving that word a power over
myself? Am I in danger of letting “sinner” become entwined with my truest
self? Does the identity of entrap me into transgressive behavior by enshrining
it?
These questions lead us to reflect further on the different kinds of power
that names have. Because, despite all we’ve said thus far on the subject, labels
do not necessarily determine us. Rather than dictating our behavior, the words
we use to describe ourselves can instead be the basis of greater self-
understanding and, therefore, of positive transformation. Using personality
tests can help us find ways to describe our traits in ways that can be helpful.
The Meyers-Briggs is one such. Like others of its type, it may not deliver a
stunning epiphany—and remember that some call these kinds of tests into
question—but many people have gained insights through them. Such tests are
liable to tell you about tendencies in how you take decisions, think through
problems, react to the company of others, and interact with the world.
“Naming” such things can help us to treat other people—and ourselves—in a
more realistic and perhaps more forgiving way. They helped me understand
some basic things about myself, such as the fact that engaging in small talk
can make my skin crawl isn’t because I hate other people but because I’m
something of an introvert. I can now observe myself more dispassionately in
these circumstances, knowing that this is part of how I’m wired. And I can
work with that wiring to find ways of adapting my thoughts and behavior that
are realistic and compassionate but still create the spiritual and other changes
that I hope for.
Whatever the diagnostic methods we use, we must beware of feeling
trapped by our newly discovered identity markers: sensitive or intuitive,
judging or perceptive, a “thinking” or “feeling” decision-maker. We can draw
insight from such tests as appropriate. They point to tendencies that we can
live with or transcend. But to work with them in your journey requires first
identifying them.
The necessity of naming a condition is all the more important when it is a
malady. In order to heal a sickness, you have to diagnose it, so that you can
understand it in its context. In order to transcend a condition, you have to
recognize it. That principle very much applies to the condition that we name as
sinner. Transcending sin begins with identifying it. Name the sin: claim it.
Now, work on it: confess it. Repent. Surrender it to God on your own as well as
in community with other transgressors.
One place that you can see these recommendations carried out is within the
world of addiction. It’s not that addiction is a sin in itself. Rather, it is a
powerful example of the importance of naming a condition in order to help
heal it. For example, in the 12-step world one of the first steps in the treatment
of addiction involves openly calling yourself an addict. As you begin your
recovery, and at every subsequent meeting, you stand up to say, “I am an
alcoholic.” “I am a drug addict.” “I have a gambling problem.” You might
wonder are they giving such identities too much power, letting them shape
their behavior? As in, “If I’m an alcoholic, then drinking is what I do, so . . . pour
me a drink!”
Yes, an alcoholic or any other addict in these circumstances is surrendering
to that as part of his or her identity. But the right kind of surrender is a
powerful step toward recovery. Meletios Webber, an Orthodox author, weighs
in on this aspect of the 12 steps:
The statement “I am an alcoholic,” is packed with meaning. . . . It means,
“I admit I have a problem.” Any alcoholic who can say that is separated
 from the countless numbers of alcoholics who go to their graves rather
than admit they have a problem. 9
Substitute “I am a sinner” and you can see that it, too, means “I have a
problem.” It does not define the totality of who you are. You are admitting that
you are not whole. That you have a problem. Webber continues:
The statement “I am an alcoholic” means, “I am not God,” or even, “I am
not God, [and therefore] someone else must be.” In turn, since someone
else is God, the drinker is free to let [God] do his job. The alcoholic is
then free to be himself, and to find and settle into whatever the real God
may have in store for him.
Likewise, “I am a sinner” means that you have lost command of yourself and
you on your own cannot regain it. You must submit to God, who is in control.
Understood this way, saying “I am a sinner” means, “God, your will be done.”
Lastly, Webber writes, “The title ‘alcoholic’ is worn as a badge of honor, and it
gives the bearer a sense of belonging in a group where everyone bears that
title.” Translating that into the language of “sinner,” we understand ourselves
as sinners-in-community, being redeemed in the communion of the Church.
If we take the 12-step model as our guide, then, we can say that calling
ourselves “sinners” is part of acknowledging the problem, submitting to God,
and our badge as a member of the Church, the hospital for transgressors. All of
us in the Church are. We have to accomplish both by ourselves and together
with each other our way forward in Christ toward freedom from sin.
So “sinner” is not a trap but a surrender and therefore—paradoxically—a
liberation. It admits brokenness and yields power to God. It signals
membership in a community that is the Body of Christ even as it is also
constantly becoming that Body through healing faults, mending brokenness,
and restoring the divine image. The community comprises broken persons who
know that their wholeness rests entirely in Christ and depends entirely on
God. I mentioned earlier that recovering addicts (especially those in recovery
programs), church-goers or not, often understand the whole “forgiven sinner”
dynamic so well, precisely because they acutely recognize their brokenness and
powerlessness, so they surrender those to their Higher Power even as they
continue to work on themselves. They are in the business of learning about and
being honest with themselves, each other, and their Higher Power. They get it,
much better than many of us righteous church-folk.
So if naming is power, it isn’t absolute power. I noted above the importance
of God’s assigning Adam to name the animals. It spoke to human stewardship
and authority over the animal world. Properly understood, that authority is
realized and exercised in humility. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness
thereof belongs to God (Ps 24.1). Ultimately, nothing is mine to own and abuse.
Creation exists to praise and serve God. I have to exercise and direct my
stewardship with that in mind in order to bring the animals into creation’s
praise of the Lord. I can treat my passions likewise. I can name them, take
responsibility for them, and strive to direct them according to God’s will. So it
is with my transgression. I recognize it for what it is and submit so my
weakness can be brought to his service.
Once I have managed to do that, calling myself “sinner” can turn into an
immense relief. I begin to feel the weight being lifted from my chest. I have
begun my surrender to God. I have surrendered a control that I could not
realistically hope to maintain. I am allowing God to be God, giving him space
to do his work, in me. I am doing so through the Church, the community of
other sinners being healed in Christ. It is a consolation and a relief to know
that sin has been defeated and will ultimately be forgiven by the merciful God.
So let’s name ourselves sinners, together, remembering that our brokenness
may be the key to bringing God into our lives.

Identifying My Self—or Selves?

The purpose of understanding and even naming myself as a sinner is twofold.
It lets me tell the truth about myself in relationship to God and others. It also
frees me to acknowledge my need for healing and my surrender to God, as I
continue to pursue purity and holiness.
But having established the benefits of acknowledging ourselves as sinners,
we need to ask again: Does “sinner” define the totality of who I am? Is my
particular self innately depraved? If it is, is that why the ascetical literature
recommends fleeing self-love or despising myself?
At the very least, I have to reconcile those questions and that advice with
the conviction that this very substance of mine is made in God’s image. Should
I not then consider myself truly good and beautiful? If so, should I not rather
love and rejoice in myself?
Or is it that I am somehow composed of two selves, a sinful one to be
denied and hated, and a God’s-image-bearing self that needs to be encouraged
and loved? Are there parts of myself to love, cherish, and be true to, and parts
to be ignored, denied, hated . . . even died to? Further, are these my only two
components, or are there more? In which case, how many people am I? (The
hackneyed advice to “be yourself” was challenged in the Pixar film The
Incredibles , where a frustrated fan-boy named Buddy addresses his hero: “You
always say ‘Be true to yourself.’ But you never say which part of yourself to be
true to!” The personality, as Buddy realizes, is not a simple monolith.)
St Paul also faced the conundrum of conflicting parts of himself in a stirring
confession in his Epistle to the Romans:
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I
do the very thing I hate. . . . But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin
that dwells within me.
Virtually all of us can empathize with his inner conflict. Who of us hasn’t
said, “I know the right thing to do, but I don’t do it. It almost feels like there’s
something foreign living in me.” St Paul continues his lament:
I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I
want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not
want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. 10
He sees sin as a force, sort of like we view a virus. In pursuing the idea, he
recognizes a pattern in his thoughts and actions:
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies
close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see
in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me
captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
Crucially, even as he admits that his actions betray him, he professes that
he has an innermost self that is still capable of delight in the divine
commandments. Brothers and sisters, all is not lost. Like St Paul, our inmost
self also delights in God and his statutes. Our inmost self is good and true. We
are not totally depraved. But we are deeply confused. And sin is there to
confuse us.
Finally, we see that although St Paul is exasperated with himself, he never
doubts his salvation through the Messiah:
Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
[What is the solution?] Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
. . . There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ
 Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free
from the law of sin and of death.
Christ has set us free! It is finished. It is consummated. As fraught as this
inner wrestling can be, Christ enters this whole broken dynamic, taking it to its
furthest point, all the way to death, and he transcends and transforms it so that
it no longer has the grip on us that it once had. How vital this is to recall, and
how easy it is to forget.
So it is important to grasp that Christ has set me free. But I must remember
that I nevertheless remain confused. I must keep both of these realities in mind
concurrently. As St Silouan of Mount Athos learned from the Lord: “Keep your
mind in hell”—recalling your state of degradation—but at the same time
“Despair not,” 11 for you know that Christ has won this victory for you, for us
all. Because of Christ, we are not enslaved to sin.
But let’s return to consider St Paul’s “innermost self.” We all have one, our
most true self. It is good and delights in God who made it in his image. The
19th-century presbyter St John of Kronstadt once wrote:
Never confuse the person, formed in the image of God, with the evil that
is in him, because evil is but a chance misfortune, illness, a devilish
reverie. But the very essence of the person is the image of God, and this
remains in him despite every disfigurement. 12
In the 20th century, in a sermon on the parable of the Publican and the
Pharisee, St Nikolai (Velimirovich) of Zicha preached about a person’s inner
essence contrasted with the wrong kind of self-love—or the love of “the wrong
self,” as it were.
When a person loves only himself, he loves neither God nor his fellow-
men. He does not even love the person that is in himself; he loves only
his thoughts about himself, his illusions about himself. Were he to love
the person in himself, he would love God’s image in him, and would
quickly become a lover of God and man, for he would be seeking man
and God in other people, as objects of his love. 13
The Pharisee openly praises himself, even “prays with himself” (Lk 18.11). St
Nikolai shows how the Pharisee’s admiration of his own thoughts and illusions
about himself set a loathsome example. If you were to follow suit, you would
come to hate God and your fellow people. St Nikolai advises, instead, to love
the actual person in ourselves so that we can come to love God and other
people. That true inner person, or inmost self, is what St Paul calls “the inside”
or “inner self” (2 Cor 4.16), as opposed to “the flesh.”
So it is that, at heart, I am a good and precious person. Even so, I apprehend
that I am fallen and, as such, I can’t be trusted. I cannot be trusted. Left to my
own devices, my self-will, my passions, I would indeed be lost. I would be a
danger to myself and to others and a shame before God.
* * *
Now, all of this still might sound as if we suffer from multiple personality
disorder. Do we have two selves, an inner to love and an outer to hate? No—
what we have is one innermost self that is broken by sin. That sin, these foibles
and passions, are not a second self; they are the dirt on the mirror. The
Orthodox funeral service reminds us of our real identity when we sing, “I am
the image of your ineffable glory, though I bear the brands of transgressions.”
We are, in our true selves, mirrors of the divine. But the glass is dirty, even
bent. Not surprisingly, this comes to the fore in church services in Great Lent.
During the penitential Canon of St Andrew of Crete, which in many churches
inaugurates the Lenten Fast, we sing:
O Savior, I have defiled the garment of my flesh
and polluted that which you fashioned within me
according to your own image and likeness. 14
I have sullied that which resembles the Lord in me by my choices, the things
I have allowed myself to think, say, and do. Because of sin that lives in me.
Because of evil.
Generally we don’t like to dwell on evil or the devil because, if we become
obsessed with the devil, he wins. He also wins, however, if we try to ignore the
power that evil has over us. All of us. Even St Paul, the great apostle, who was
caught up in the third heaven (2 Cor 12.2), was subject to the force of
immorality. Even though Christ has set us free from sin, it continues to exert
powerful influence on us.
Who am I? This human being, made in the image and glory of God, greater
even than the angels, is the same person who gives in to evil, defiling the
universe with impure thoughts and shameful deeds. I am a single, beautiful-
but-broken self. My freedom in Christ begins by acknowledging this very
paradox.
Epilogue
St Paul’s passage about his Jekyll-and-Hyde inner struggles (“For I do not do
the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do”) closes with a clear
sense of who and what his deepest self really is, in God’s love. Which is also
how he regards his audience. Toward the end of the same letter, he expresses
his wishes for the community: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and
peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy
Spirit.” He acknowledges their true inner selves: “I myself feel confident about
you, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled
with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.” 15 Paul is well aware of
bickering and dissent within the churches. Many of his letters, after all, were
written to quell their arguments. He knows what human beings are made of.
He also knows the power of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and how they operate
in the community. The final words of his letter to the Romans, however, are
not about sin, darkness, or delusion. That’s because when people make
themselves aware of their hold over us—and Christ’s dominion over them—
what’s left is hope, joy, and peace.
* * *
This chapter covered a lot of concepts. Essentially it was about knowing
ourselves realistically and honestly. We saw that it’s possible to identify
ourselves in limiting ways (“I’m unattractive” or “I’m inept”). But a realistic
naming of ourselves as sinners, as sufferers of particular passions and
compulsions, is vital to being healed. Despite an apparent split between our
good self and our bad self, what lies at our core is an essential goodness,
patterned on ineffable divine goodness.
Self-knowledge arrives with time, with age. It comes by paying attention,
seeking patterns, scrutinizing the inner impulses that lead to our thoughts,
words, and actions. Though much of that work is interior, it also benefits from
discussion, perhaps with an experienced counselor, a spiritual director, or a
friend. It can happen especially fully and fruitfully within the context of the
Church. To that end, it is good to be attentive to its penitential and festal
rhythms, and to the texts of its prayers. But we must strive for balance,
avoiding both vain self-obsession as well as merely skimming the surface. The
key, really, is radical but realistic honesty with ourselves.
Since knowing yourself involves studying what you do, what you think,
what you want, many of us find it helpful to keep a journal. The discipline of
writing a daily chronicle of your actions, thoughts, and realizations—
sometimes shorter, sometimes longer, sometimes insightful and sometimes
totally banal—can be part of a program of mindfulness and self-understanding.
As with all of the endeavors within this book, self-knowledge is a gift as
much as a process. Pray about it and for it:
O Lord, in your time and as you will, open to me the mystery of my
innermost self, created in your Holy Image. Teach me too about the
tendencies in me that distort that self. May my self-reflection be neither
vain nor perfunctory. May it orient me all the more to your glory.

Notes
1 Tito Colliander, The Way of the Ascetics (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985 [1960]), 8.
2 Synaxarion for St Ephrem, see online at [Link]/saints/lives/2017/01/28/100328-venerable-ephraim-
the-syrian.
3 The title of the homily was drawn from a phrase found twice in Exodus (10.28; 34.12) and also in I
Timothy (4.16).
4 Quoted in Epiphanius, Panarion 76.4.2.
5 See Philip Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea (Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1994), 112f.
6 Acts 2.21, Acts 4.12.
7 See Fr Thomas Hopko, The Names of Jesus: Discovering the Person of Christ through Scripture
(Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2015).
8 We can experience this with pets, too, although we generally name them more whimsically than we
do our children. I know of an owner with a large, highly aggressive dog that had been given the name
Cujo as a puppy after the rabid St Bernard in a Stephen King horror novel. The moniker became a semi-
prophetic, partly because it affected the way people treated the animal. Naming a cat “Princess,” or for
that matter, “Cruella Deville,” will not only reflect your own attitudes toward her but will play a part in
how she lives out her life.
9 Meletios Webber, Steps of Transformation: An Orthodox Priest Explores the Twelve Steps (Ben
Lomond, CA: Conciliar Press), 58.
10 Rom 7.15–8.2.
11 Sakharov, Archimandrite Sophrony, Saint Silouan the Athonite (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1999
[1991]), 42, then see pp. 208ff.
12 From his spiritual autobiography, My Life in Christ , Part 2.
13 St Nikolai Velimirovic, Homily 27, in Homilies: A Commentary on the Gospel Readings For Great
Feast and Sundays Throughout The Year, Volume 2 (Birmingham, UK: Lazarica Press, 1998), 277.
14 See Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware, trans., The Lenten Triodion (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1978),
200. Alternate translation.
15 Rom 15.13–14.
 5
Self-Esteem, Self-Denial, Self-Love
He who has learned to know the dignity of his own soul is in a position
to know the power and the mysteries of the Godhead, and thereby to be
the more humbled.
Spiritual Homilies of St Macarius 1
Do not neglect the gift you have.
1 Timothy 4.14

T
here remains more to say about the self in the context of exploring our
sinner identity. Here we will focus especially on three concepts within
Christian tradition that have mixed reputations: self-esteem, self-denial,
and self-love. A surface reading of traditional monastic literature yields the
impression that our spiritual forebears took a dim view of self-love, praised
self-denial, and shunned self-esteem like poison. Such a picture agrees with
an image of Christianity—especially in its ascetical dimension—as a religion
of guilt and self-loathing. And, in some contexts, it can be.
But the context for us is quite different and our task here is to take a
closer look at each of these concepts. Our interest in how to properly regard
ourselves as sinners is necessarily bound up in how to properly esteem and
treat ourselves. The conclusions from the last chapter—that the self is good
and cherished, but also broken and confused—will have a direct bearing on
how we regard and treat that self.
Our modern society conveys mixed messages about how to treat the self,
running from uncritical self-acceptance and self-indulgence, to setting
unmeetable criteria for beauty and fitness. There is something good and true
in the repeated calls to improve how we regard ourselves. “Low self-esteem,”
if understood in terms of self-loathing or insecurity rather than healthy
humility, is a paralyzing thing, keeping us from achieving great things. It is
also a destructive force. A person who hates himself will nearly always take
that hatred out on other people. People with poor self-worth make the rest of
the world suffer for it. Think of the mother who beats her children because
what they do reminds her of all the things she hates about herself (especially
if she was beaten by her own parents). Think of the blogger who pens endless
hateful screeds against homosexuals, largely because he despises his own
unacknowledged sexual struggles. Self-hatred rarely fails to be acted out on
others. As the saying goes, “The devil rejoices twice,” first at the sin, and then
the havoc wreaked through ill-placed shame and self-loathing.
And then of course there is the damage to oneself. On the milder level,
consider the person who is unaware of what she is truly capable of achieving,
and is held back all his or her life by low self-esteem. Then there are all the
other ways that people compensate for the wrong kind of self-abnegation,
such as over eating, compulsive shopping, or obsessive gambling. Consider
too how many people in self-denigrating professions like pornography got to
where they are precisely because they think of themselves as worthless,
useless beings. They were taught to hate themselves, and these ways of life
are the inevitable result of their own inner mantra, that becomes something
like a self-fulfilling prophecy: I am garbage.
So the messages we hear, exhorting us to build up our self-esteem, are
correct, but they go astray when they tell us to do so through an unbridled
self-pampering, especially through unchecked consumerism. There must be
different kinds of self-esteem, and it will be fruitful to see how the ascetical
writers expound the concept further below.

Self-Acceptance
The media and the arts are also on target when they preach “self-
acceptance,” but only when by that term they mean the acceptance of one’s
genuine condition, giving thanks for its gifts and taking responsibility for
correcting its flaws. But on the surface, society rarely conveys that message.
It is more often telling us to “accept ourselves exactly as we are.” What does
that mean? Accept myself as being a short person? OK. Accept myself as
slightly weird, different, quirky? Fine! Accept myself as shy and introverted?
Accept myself as extroverted? Absolutely.
But what else is a person supposed to accept about himself “exactly as he
is”? Accept his predilection for violent sex acts? Accept herself
unconditionally as someone who lives to undermine others and destroy their
relationships? Accept his manic obsession with his appearance? No. We do
not accept such things about ourselves, as if they are good, requiring no
change. We name them as sinful passions, as tendencies that we must
transcend, by identifying them, surrendering them to God, and submitting to
his will, and thus becoming sober and whole . So we have to discern this
concept of self-acceptance thoughtfully as well.
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh said, in one of his informal talks to his
parish, “Accept yourself, as a stone given to a sculptor. Accept how you are
and that you need work to reveal the statue, i.e. what you truly can be.” 2 In
other words, reconcile yourself to being you, a beautiful creature but a work
in progress. Accept also that you must give yourself over to God’s sculpting.
Because there are elements that need refining and others that need excision
to reveal the genuine you.

Self-Esteem
Now, let’s bring this back to self-esteem. Earlier I asserted that maintaining a
healthy sense of your own worth is important. Does this contradict the Philo
kalia and other ascetical literature? They tell us repeatedly and emphatically
to flee from it as you would run from a herd of demons. A couple of examples
will suffice. The fourth-century ascetic Evagrios the Solitary observes, “In the
whole range of evil thoughts, none is richer in resources than self-esteem; for
it is to be found almost everywhere, and like some cunning traitor in a city it
opens the gates to all the demons.” 3 Likewise, the fifth-century St Mark the
Ascetic says, “All vice is caused by self-esteem and sensual pleasure; you
cannot overcome passions without hating them.” 4 Earlier I noted the modern
view that a poor sense of self-worth is at the root of so much human
suffering: is there a complete conflict of opinion here?
One way to resolve the apparent contradiction is to plumb the actual
meaning of the word used in the ascetical literature. The word in the original
Greek that is nearly always translated into English as “self-esteem” is “
kenodoxia .” If we think etymologically, “ keno-doxia ” is literally idle or
empty ( keno ) glorification ( doxa ), which is more precisely rendered as
“vainglory.” 5 The Greek lexicons translate kenodoxia as the “desire for and
delight in praise and reputation.” So, what we are to flee is not the proper
esteem of the self, but vanity and its companions pride, inordinate self-love,
self-obsession and the love of praise. In other words, what we are to shed is
self-esteem taken in all the wrong directions . Vainglory is indeed a deadly
significant sin that the ascetical writers are right to warn us against.
Vainglory and conceit are self-esteem gone awry.
Once when I led a retreat on these subjects, I had just finished this talk
about “self-esteem” in the monastic writings. Afterwards, after we all sat in
silence for a few minutes, the woman next to me sighed and said, “I sure wish
someone had told me that it was vainglory we were supposed to flee.” One
wonders how much unnecessary self-suppression has been caused by this
odd decision to translate kenodoxia —which so obviously means “vainglory,”
as “self-esteem.” Because just as there is vanity to flee, there is self-worth to
cultivate. Let’s say more on that.

Self-Care 6
In all this, and despite all the confusing language, there is a consistent picture
given us by our Fathers and Mothers in God. They were, after all, not only
spiritual giants but also eminently practical. They knew both the beauty of
the human person and the tendency towards distorting and sullying that
beauty. They knew that our hearts must be thoughtfully cultivated, like
plants. Different plants need different kind of care. The fourth-century Desert
Mother Syncletica ranked thoughtful gardeners alongside doctors as good
examples:
When [gardeners] see that a plant is of small stature and sickly, they
water it profusely and care for it greatly, so that it will grow and be
strong; while, when they see in a plant the premature development of
sprouts, they immediately trim the useless sprouts, so that the plant
does not quickly wither. Likewise, physicians give rich nourishment to
some patients, prescribing that they walk, while to others they give a
strict diet and require them to remain at rest. 7
How we care for ourselves will differ from person to person. Sometimes,
and for some people, that care will be exercised in nourishment, at other
times in fasting.
At the Litany of Supplication prayed in the Orthodox Church we ask God
for “all things good and profitable to our souls and bodies.” A healthy self-
love will lead us to do what is truly best for ourselves, soul and body, such
that to care properly for them is the work of heaven. As St Dorotheos of Gaza
writes: “The one who harms his own soul is . . . helping the devil. The one who
seeks to profit his soul is cooperating with the angels.” 8
Our “inmost self,” as St Paul put it, is beautifully formed in God’s image, a
thing of dignity and glory. It is to be tended and loved, holistically. In a
homily attributed to the fourth-century Macarius of Egypt we read,
Know your nobility and your dignity, how honorable you are, the
brother of Christ, the friend of the King, the bride of the heavenly
bridegroom. The one who has learned to know the dignity of his own
soul is in a position to know the power and the mysteries of the
Godhead, and thereby to be the more humbled. 9
“Soul” here denotes the totality of the human being, whom—unlike even
the angels—God created in his own image. The glory of the human being
consists of body and soul. In other words, all of you. But notice that this
awareness of our own nobility and dignity goes hand-in-hand with humility
before God. They must exist in balance with each other.
The cultivation of a right self-esteem, self-care, and self-love is worth
thoughtful reflection. Because the wrong kinds—vainglory, an exaggerated
need for others’ approval and affirmation—are pernicious. They tempt us to
undermine other people, aggrandize ourselves, and generally forget God. But
since we must care for ourselves, think about ourselves, reflect on ourselves,
we have to find appropriate ways to do so. We do this both in general (as
human beings in God’s cherished image) and in particular (as specific persons
each bestowed with unique vocations by God for the world). This is part of a
healthy and genuine self-reflection. The trick is to steer clear of vanity. That
means, for one, when you do self-reflect, keep it light. A good sense of humor
about yourself helps immensely in this regard. Don’t overdramatize either
your sins or your virtues. Frankly, chances are good that neither are
spectacular.
So we have to discern what suitable self-care is. It will certainly involve
making sure you get the proper medical care, eat nutritiously, exercise, get
enough sleep. (Seriously, do what it takes to address your lack of sleep. See a
specialist if you need to.) Find the right balance of work and leisure. Read a
good book. Watch a good movie. But self-care also involves a thoughtful
denial of excesses. That means fasting in due season, working with purpose,
and strictly limiting our pleasures and passions. Keep in mind that prayer is
also self-care, as are silence, proper asceticism, confession of sins, humility,
and repentance.
 So we have come full circle. Because self-condemnation (“I am the worst of
sinners”) and the flight from vainglory and self-obsession are unrelated to
“having a poor self-image,” being insecure, or having obsessive guilt feelings.
Proper self-condemnation and flight from vain obsessions actually free us
from precisely these pathologies. They are instruments, paradoxically, of deep
self-care. St Dorotheos of Gaza, whom we have been citing frequently, writes
that lowliness of mind is the way to “all joy and all glory and all tranquility.”
He continues: “How much joy, how much peace of soul would a person not
have wherever he went . . . if he was one who habitually accused himself . . .
that person would have complete freedom from care.” 10
How do you know if you are conducting the “right kind” of self-
condemnation? You’ll know it by its fruit. If the result is not peace, freedom
from care, joy, and absence from judgmentalism, then you are not using this
tool as the saints intended. The saints say we can expect these effects if we
use these tools correctly. Who among us would not like to experience them?

A Right Configuration
As the New York Times columnist David Brooks reminds us, St Augustine
liked to speak of sin in terms of “disordered loves.” 11 It is fitting to love
oneself, one’s family, God, as well as to enjoy things like food, sexual
pleasure, and money. Sin comes when we prioritize these loves in the wrong
order. We might likewise say that it can be appropriate to love ourselves and
care for ourselves, as well as to condemn ourselves and discipline ourselves.
We must, however, rank them in the proper configuration.
Amazingly, Augustine claims that balancing self-condemnation, self-love,
and self-care is actually possible. Imagine yourself as someone who speaks
without equivocation, and also understands how to keep silent. Someone
with absolutely nothing to prove, to yourself or to anyone else, and doesn’t
require others’ admiration. Someone who has come clean with God in your
transgressions and who is, in fact constantly coming clean with him.
Transparent to God, you have broken the shackles of self-justification,
constantly trying to rationalize your sins. You have attained the humility of
accepting God’s love and forgiveness. Your goal is not to impress or to blame,
and certainly not to judge anyone. That’s the freedom attained through
humility and repentance. That’s genuine self-esteem: it moves you outside of
your vanity and frees you to love God and be loved by him, to love others and
be loved by them, to nurture others and be nurtured by them, and to love and
care for your true, innermost self.
Humility is effectively a genuine, proportionate sense of oneself before
God and others. It also denotes wholeness, or whole-mindedness, because our
goal not to further fragment ourselves (“here’s my good self, here’s my bad
self”) but to be whole persons. It is this whole person—and not some kind of
pious created persona—who presents himself before God in prayer. It is this
whole person—and not some façade—who relates with himself and with
others.
So, yes: the whole person that I am is indeed a sinner. My innermost, God-
given beauty only barely shines through, distorted as I am by my
enslavement to passions, to my will, and my need for gratification. Only in
giving myself over to God can I hope to attain my freedom. Only then will my
inner self shine. Only then will I be fully alive to the Glory of God. Then, too,
I will know this “self” that I must care for diligently, with love and
appropriate discipline.
May I learn to discern proper and true self-care, self-esteem, and true self-
condemnation, that I may be free and whole, a loving consolation to others,
and an active, breathing, fully-alive image of Christ.

Notes
1 St Macarius, Spiritual Homilies 27.1. Translation from Fifty Spiritual Homilies of St Macarius the
Egyptian , trans. A. J. Mason (New York: SPCK, 1921), 200 (translation updated).
2 As recorded by Mary Ford, who took notes during his talks with parishioners.
3 Philokalia Vol. 1, p. 46.
4 Philokalia Vol. 1, p. 117.
5 In Philippians 2.3, the Greek κενοδοξία is translated in the King James Version as “vainglory,”
and by the Revised Standard Version as “conceit.”
6 The following paragraphs, and the citations from St Dorotheos, are informed by talks that
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh would give to his gathered parishioners. I am grateful to Mary
Ford, who shared her notes from these talks.
7 The Evergetinos , Book I, Vol. I (Etna, CA: CTOS, 1991), 21.
8 Discourses and Sayings , 136.
9 Spiritual Homilies 27, in Fifty Spiritual Homilies of St Macarius , 200 (translation amended).
10 Discourses and Sayings, 141.
11 See his The Road to Character (New York: Random House, 2015), 186–212.
 6
The Sweetness of Compunction
May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy!
Psalm 126.5
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Matthew 5.4

I
t is time to take a deeper look at some of the benefits of coming clean with
ourselves, each other, and God. As you might guess, we’ll be rescuing yet
another set of concepts from some of their negative connotations. “Regret”
will be one, as well as “shame” and “guilt.”
Each of these words has a justifiably bad reputation, because each so easily
leads to destructive thoughts and behaviors. In the pages that follow, we’ll be
looking at regret (or compunction), beginning with a reflection on guilt and
shame and the various ways to distinguish them. Because naming these
phenomena and acting on them appropriately is a vital component of a life
lived in freedom, grace, and clarity. And if the ancient Church writers are to be
believed, traveling this path of sober self-scrutiny and reflection, mournful as it
can be, also yields a profound sweetness.

Guilt and Shame

The media often stereotypes religious people as suffering from perpetual guilt
complexes. In comic or dramatic portrayals guilt is usually presented as a
burden to be shed, but sometimes as an appropriate emotion after wrongdoing.
Let’s reflect for a moment on guilt as well as shame, with which it is frequently
associated.
First, they are states of being. “Guilt” means “culpability.” A person who has
committed a crime is guilty of that crime. I can be objectively guilty of an
action, whatever the mitigating circumstances might be and however I might
feel about it. I either did it or I didn’t. Likewise, “shame” means “dishonor” or
“humiliation.” A person can “bring shame” to his or her family through
behaving dishonorably.
What concern us here, in our reflection on the “sinner identity,” are feelings
of guilt and shame. (My observations below are superficial: there is much more
to be said on this intricate subject, but I hope that even this level of reflection
can be of use.) Guilt and shame may be experienced by an individual or a
collective, such as a family, a society, a nation. They may act as a salutary
warning-light; they may infect like a disease. But before we evaluate their
merits and drawbacks, let’s spend a few minutes looking at how guilt and
shame are related, but distinguishable from each other in at least two ways.
Doing vs. Being
Some—including many psychologists—analyze guilt as a feeling about
something that I have done, while shame is a feeling about something that I
am. (“I did something bad,” vs. “I am bad”).
Within this distinction, guilt concerns things that are within your control to
change or redirect. You can therefore acknowledge it, confess it, and take
responsibility for it. You may be able to make reparations. And you can repent of
it, working to reorient yourself in order not to repeat the problem behavior. It’s
therefore possible to be rid of the deed, so that the feelings around it no longer
need to haunt you.
Shame, on the other hand, being about what you are, is outside your control.
You can be ashamed of your height, your skin color, your social class. There’s
little or nothing to be done about these, so that feelings of shame are pointless
and always to be avoided. The only way shame can be useful is if it is
converted into guilt, in other words, into something that can indeed be
changed, dealt with, and expunged.
This way of distinguishing the two is helpful in that it encourages us to
identify what we can act on and what we can’t. It directs us away from
downward spirals of shame and toward reparative actions to free us from the
weight of guilt. This is important and helpful.
But there is something in this distinction that rings false. For one, people
don’t only feel shame for things they are, for things that they cannot help.
People can be ashamed also for things they have done. If I do something wrong
(cheat on my spouse, say), I feel not only guilty, but ashamed of myself. In
addition, I disagree that shame plays no useful role unless it is “converted” to
guilt over something you can change. Shame can be both apt and healthy.
Imagine someone who wantonly and repeatedly lies, steals, bullies people, or
sleeps around. People will justly ask such a person: “Have you no shame?”
Because in the face of some kinds of bad behavior, “You should be ashamed of
yourself!”
The Philokalia talks about “shame” mostly as a descriptive of sins—the
“shameful misdeeds” we should avoid. The implication there is always that we
ought to feel ashamed for such wrongs, such that “feeling no shame” is seen as
a problem. “Alas, alas, for I do not feel shame before my Creator and Master!” 1
At points, though, the feeling of shame is shown to be a possible aid to
acquiring humility. 2
Individual vs. Social
Another way to construe the distinction can be found in anthropological
studies: guilt is an individual reaction (“I transgressed a law or commandment
and I feel bad about what I did”), while shame is a social one (“I am
embarrassed before others, and/or God, for what I did or who I am”). Guilt
comes when you know you’ve done something wrong; you feel shame when
others know it. It arises when you consider how they see you or your actions or
have been affected by them. Guilt has to do with transgressing morality,
shame with how others experience your actions.
This distinction also sounds realistic. However, separating out individual
from social transgressions has an inherent flaw: nothing is a totally “individual
act.” Regardless of what other human beings have discerned about my
misbehavior, inside myself I am fully aware that God knows about it.
Furthermore, the whole universe is affected by it—such is our integral
connection to all things. Which means that I might feel not only guilty but also
ashamed for what I have done, even if I haven’t gone public. In a spiritually
interconnected world, nothing I do, say, or even think, stops with me.
When the Prophet Hosea wrote about the people’s lack of faithfulness and
kindness, their swearing, lying, killing, stealing, and adultery, he linked it
directly with the demise of the soil and the animals:
Therefore the land mourns,
and all who dwell in it languish,
and also the beasts of the field,
and the birds of the air;
and even the fish of the sea are taken away. 3
 On the spiritual level, the victimless crime is a non-reality. The whole world
suffers from what I think and do.
Practical Lessons
Defining guilt in opposition to shame allows us to distinguish what we can
control from what we cannot, and the realm of morality from that of self-
regard. That is good. But distinctions between guilt and shame are not tidy, for
in fact the two are often thoroughly interwoven. No matter how we define
them they exist side-by-side. Let’s say I consciously cheated on my taxes, so
that I would pay less money to the government and keep more for myself.
Provided I haven’t been completely successful at justifying myself (“Taxes are
too high anyway!” “I deserve this!” “It’s not for me but for my family!”) I may
feel guilty, because I’ve done something objectively wrong. I may also feel
ashamed, especially if I consider how my children would react if they knew.
That combination pertains, in one configuration or another, to virtually any
misdeed. It is often the shame of the guilty person that will lead him or her to
change, to seek forgiveness, to surrender to God.
However we define shame and guilt, they come down to a mixture of
feelings of regret, embarrassment, humiliation. Here are some steps toward
taking a spiritually useful approach to them:
1. Identify what you are actually feeling
2. Acknowledge it to yourself and to someone else
3. If it may be acted on, do so.
As soon as possible, let it go and move on.
St John Chrysostom reminds us that, just as shame follows a sin, so courage
follows repentance. 4 That is a movement in the right direction.
Be patient. Every stage of this process can pose challenges. Although they
may take only seconds or hours, on other occasions they may demand months
or years. It also helps to know that along the way, feelings of shame or guilt
may be entirely appropriate. They also might be instrumental. They can play a
crucial role in the positive reorientation of our self-understanding and our
relationship with God and the world.
These otherwise negative feeling can also help us participate in Christ, who
—amazingly— became shame. That is how the Church speaks about Jesus and
his death on the cross, which in historical context was one of the most
shameful deaths to undergo. 5
 Since we’re talking about practical lessons, let’s dwell a bit longer on shame,
over things that we can and can’t control. Think about what these might be for
you: the size of your feet, which sex attracts you, the social status of your
ancestors. Begin by naming these sources of shame, as well as the fact that
they are not your fault and mostly beyond your ability to change. Then you
need to decide how to cope with such feelings. But it’s important to identify
what is and is not in your power to change, so as not to waste your efforts.
This is important. There may be events or aspects of your life that, through
no fault of your own, you have been led to feel guilty about, sometimes
devastatingly. Imagine you are the engineer of a commuter train, and someone
dies by leaping in front of your fast-moving cab. Or you are pregnant and
suffer a miscarriage. Or you are a surgeon whose patient dies on the table
despite a flawless procedure. Perhaps you discover that your father or
grandfather participated in war crimes. Or you are a victim of physical,
emotional, and/or sexual abuse who—as is tragically common—feels
responsible for acts perpetrated against you. The naming and healing of these
wounds may take years.
This kind of shame is common to people regardless of their belief system.
Christians have the gift of a God who knows shame and suffering, in the
person of the Divine Son Jesus Christ. Through no fault of his own, he
underwent utter shame and suffering. This was an act of total solidarity with
us who experience our own shame. It also shows that within those depths of
darkness there is a victory of light.
In all of this, the stakes are high—both positively and negatively. Feelings of
repressed guilt and shame, unnamed, unchecked, untreated, can lead to
emotional and physical illness. When turned inward, unchecked shame leads to
depression, and possibly towards suicidal tendencies; when turned outward, it
can lead to toxic anger, and possibly towards the abuse of oneself and others.
In fact, people can seek to offset their own shame by shaming others . In one
very common example of this, a man can so despise the fact that he is sexually
attracted to other men that he channels that hatred towards others, especially
other people with same-sex attraction. Shame can furthermore lead to or
exacerbate compulsive and addictive behaviors, notably the abuse of
substances, food, sex, or money. All of these are deeply serious concerns, a
matter—sometimes literally—of life and death. Guilt and shame can act like a
poison.
And yet, guilt and shame play a vital part in our salvation. Just as the body
generates a fever to combat illness and nerves send signals of pain upon
trauma, so our feelings of guilt and shame can tell us that a wrong needs to be
rectified, a breach needs to be healed.
In fact, these kinds of remorse are signs that your conscience is in good
working order (an important step in an examination of the self is
acknowledging that it may not be). One of the most significant symptoms of
our fallen human nature is that your ability to discern right from wrong is
compromised. The instrument isn’t properly calibrated. Add to this that you,
like many of us, may have become experts in jamming its mechanism. You do
that by justifying the transgressive things you think, say, and do. Many of us
put a great deal of effort into that. Sinning can make us feel extremely good for
a while, and we really want to continue! So we cloud our conscience, ignore it,
or assuage it.
But this never actually benefits us, even though it is a perennial human
pastime. We do it individually and corporately. Recently, one of the world’s
largest automobile manufacturers, Volkswagen, was caught cheating. 6 They
installed a mechanism in their cars that lowered the vehicle’s harmful
emissions only when it was undergoing a diagnostic test. Basically, they found
a way around the car’s “conscience.” Such bald-faced cheating is shocking. But
we do much the same when we suppress our own consciences to do what we
know is wrong.
* * *
So guilt and shame are signs of a healthy conscience, and in this—ironically,
perhaps—they may even testify to a healthy sense of self-worth. A feeling of
shame can be telling us, “You were created for better than this. You are better
than this. This bad behavior is beneath the beauty and dignity of your true
self.”
We are now ready to talk about something that can encompass guilt and
shame, and go beyond them.

Compunction
In Chapter 1 (“Discovering Myself as ‘Sinner’”), I spoke of the importance for
our journey of finding ourselves in contexts of purity and holiness. Sometimes,
being with a truly good person—someone in conscious pursuit of purity and
closeness to God—can alert us to our sinfulness. They can make us feel
uncomfortable because, without any intention of embarrassing us, they see
through our façades. The degree to which we experience holiness, wherever we
find it, will likely be the degree to which we experience compunction. Not
necessarily as remorse for a particular deed, but for our brokenness. Contrition
is the natural reaction to the gulf between what we are in our disordered lives
and what we are in God’s eyes. Ideally our experience of that gulf will produce
a positive, life-giving compunction.
The eighth-century saint Hesychios said much the same about the
awareness and cultivation of this inner goodness:
If we preserve, as we should, that purity of heart, the watch and guard
of the intellect . . . this will not only uproot all passions and evils from our
hearts; it will also introduce joy, hopefulness, compunction, sorrow,
tears, an understanding of ourselves and of our sins, mindfulness of
death, true humility, unlimited love of God and man, and an intense and
heartfelt longing for the divine. 7
The virtues and pursuits he lists have the effect of routing sinful passions
and evil. These gifts help to explain why—consistently throughout the ancient
prayer texts—we see the saints effectively asking God for remorse . For example,
“Take from me the heavy yoke of sin, and in your compassion, grant me tears
of compunction.” 8 Or, “‘‘Give me understanding, O Lord, that I may weep
bitterly over my deeds.” 9 These tears of contrition will lead us to a life lived
truly.
But such an attitude, like everything we have been discussing in this book,
is rife with the possibility of neurosis. For one, compunction needs to be
distinguished from clinical depression, which as a chemical imbalance in the
brain must be diagnosed and treated by a healthcare practitioner through
therapy and/or medication. Without a modern clinical understanding of
depression, St Paul recognizes the difference between therapeutic shame and
the neurotic kind. To the Corinthians, he writes that “godly grief produces a
repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief
produces death.” 10 Here is the back-story: St Paul had sent this community an
earlier, difficult letter that had evidently caused considerable upset. But he is
pleased about this, not because he takes any enjoyment in causing grief, but
because he sees that the people acted on it. Their remorse lead them to address
their problems so that they grew into a better community. St Paul’s message is
that sorrow is to be expected in this world. The problem arises when grief is
allowed to fester and to destroy. Therefore we should embrace a compunction
that compels us to change our lives for the better.
Elsewhere too, remorse takes its place among many benefits. Hear a list of
encouragements given us by the angels: “support, illumination, compunction,
encouragement, patient endurance, joyfulness, and everything that saves and
strengthens and renews our exhausted soul.” 11 Contrition, the ascetics say, is
to prayer as salt is to food, and as melody to the lute. Without it, the meal has
no flavor, the notes no sweetness. 12 Compunction, then, gives our inner life and
our prayer life substance. It insures that our words are heartfelt and grounded
in reality.

Reality as Sweetness
You may well wonder what is sweet about feeling shame and regret. I’ve
discussed the benefits of these states of mind when they lead us to re-order
our minds and lives for the better (in a word: repentance). I have suggested
that contrition, properly felt, lends a genuineness to our actions and our
prayers. Effectively, compunction is reality . What does that mean? Consider
the opposite. If our stance, before others, ourselves, and God, has no reference
to our mistakes, failures, misdirected priorities—none whatsoever—we are
simply not in concert with reality. We are in denial.
In interviews with politicians or high-profile corporate officers they are
often asked to list mistakes they have made in their careers. It’s a risky
question to answer, because such leaders want to project competence, and in
some cases, avoid prosecution! Rarely will they understand that realistic self-
scrutiny is a vital component of competence. Because almost inevitably, the
subject will dance around the question and avoid it. And the only “regrets”
they typically list in these cases are the shortcomings of others. The effect of
these utterances is, simply put, unreal to a shocking degree. But even apart
from the trickiness of public confession of sins, many of us tend towards that
kind of fault-masking.
Part of the sweetness of compunction stems from owning up to actual
reality. Shortcoming, failure, and brokenness are inevitable in the living of this
life. Denial and justification lead to lies and are always harmful to us.
Acknowledgement leads to authenticity. Confronting that reality may hurt, but
only for a while. The fourth-century Egyptian ascetic John the Dwarf considers
that the easy burden is self-accusation, while the heavy one is self-
justification. Although it sounds counterintuitive, recognizing sin may seem a
burden, but it beats the imprisonment of constantly lying to ourselves.
Commenting on that observation, Rowan Williams explains that the burden of
self-justification amounts to the ego’s perennial trench-digging, in a futile
effort to defend itself. Self-accusation, puzzlingly, is the light burden. Why?
Because “we know that the burden is already known and accepted by God’s
mercy. We do not have to create, sustain, and save ourselves; God has done, is
doing and will do all.” 13
People versed in psychology will know well the perils of covering up our
compunction or sadness. Especially following tragedy, trauma, abuse, a loved
one’s death, we are apt to supplant our regret and sadness with other things
such as forced joy, anger, hatred, anxiety, and/or depression. The therapy for
deep-set and unexpressed sadness will often include prolonged tears, the
welling up of what had perhaps long been submerged. Often unspeakably
painful, this sweet reality that will, God willing, result in healing and
wholeness.

Penitential Prayer as Sweetness

The Lenten periods are reckoned by the Church as sweet. The Friday before
Meatfare Sunday, we sing, “Let us begin the fast with joy!” and read aloud
from the Old Testament:
“Thus says the Lord of hosts: The fast of the fourth month, and the fast
of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be
to the house of Judah seasons of joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts
. . .” (Zech 8.19)
Why is it that the most penitential services of the Church are so often seen
as the most beautiful, even joyful? People seek them out. The first days of
Great Lent feature evening services where we sing the long penitential Canon
of St Andrew of Crete, which opens:
How shall I begin to mourn the deeds of my wretched life?
Come, my wretched soul,
and confess your sins in the flesh to the Creator of all.
From this moment forsake your former foolishness
and offer to God tears of repentance.
The text enumerates all the sinners of the Old and New Testaments. If I
follow the words, I find myself confessing that my sins are worse than theirs.
The Canon also catalogues the virtuous ones of the Bible, and I find myself
singing that I have failed to imitate their goodness. The musical tonalities are
somber, and the lighting is low, sometimes limited to just the candles.
Who wants to come to such a maudlin service? Apparently, a lot of people
do. The Canon services are among the most heavily populated of the year in
the many parishes I have attended. Artists, bankers, academics, doctors,
construction workers, teachers, and office administrators come. My teenage
children would insist on attending: “My favorite!” (actual quote). All of these
people, prostrating themselves willingly, devoid of pathos, as the prayers are
chanted—it’s a sight to behold.
That being said, these services do not appeal to everyone. First time visitors
can be shocked at the depth and severity of their penitence. But for those who
understand their context, they feel heavenly. Through social media I asked
friends in the Church why they thought these services were so curiously
attractive. Some of their answers touch on how they help us recognize the
depth of divine love and forgiveness.
The bright sadness of these services reveals something about joy, about
love that doesn’t skim over faults but encompasses and heals them.
It’s the “no matter what” quality of forgiveness and love. You don’t
really see the divine love until you look at how poorly you’ve done, and
then see that you are still beloved and accepted.
Others wrote about the services’ honesty and how they put sin into the
context of redemption, mercy, forgiveness.
Another wrote about the communal dimension of these confessions:
These services are beautiful because we drop our shields and open up
our hearts, and we realize that we are not alone: others have made
mistakes, felt sorrow and pain, and all need to heal.
Another suggested that they connect us with an emotion that can be elusive
in the rest of our lives. And then this same person wrote:
Somehow the distance from woundedness to joy is shorter than the
distance from happiness to joy.
This observation still has me reflecting in wonder.
A recurrent theme of this Canon is the inner beauty of the human person: it
is marred by sin, but capable of restoration. That is what we are asking for.
Through love of pleasure
has my form become deformed
and the beauty of my inward being has been ruined.
The woman searched her house for the lost coin until she found it.
Now the beauty of my original image is lost, Savior,
buried in passions.
Come and as she did, search to recover it. 14
The repentant spirit of the Church maintains that that Christ comes to
bring back the beauty that we have tarnished, and that we can participate in
that restoration.
The Canon services are special, deliberately so. In them we see how the
Church’s liturgical cycle are a masterpiece of pastoral management. We don’t
delve so deeply into our compunction throughout the whole church year; if we
did, we couldn’t bear it. We have to maintain a balance. During the seasons of
fasting, we focus on our responsibility for sin. But we must never lose sight of
our goodness, created by God, restored in his Son, by his Holy Spirit. The
Church’s liturgy is designed to show us how to fast and how to feast, how to
lament and how to rejoice. It opens our hearts to an increasing acceptance
these realities. Because until we allow them in, they can barely touch us.

Bright Sadness
When I was writing my book on the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, I examined
a quality to his music that a vast number of his listeners have commented on.
He interweaves sorrow and joy, loss and hope, suffering and consolation. 15
This balance—entirely true to the reality of human life—is reflected in the ethos
of the Church. 16 The Church’s emphasis on our corporate and personal sin
holds before us that reality that we normally seek to forget. The Church
likewise never ceases to hold before us the joy of the resurrection, and the
miracle of divine love, mercy, and forgiveness. It also brings us to recollect the
beauty of the universe, which itself is an epiphany of God and which offers
God constant praise.
But, let’s face it, repentance can be extremely painful to experience. Tears
are not always laced with sweetness. Sometimes they express anguish,
profound regret, bitterness. These can last, unconsolably, for years. There may
be no simple remedy for a transgression we have either done or had done to us.
We have to acknowledge that some of our pain will endure as long as we live.
But our faith maintains that God knows it fully, that he has taken it up in
himself, and that he is love and mercy .
Furthermore, after some kinds of trauma or tragedy, penitence may not be a
healthy focus. We’ve already looked at the kinds of seemingly inevitable but
misplaced guilt that people may feel over events that had no control over. Such
cases are more apt to demand a period of healing, sometimes over a long time,
before a person would profitably revert to the sinner language about himself or
herself.
Keeping these caveats in mind, we find that the Church teaches there is
consolation in our compunction, especially when it includes self-examination,
identifying our sinfulness. Self-pity, blaming others, and self-justification play
no part in that kind of repentance. In Step 7 (“On Mourning”) of St John
Climacus’ Ladder of Divine Ascent , he notes that self-condemnation can be
misapplied. He has read St Paul, and is aware of both good (“godly”) grief and
bad (“worldly”) grief, that there is mourning, and there is “false mourning.” But
if we do it right, mourning is tinged with joy:
When I consider the actual nature of compunction I am amazed at how
that which is called mourning and grief should contain joy and gladness
interwoven within it like honey in the comb. What then are we to learn
from this? That such compunction is a special sense a gift of the Lord.
There is then in the soul no pleasureless pleasure, for God consoles those
who are contrite in heart in a secret way. 17
Climacus suggests that we are aiming for the right motivation.
Compunction and mourning need to be driven less by sorrow than by love.
May this mystery be revealed to us ever more, as we draw nearer to the loving
God in the prayer life of the Church.

Notes
1 Peter of Damaskos, in Philokalia Vol. 3, p. 112.
2 See, for example, Diadochos of Photike, in Philokalia Vol. 1, p. 280.
3 Hos 4.1–3.
4 On Repentance and Almsgiving, Homily 8.
5 See Gal 3.13—Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us—for it is
written, “Cursed be every one who hangs on a tree.”
 6 [Link]
[Link], accessed January 15, 2016.
7 St Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness , in Philokalia Vol. 1, p. 181.
8 The Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete.
9 The Canon of Repentance.
10 2 Cor 7.10.
11 St John of Karpathos, For the Encouragement of the Monks in India , Philokalia Vol. 1, 315.
12 Elias the Presbyter, Philokalia Vol. 3, 56; 46.
13 Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes, 47.
14 The Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete, a penitential work, devotes much of its second ode to
reflection on the original beauty in which we were created, thus simultaneously lamenting our fall, and
remarking that the glorious image is still there, and to be valued and recovered.
15 Peter C. Bouteneff, Arvo Pärt: Out of Silence (Yonkers, NY: SVS Press, 2015).
16 See also Fr Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent: Journey to Pascha (Yonkers, NY: SVS Press, 1974), 36
and elsewhere.
17 St John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent , Step 7.49.
 7
Mercy, Forgiveness, and Divine
Judgment
I am the foremost of sinners; but I received mercy for this reason.
1 Timothy 1.15–16
God loves your enemies as much as he loves you.
Mother Gavrilia

A
healthy approach to yourself as sinner depends upon knowing something
of God’s mercy. Without faith and trust in God—as merciful and loving
beyond measure—our self-condemnation would be impossible to bear. It
would be self-destructive. And there is no clearer portrait of God than the
crucified Christ, who has voluntarily surrendered everything for us. The cross—
the limitless self-giving, voluntary co-suffering that it represents, the extent of
love and mercy that it conveys—reveals to us what it is to be God. Some
theologians say that God is “cross-shaped.”
“Yours it is to have mercy on us and to save us, O our God,” we say in
several Orthodox prayers. Forbearance is what God does, who he is, and we
know this because he has shown us, again and again. This God, and none other,
is the one before whom we acknowledge our sin, to whom we surrender the
totality of our inner pollution. “Mercy” is the usual translation for the Greek
eleos and the Hebrew hesed . Both eleos and hesed are also rightly rendered as
“loving-kindness.” Both also imply “grace,” in the sense that this love is
undeserved. It is pure and voluntary on the part of the bestower. The Greek
eleos also calls to mind “oil” (in Greek elaion ), which carries its own scriptural
depth of meaning as an anointing of rulers, 1 something to make the face shine,
2 the oil of gladness. 3 Mercy, though, in the church context is primarily an

unearned blessing from God.

It also means letting someone off the hook for a deserved penalty. Some
years ago I was pulled over on the highway for speeding. I recall asking the
policeman, “Would you have mercy on me?” His answer was brief and final:
“No.” (He proceeded to write me an extremely expensive ticket.) We beg the
mercy of someone capable of condemning us to or releasing us from a penalty.
We ask God’s mercy in this sense as well. He is the judge. And it is a good
thing that his justice does not mimic our own.

Divine Justice
Divine forgiveness bears little resemblance to our human sense of justice.
Conceived humanly, justice consists of a fair trial and a reasonable punishment
or reward. But if we are truly cognizant of the errors of our ways, we can only
repeat the words of the psalm,
If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,
Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness.
(Ps 130.3–4)
If God were “fair” or “just” according to human legal standards we would
stand condemned. It’s that simple. The ways we live for gratification, attach
ourselves to possessions and pleasures, regard our colleagues and neighbors
coldly and competitively, strew trash over the beauty of the world, and
otherwise manifest our skewed priorities would find us condemned in an
earthly court. But—thankfully—God’s weighs justice differently.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
(Is 55.8–9)
Also,
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
(Ps 103.11–12)
Heaven and earth, East and West—these describe a cross, of the greatest
expanse imaginable.
The knowledge of this undeserved and unconditional forgiveness is the
indispensable accompaniment to our compunction and our shame. It converts
contrition into consolation and hope. As Pope Francis recently said, “Shame is
a grace that prepares us for the embrace of the Father, who always forgives
and always forgives everything.” 4

Identification and Confession

If naming ourselves as sinners rests in genuine self-understanding, before God,
others, and ourselves, that means that recognition of that identity is a vital
first step towards healing and mercy. The second step involves articulation.
Openly acknowledging and articulating our wrongs to one another is a
powerful medicine against the sickness of sin.
I may transgress against others—lie to them, hurt them physically or
emotionally—and acknowledge it, but there is no guarantee that they will
forgive me immediately—or ever. By contrast, we are told that mercy and
forgiveness from God is instantaneous and guaranteed. The parable of the
Prodigal Son depicts God as a father who runs with arms outstretched to
embrace and kiss the son who intends to articulate his immorality. The father
doesn’t even allow his son to complete his confession—he has already ordered
the celebratory feast (Lk 15.20–24).
You may prefer to bottle up your faults. It seems easier in the short term,
after all. But the way to mercy and freedom comes through verbally owning up
to them:
Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose
spirit there is no deceit.
While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day
long.
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried
up as by the heat of summer.
Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the
guilt of my sin.
. . . Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous,
and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.
 (Ps 32)
Happiness relies on not deceiving yourself, but on acknowledging your
errors and receiving forgiveness. Doing this with someone, usually a
“confessor,” does several things. It instills an accountability to another flesh-
and-blood person—who also may be able to give some useful advice. It puts
you into community with other sinners-being-forgiven, sufferers-being-healed,
in the Church. And in all of this it takes you out of a very unhealthy isolation.
No longer are you carrying a burden by yourself, you are giving it over to
others, and ultimately to God.
And, again, God is merciful. Christ, our true judge and priest, is not “unable
to sympathize with our weaknesses”; rather he “in every respect has been
tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to
the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of
need. ” 5

The State of Sinfulness

I opened this book with a description of three imaginary people with different
approaches to the “sinner” identity. Let me describe a fourth, an actual
historical figure, Peter of Luxembourg, from the 14th century. Throughout his
youth, he was obsessed with identifying and cataloguing his transgressions. He
would write them down in notebooks or on little scraps of paper. He would call
for confession, twice a day and sometimes at night, too. Priests would try to
ignore his pleas, but in vain. After his death (at the age of 18), they found a
whole chest-full of these little scraps of paper with his sins. 6
When I first read this story, my immediate reaction was that this kid really
needed was to get a life. I don’t wish to denigrate a Roman Catholic saint, but
the accounts about him sound a bit unhealthy. He certainly lacks the post-
confessional joy, that sense of relief that I’ve been touting. He seems to indulge
in an obsessive-compulsive series of confessions. I wondered at his capacity for
locating particular sins at every moment of his life—and then I had to ask
whether doing so was really the point of Christian life.
You do need to come clean about particular faults and ill-directed
tendencies. But specific sins do not tell the whole story. They may serve as
indicators of patterns that deserve our attention. We may benefit from the
insights of a spiritual director or an astute, trusted friend. For example, if I tend
to feel bitter anger at people who disagree with me, I might harbor a kind of
vanity, a self-esteem problem that I would do well to address. That tendency
might also be thoroughly enmeshed with compulsions to overeating, lust, or
other kinds of consumption and objectification. I need to be helped through
that tangle of passions and attachments.
Another aspect of focusing on particular offenses is that they are but signs
of an entire state of being. Whether or not I point to an exact quantity or
gravity of specific faults I have committed, I will gradually come to understand
myself as a sinner, in the sense of an overarching portraiture, my existential
state. My condition of unworthiness brings me to my utter contingency upon
God and his divine grace. The condition of “unworthiness” doesn’t mean “I’m
not worth saving.” It means that I’m dependent on God’s mercy, which I did
not earn.
Imperfection and sin, as a total condition, are the doors to mercy. Orthodox
Christians are not the only ones who recognize this. The 13th-century mystic
poet Rumi writes, “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” Eight
hundred years later, Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen would sing, “There is
a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Trappist monk Thomas
Merton wrote about the person who is “unafraid to admit everything that he
sees to be wrong with himself, and yet recognizes that he may be the object of
God’s love precisely because of his shortcomings.” Such a person, Merton
continues, “can begin to be sincere. His sincerity is based on confidence, not in
his own illusions about himself, but in the endless, unfailing mercy of God.” 7

Asking for God’s Mercy

We have established at many points in this book that God is merciful by
default. He forgives what we would consider unforgivable. He loves us more
than we can comprehend. If this is the case, we might wonder: why do we
need to ask for mercy?
It is the nature of a vending machine to dispense things. I put my coins in,
and out comes the candy. I don’t “humbly ask” the machine for its goods, nor
am I grateful to it for dispensing them. The machine is just doing what it was
made to do. God is obviously not a vending machine. But still, if God is the
very definition of all-encompassing love and mercy, why not just rely on his
forbearance to just “happen” to us?
At the human level, it’s easier to understand the importance of asking
forgiveness of each other. If I feel hurt by something my wife has said or done,
I am inclined to forgive her, out of a combination of love, understanding, and
even self-preservation. It isn’t always easy. But if she comes to me and asks my
forgiveness, my feelings are transformed. Almost immediately, I’m twice as
ready to patch things up with a heartfelt embrace.
But this is not how God operates. God does not change his orientation
towards us on the basis of how persistently we beg. Some Bible stories make it
seem otherwise, but those narratives describe how we human beings
experience God’s love, mercy, and judgment. They show what seem to be give-
and-take or tug-of-war exchanges between God and humans (especially in the
Old Testament). If read without discernment, these paint a misleading portrait
of God’s nature, as our human perspective is limited. God’s disposition
towards us, personally and corporately, is unchanging whether we repent or
defy him.
So, why ask for mercy and forgiveness?
For one, asking is a healthy part of how we respond to the realization of our
shortcomings. In this sense, it’s conceivable to ask (or at least to want to ask)
forgiveness of an infant whom I caused to cry, of a dog whose paw I
accidentally trod on, even of a place that I have defiled. None of these know or
care whether I’ve sought their absolution. I ask because I need to. But once I
have made the request to my clueless victim, I would hope to act differently.
Saying, “I am sorry” begins as a realization of my negative effect on the wider
world, evolves as a kind of self-cleansing, and then ought to be part of a
commitment to act better in the future. Saying it aloud helps my apology
become simultaneously a sign and an instrument of transformation.
Likewise petitioning aloud the merciful God, “Forgive me,” or “Have mercy
on me,” is in part a pledge to do better. Before that, it acts as an
acknowledgment, an inner reminder, of my total dependence on him. I am
contingent on God for my very being. I seek that mercy in recollection of God’s
glory and greatness, his identity as creator and redeemer of the world, and also
his role as judge of the world.
Moreover, my plea for forgiveness is a sign that I am willing to receive
forgiveness. God doesn’t force anything on us, not even his mercy or salvation.
The 20th-century Russian-French theologian Vladimir Lossky wrote that God
willingly becomes powerless in front of human freedom, “a beggar of love
waiting at the soul’s door without ever daring to force it.” 8 Therefore I must
become complicit with God’s mercy and love. I can only do that if I am
convinced that I need it.
 God doesn’t need us to ask for mercy in order to be merciful. He doesn’t
need us to ask for forgiveness, to forgive us. God, in his essence, doesn’t need
prayers of any kind. Our prayers and pleas, our exclamations of gratitude, both
testify to and shape our disposition before him. They serve to cultivate and
strengthen that stance, of contingency, gratitude, repentance, and joy. So
much of prayer shapes us, softens our hearts, and allows us to wonder at the
ways of God, the mercy of God, the justice of God, which—thank God—are not
like ours.

God’s Mercy and Mine

Telling his followers that they must love their enemies, Jesus says, “Be perfect,
therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect.” Thus says Jesus in Matthew’s
Gospel (5.48). In Luke’s Gospel, the saying is just a bit different: “Be merciful,
just as your Father is merciful” (6.36). One wonders, was Jesus making two
different statements? Did Matthew and Luke hear the same thing differently,
“Be perfect” versus “Be merciful”? Or perhaps we can glean that perfection is
somehow related to mercy. Evidently, Jesus wants us to imitate God in his
perfection and in his mercy.
These are two key places where Jesus tells us to pattern our behavior on
God’s. In another, he recites in the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses”—
in other words have mercy on us in the face of our sins—“ as we forgive those
who trespass against us.” He seems to be saying that we shouldn’t ask God to
absolve us if we don’t absolve others. It’s as if we are saying, “To the extent I
forgive others, forgive me.” Or at the very least we pray this as our
commitment to try to forgive as God does, to have mercy as God does.
If nothing else, relating our forbearance to God’s reminds us that the more
we are aware of our own sin and our dependence upon God’s endless grace,
the more we will be compassionate towards others. This kind of reciprocity
ought to come naturally, but often falls short. In Matthew’s Gospel (18.23–35)
Jesus tells a cautionary tale of a servant who was forgiven a huge debt by his
master. When that servant was ruthless to his fellows who owed him money,
the master imprisoned him. We might say that the inability to forgive is itself a
prison.
At the end of St John’s Gospel, Jesus breathes on the disciples, saying, “If
you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they
are retained” (Jn 20.23). These words herald the disciples’ future ministries. But
we can also apply them universally. When we “retain” our own sins or those of
other people, everyone is affected, on earth as in heaven. But, hard as it might
be, when we forgive, “let go and let God,” everyone is freed.
There has been a debate on-and-off throughout the history of the Christian
Church as to whether God might in fact save everyone. This is known as “the
doctrine of universal salvation,” often known by the Greek word apokatastasis,
which means “restoration.” From antiquity until today, many people reasoned
that, since God is merciful and loving—essentially and by definition—and since
evil is really only a misuse of good, it would follow that in the end, everyone
will be saved, admitted into heaven. The Orthodox have been cautious of
teaching universal salvation for a variety of reasons. For example, God doesn’t
interfere with human freedom, including the freedom to fall—but several of the
Church’s cherished voices have expressed at least the hope for the salvation of
everything and everyone. Among those voices was St Silouan the Athonite. He
once found himself in conversation with a hermit who took a certain relish in
contemplating how God would send atheists to hell, because “it was their own
fault.” Silouan, alarmed and sorrowful, replied, “Love could not bear that . . .”
Did he mean God’s love, or ours? We don’t know for sure, but he completed
his sentence with “. . . we must pray for all.”
Whether God saves everyone or not, we can hope that he does. But more
than that, God’s universal salvation or “ apokatastasis ” may in some way be
predicated on my personal “ apokatastasis ,” my internal complicity with
universal divine mercy. As Jesus says, “whatever you bind on earth shall be
bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven”
(Mt 18.18). We might therefore consider adopting a practice of mercy, of
“loosing,” opening our hearts to God’s salvation of everyone. Every single
person we encounter—in a meaningful way, positively or negatively, or just in
passing on the street, whether they are openly transgressing or seem
deplorable or just annoying—is someone who should elicit our internal
disposition of release. The next time you see someone you are inclined to judge,
roll your eyes at, or condemn, imagine God calling you by name to say. “I love
this person, and I want to save her. Is that OK with you?” Your answer should
be, simply must be, “Yes, Lord! Don’t let me hold you back!” That goes for
everyone and anyone. The sea of people crowded ahead of you in the
supermarket check-out lane. The kid with the ridiculous tattoo. That over-
affectionate couple. Someone yelling at you because of your color or sex. The
politician whose views you abhor. Every one of them: “Yes.” “Yes.” “Yes! Save
and love them, O Lord! And I will rejoice.”
Technically speaking, God doesn’t need our agreement to save someone, or
for that matter to do anything he pleases. But he awaits our assent
nonetheless. He won’t even save me without my saying “yes” to it. So let me say
“yes” to God’s saving everyone and anyone. And then let me say “yes” to God’s
saving even myself.
This kind of “applied mercy” on other people, including the annoying or
even morally reprehensible ones, should ideally entail that I also be willing to
act an instrument in their salvation. In addition to assenting to their salvation,
I should engage with them, listen to them, serve them. We will fall short of this
ideal. But let’s at least start with the “Yes.” For everyone. The “personal
apokatastasis ” liberates others, and us too. It saves us the trouble—really the
utter nuisance—of being judgmental. It is part of surrendering to God. As St
Paul writes, “Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put
away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph 4.31–32). Or as
Jesus said, “Be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful.”

Summary
Throughout this book we have been looking at the healing power as well the
potential problems of the sinner dynamic. Here is a brief summary to reflect on.
We’ve been describing the healthy appropriation of “sinner” language and
identity as a journey, and any of a number of pitfalls can crop up along the
way. In fact, it’s best to expect that they will so you won’t be taken by surprise
when it happens. These are some of the toxic tendencies to beware of when
taking on a sinner identity.
Reactivating old abuse/victim language about yourself.
Exacerbating a genuine clinical depression.
Descending into shame-spirals over things you can’t control.
Obsessing over past sins that have already been forgiven.
Thinking that you are your sin, your shame, your guilt.
Becoming maudlin or self-pitying.
Trying to “out-unworthy” other people.
Allowing it to prevent you from living a fully realized life.

Be patient with yourself. Don’t forget to pray.

 As for the healing tendencies of the penitential mindset, St Paul identified
“the fruits of the Spirit,” as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal 5.22). Here’s what you might
discover in yourself as symptoms or consequences of understanding yourself
properly as a sinner:
Living in truth.
A right stance before God and your fellow humans.
Freedom from enslavement to self-justification.
Freedom from care about what others think of you.
Freedom from taking offense.
Freedom from judging others.
Love and mercy for others.
Love for your true, innermost self.
Taking responsibility for wrongdoing.
Addressing your attachments, compulsions, and passions.
Experiencing forgiveness and love.
Knowing the sweetness of unearned love.
Inner peace.
An appreciation of beauty and goodness in the world.
The discernment of evil in the world.
Closeness to Christ.
Greater knowledge of Christ, who saves the world, overcomes evil, and
forgives sin.

Epilogue
Coming to understand yourself as a sinner heals you because it lets you
acknowledge a truth about yourself. It bolsters your consciousness of
goodness, beauty, and God. It breaks the logjams that separate you from your
true self, from your fellow humans, from God, and from the created world. It is
the beginning of your inner acceptance of God’s all-encompassing and
unconditional love. It sets you free.
The classical icon of Christ’s descent into Hades is evocative of much of
this. The “Easter icon,” as it’s often called, shows him standing on the gates of
hell which he broke down. Around the shattered doors are dozens of broken
locks. Surrounded by others whom he saves, he pulls Adam and Eve
(representing all of fallen humanity) out of the imprisonment of Hades
(representing death).

When Christ, the God-man, becomes sin and enters death, they cease to be
what they were. They are no longer final, they no longer reign over us. Their
power is gone. Jesus’s death completes God’s entry into the full extent of our
vulnerability, our susceptibility, our imprisonment. There’s nowhere lower he
could go, no further depth he could have penetrated. The greatest abyss, the
deepest darkness is now filled with the true Light. Darkness, captivity, and sin
have lost any power they might have had over us. All is light.
All we have to do is prefer the light. That means letting it engulf us, illumine
us, expose us for everything we’ve done and for what we are. It means
surrendering, as sinners, to God’s mercy and love.

Notes
1 Ex 29.7.
2 Ps 104.15.
3 Ps 41.7; Heb 1.9.
4 Public address at St Peter’s Square, August 2, 2015. See
[Link]
[Link], accessed January 15, 2016.
5 Heb 4.15–16, italics added.
6 This description of the life of Peter of Luxembourg is from Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle
Ages (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1999 [1924]), 168.
7 No Man is an Island (New York: Harcourt, 1955).
8 Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1978), 73.
 THEOLOGICAL APPENDICES

T
his book has featured many observations about human beings, their
beauty and their fallenness. What are my source data on these subjects? I
am drawing on my experience as a human being, as a sinner, and as a
student and professor of theology committed to the life and teaching of the
Orthodox Church. The following two appendices set out my understanding of
the Church’s basic teachings about these two subjects, with the hope of
providing a deeper foundation to what we’ve been talking about in the
preceding pages.
 1
The Bible on Human Nature: Is It
Human to Sin?
What are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
Psalm 8.4

W
hat it means to call myself “a sinner” invites some basic questions
about identity: “Who am I?” and “Am I good or bad?” These are
grounded in another fundamental question: “What am I?” To this you
could answer, “I am a human being,” but you know what the next question is:
“What is a human being?”
How do you evaluate a specific guitar, or a table, or a horse, or a car? How
do you decide whether it is good or bad, lacking or complete? You do so on the
basis of what guitars, tables, or horses are collectively, on how they must
function, and how they ought to perform. Guitars are supposed to sound
resonant and be readily playable. Tables ought to be level and stable. We
assess any particular guitar or table against those kinds of criteria. It follows
that the questions I ask about myself—my identity, my evaluation of myself,
and God’s evaluation of me—are characterized by the general questions about
humans collectively. Questions about the particular (me) need to be informed
about the general (humanity). Plus they need to be informed by function: what
is the purpose of human beings?

Genesis 1–3: The Nature of Good (But Fallen) Humanity

The first three chapters of Genesis exist largely in order to answer exactly
these basic questions about what it means to be human and how we relate to
God. Most everyone is familiar with their broad contours. The first chapter
narrates the six days/events of God’s bringing the world into existence. The
next two chapters focus on the odyssey of the human person by recounting the
story of the primordial couple Adam and Eve. Over many millennia these
chapters have been interpreted in a variety of ways. They leave many
questions unanswered about astronomical, geological, and biological origins.
But Genesis was never intended to address those questions. The early
Christian interpreters didn’t consult it in order to learn about the physical
history or layout of our solar system. But they did use it to glean key insights
about how the human person relates to God and the rest of creation. 1
Here are some of the relevant teachings that the early Christian authors
consistently found the in Genesis 1, a chapter sometimes known as the
“Hexaemeron” or six days:
God orders the world in a deliberate way. Whatever the “days” signify
(24-hour cycles? millennia? sets of events?), they reveal God working
through a purposeful sequence of creative acts. We witness God forming
the universe out of nothing and setting it in careful order.
The human being is the pinnacle of creation. After all the “Let there
be”s of the first five days, suddenly God takes stock within himself and
says “Let us make man” (in Hebrew, “adam ”). God creates the human
person, male and female, in his own image, i.e., making us a unique
reflection of himself within creation (Gen 1.26–27).
Creation—with humanity—is very good. God evaluates creation as
“good” at every stage. But once he creates humanity, he considers it to be
very good (Gen 1.31).

Within creation, then, humanity is both good and uniquely akin to divine
nature. These points must inform our inquiry about ourselves at every stage.
The next two chapters of Genesis focus on Adam and Eve in Paradise. Here
the early Christian interpreters glean further basic truths about humankind:
Humanity is a community, male and female. The first time that God
says “it is not good” is when he considers the man alone. The human
person is communal, and sexed, by nature. In Genesis 5.2, during a
summary of Genesis 1–3, we learn that it is only when there are male and
female that God even calls us “human” (in Hebrew, adam, in Greek,
anthro¯pos ).
Humanity is good, but fallen. Created as God’s reflection and animated
with God’s breath, human beings are given the promise of immortality
and perfection. But they do not realize their potential. They live in a state
of child-like innocence, naked and unashamed, and in that state they
 succumb to a foreign influence.
Humanity is supposed to become like God, but not magically. Humans
yield to the temptation of the forbidden fruit because the devil tells them
it will make them like God (Gen 3.5). Of course, God created us to be like
him, but we were not supposed to achieve that by eating a magic fruit.
Instead, our “divinization” is meant to happen in more beautiful and
enduring ways that involve conscious co-operation with God.
Humanity is fallen. This is an important point for a book about sinning.
Genesis shows us that we fell, that we are broken. Since the fall, we have
never known any other mode of existence, which inevitably ends with our
biological death.
Humanity is still good. In spite of the fall, the fact remains that we were
created good and are good. The fall does not result in our being totally
depraved, stripped of all virtue or reason. Our fallenness, our errors, our
shortcomings do not define what it means to be human. True human-ness
is sinless.
Humanity is an organic, interconnected whole. As the Genesis story
continues, we see how people beget other people, and sin begets sin. One
leads to another. The immorality of one person affects his fellows. No
person’s holiness or sin exists in isolation from others. We are so
interconnected with one another and intertwined with the rest of creation
that our sin even affects the natural world (Is 24.5; Hos 4.2–3; Rom 8.19–
23).

So when humanity fell from grace, our goodness became complicated. Our
perception of reality got clouded. Our moral compass and our motivations
were compromised. And we live under the specter of death.
Keep in mind that, although the book of Genesis was written in a Jewish
context, the Christian Church cannot read it without interpreting it in terms of
Jesus Christ. That’s because Christ is the one by whom the world was made (Jn
1.3). Christ is the creator; he pervades the universe; he is its principle of
coherence. When the compiler of Genesis narrates the creation of light, of
water, of humans, Christian thinkers are reminded that Christ is the true Light
and the living Water. They also understand that Christ is the New Adam (Rom
5.14). Christ, our full and final redemption, is the Logos, the “logic” and
coherence of everything that is shown in Genesis 1–3, and beyond.
For in [Christ] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible
 and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or
authorities—all things were created through him and for him. He is
before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Col 1.16–17)
Christ, the New Adam, is the redemption of the human person. He is
perfection. The Old Adam is not perfection: having squandered his potential, he
represents human brokenness. When we look to Adam and Eve we see the
story of the struggle to obtain goodness—sometimes finding it and sometimes
not. The entire biblical story shows God calling us, God redeeming us.
Sometimes we act on that redemption, more often we do not.
God allows our downfall in order to help us become discerning creatures.
That gives us the chance to choose freely, informed by real experience. God
respects us too much to create us as automatically good: genuine love cannot
be pre-programmed. By design, we are in a state of emerging. We are made in
God’s image—the fall doesn’t take that away—but we must actively participate
in the process of becoming truly like him, being “perfect as our heavenly father
is perfect” (see Mt 5.48). God, in his Christ and by his cross, sets us on the way.
Our challenge is to accept the journey.
Human creation required only one unilateral initiative: God’s. But our
redemption requires bilateral measures: God’s and ours. God doesn’t force us
to be like him. God creates by his own will but he voluntarily submits himself
to our cooperation. He will not violate that principle of freedom, love, and
respect.
To sum up what it is to be human:
Good but fallen
Fallen but redeemed
Redeemed but with responsibility in community and in Christ

Genesis shows that humanity and human experience cannot be described

with a single unqualified adjective. Humanity is complex and finite. God, on
the other hand, is simple and infinite, and his approach to us can be described
in just one word: Love.

Further Reflections

1. The Psalms: The Experience of Being a Good-but-Fallen Person

If the Genesis creation accounts offer insights into our origins, our
transgression, and God’s redemption, the Psalms immerse us into how we
experience these realities in this world. The Psalms are a catalogue of human
frustration, hope, despair, faith, trust, anger, love. Every one of these human
dispositions is given its due, along with its proper orientation.
Psalm 8 gives a perfect introduction as to who and what we truly are. It
opens in the praise of the wondrous God:
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is thy name in all the earth!
Thou whose glory above the heavens is chanted by the mouth of babes
and infants . . .
In the face of that glory, and the glory of the rest of creation, human beings
seem so small:
When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars which thou hast established;
what is man that thou art mindful of him,
and the son of man that thou dost care for him?
And yet the creator has made us great, like he himself is:
Yet thou hast made him little less than God,
and dost crown him with glory and honor.
The only adequate response is to return to the praise and awe of God:
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is thy name in all the earth!
But our greatness stands in stark contrast to the ways in which we sin. We
make war; we act wickedly. The rich oppress the poor. Immorality appears
throughout the Psalms, in terms that are all the more stark and emotional
given humanity’s rootedness in virtue and the glory with which we were
crowned. Our hope rests not in us, but in God. God made us majestic and
remains our redeemer. It is God in whom we should put our faith, say the
Psalms.
The Psalms describe a constant movement from lament to praise, despair to
hope, frustration to faith, and we can learn from that upward movement:
“I am greatly afflicted”;
 I said in my consternation,
“Men are all a vain hope.”
What shall I render to the Lord
for all his bounty to me?
I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the Lord.
I will pay my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people
. . . Praise the Lord!
(Ps 116.10–14; 19)
For I eat ashes like bread,
and mingle tears with my drink,
because of thy indignation and anger;
for thou hast taken me up and thrown me away.
My days are like an evening shadow;
I wither away like grass.
But thou, O Lord, art enthroned forever;
thy name endures to all generations.
Thou wilt arise and have pity on Zion;
. . . For the Lord will build up Zion,
he will appear in his glory;
he will regard the prayer of the destitute,
and will not despise their supplication.
(Ps 102.9–13; 16)
This is the shape of human experience in God. We are made “little less than
God” and “crowned with glory and honor.” Yet we sin: “I know my
transgressions, and my sin is ever before me” (Ps 51.3). Furthermore immorality
is all around us: “Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the
grasp of the unjust and cruel man” (Ps 71.4). And therefore: “Thou, O Lord, art
my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth. Upon thee I have leaned from my
birth; thou art he who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is
continually of thee” (Ps 71.5–6).
So we return to our questions: Are we good? Are we bad? Are we defeated?
Are we saved? Are we condemned? Does heaven await? As we watch all of this
play out in a glorious but damaged world, our experience is mixed, bittersweet,
full of both sorrow and joy. The Psalms encapsulate and guide all of this in
poetry and prayer.

2. “To Err Isn’t Human”

There are a number of popular expressions about human nature that I’d like to
take issue with. Alexander Pope’s dictum “To err is human” has become all-
pervasive, as we excuse failures. Someone vindicating a mistake may say, “I’m
only human!” Such expressions are understandable. Our daily experience of
society reveals a humanity that is weak, limited, irritating, and prone to greed
and dishonesty. So there is a sense in which we are right to curb our
expectations. On the other hand, these expressions are unacceptable if used to
refer to our essential nature.
True humanity is not broken, but whole. Genuine humanity is not sinful but
uncompromised. Being fully human means being fully alive, in free, loving,
creative communion with God, with one another, and with the created world.
That is how you define humanity, not through brokenness and rudderless
groping. Seen this way, our journey toward being increasingly God-like is
commensurate, even synonymous, with our journey towards becoming fully
human.
There are expressions about humanity that are closer to the mark. When
someone acts cruelly, abusively, or exploitatively, his or her behavior is often
(rightly) condemned as “inhuman.” After performing a heroically, a rescuer will
often (rightly) say of his or her action, “It was the human thing to do.” We are
recognizing our essential goodness. “Humane” is actually the original version
of the word “human.” They became separate forms only in the 18th century,
when “humane” came to connote—and rightly so!—“compassion” and
“benevolence.” Now think what it means to “ de humanize”: to deprive people
of their innate qualities of individuality, liberty, worth, and dignity. Defining
our neighbors, our fellows, our colleagues, our workers, our enemies, our
antagonists, our refugees and migrants as “other” is a way of dehumanizing
them. People dehumanize others to justify depriving them of basic rights, bully
them, or kill them. All of these applications of the word human/humane,
humanize and dehumanize, are instructive of our innate sense that humanity
is, at root, good and worthy of dignity.
So our imperfection does not mean that we are totally depraved. We are
still, at our core, upright and virtuous. Although the humanity that we
experience around us is constantly compromised—the shabbiness, mediocrity,
and sometimes sheer evil can be mind-numbing—it does not define our
existence, theologically speaking.

Epilogue
We’ve been reflecting from the general to the particular—that is, considering
“humanity” in order to start thinking about our own selves. That’s deliberately
how I set out this reflection on human nature. But this can be misleading. If we
think only about the whole of humanity as “good” but individual humans as
“sinners,” we are thinking like Linus in the classic Peanuts comic, who shouted
in exasperation, “I love mankind . . . It’s people I can’t stand!!”
We can’t glibly make theologically beautiful statements about the essential
goodness of humanity, without recognizing that individuals can be annoying,
criminal, or dangerous.
Classical Christian theology accounts for this problem. It insists on defining
humanity by its true, genuine nature, and on seeing the deep-set aberrations
within human behavior as distortions of that nature. All of us distort our true
nature, even as we try to live up to its goodness. We are all on our way to
becoming human. No matter how much someone sins while they are “becoming
human,” from the divine perspective, they are still “human,” which means,
good. So Linus’s distinction between a beautiful general “mankind” and bad
particular “people” doesn’t finally work.
The early-third-century Christian theologian Tertullian writes about life in
the womb, “That is a human which is going to be one; you have the fruit
already in its seed.” 2 Even if fetal life does not yet meet all of the
characteristics of a fully conscious human, it only needs time. The potential to
be human is being human. To extrapolate further, no matter a person’s age,
physical or mental state, or stage of emotional and spiritual development, this
human being is valued. Fetus, child, or teenager; callous or sensitive; gay or
straight; male or female; communicative or mute; kind or murderous: each is a
person on the way to being human, a human-in-progress.
Who am I? Together with you, I am a human being, created in God’s image,
imperfect and constantly deviating from that image, striving to stay the path
that was established and shown me by Jesus Christ. So I am also redeemed,
forgiven, or rather (since we are temporal beings) constantly being redeemed
and forgiven, in the love that God manifests in Christ Jesus.
Notes
1 For a look into the first four centuries of Christian interpretations of the Genesis creation accounts,
see Peter C. Bouteneff, Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008).
2 Tertullian, Apology 9.6.
 2
What Is Sin?
Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is
doing it.
Augustine of Hippo

in,” in its Greek translation (hamartia ) means “missing the mark,” that
“S is, off target. This matters, because Greek was the language of many of
the earliest Church fathers, whose thinking shaped much of our most basic
theology. If we are at root good yet broken, it makes sense that this Greek-
inflected idea of sin actually presumes our goodness: it presupposes that there
is a “mark” to be missed. Hitting the target—not missing it—is truly to be
human. Remember, sin does not define humanity; goodness does. Whatever sin
is, it does not reside at the root of our nature. Our transgressions result from
poor aim, misjudgment, skewed priorities. Sin is failure to be true to what we
really are. Which is to say:
Living beings
Loving God in freedom
Flourishing in all good things

Sin is a turning away from that. It negates flourishing, loving, being.

Let’s contrast that understanding of sin with three of the more common
definitions.
1) “All things are lawful . . .” (1 Cor 10.23a)
There are those who reject a notion of sin, or rules, altogether. In this view, we
should travel through life, taking its enjoyments and bumps in stride. We
should avoid feelings of guilt and shame as detrimental to a life well lived.
2) “. . . but not all things are helpful.” (1 Cor 10.23b)
To others, ethics should simply be left to common sense. Your heart knows the
right or “helpful” thing to do, so do it. In essence, everything is permitted,
other than what your instincts tell you is obviously wrong.
3) “Thou shalt not . . .”
Others consider sins as a list of taboos. Do not lie, do not kill, do not fornicate.
Although couched in negatives, such lists can be useful. They can act like the
rumble strip on a highway, the indentations in the road that cause your car to
make a loud “humm” when you veer off course. The Ten Commandments
function something like this, since it is mostly a list of “Thou shalt not”s. They
played a crucial role in the cultivation of God’s people Israel and they continue
to act as guidelines for a right life. They point to the fact of “God’s law,” which
can be upheld or transgressed. Israel knew well that in his love for them God
provided these laws so his people—and ultimately all people—might live an
abundant, true, healthy life.

But a helpful as “thou-shalt-not” lists can be, they are limited. They can
make us feel not as though we are traveling along a highway protected by a
rumble strip, but through a minefield, paying more attention to avoiding
danger than to progressing forward. Such lists also encourage legalism and
self-justification. I can say to myself, “Well, I didn’t technically commit adultery,
because we did not consummate the sexual act (though we did everything
short of that . . . ).”
In contrast, one of the main characteristics of Christ’s commandments is to
make the law into a much more holistic way of life. Let’s explore what Jesus
does with commandments, rules, and the concept of sin.

Identifying the Mark

Let’s return to the definition of sin as “missing the mark.” If that is correct, we
ought to devote some serious attention to what “the mark” should be. Let us
orient ourselves. We might be missing it because we’re not actually aiming
right.
There are many ways to identify the target. Our conscience can act as a
pointer, but it is not infallible, and sometimes it is fickle. We need a more
reliable guide. To the Christian that is Jesus Christ, as we meet him in the
Gospels.
Christ is the target. He sets the standard, by his life and his death. He also
sets some clear, explicit “commandments,” in Matthew 5–7. He not only
expands on the Ten Commandments, but he also transforms their proscriptive
(“thou-shalt-not”) spirit into a holistic handbook for living.

Transforming the Commandments in Love

Jesus begins teaching the commandments through affirmation, rather than
negation. Blessed are those, he says, who live life in life-affirming ways
(peacemaking), or experience these kinds of adversities (unjust persecution),
yet maintain these attitudes and dispositions (meekness, purity of heart, the
thirst for what is right) (Mt 5.1–12).
The affirmations continue as Christ encourages his listeners to continue
seasoning the world with the “salt” of their lives, enlightening the world the
way a lamp does on a hill (Mt 5.13–16).
Christ then demonstrates that his teachings not only continue the Law of
the Old Testament, but elaborate on it. He teaches that “Do not kill” is
insufficient. He wants us to become aware of inner dispositions (notably,
anger) that could lead to murder. The inner passions miss the mark as
thoroughly as the acts do. Same with adultery: allowing lust to take hold of
our emotions is wrong, even if it is never consummated in adultery.
Christ’s teachings do more than merely upgrading the Decalogue. By
focusing on the spirit as much as on the letter of the law, his commandments
become part of a whole way of life, informed foremost by love. Which is
perhaps why Christ introduces a radical requirement almost entirely absent
from the Old Testament: love of the enemy. That is the greatest test of love
and, therefore, love’s proof.

Teaching the Commandments with Love

The transition from living the “letter of the law” to living the “spirit of the law”
is deeply challenging for Christ’s hearers. So he teaches them as does a true
pastor. When different inquirers approach him about the law, he listens
carefully to them. Then he tailors his response based on what they may be
ready to hear to guide them on their next step towards Real Life. With love, he
moves each person, in a different way, from “letter” to “spirit.”
In one such encounter, a man asks Jesus what he is supposed to do to
achieve eternal life. Jesus asks whether he has followed the letter of the law in
the Ten Commandments. When Christ hears that he had, he “looked upon him,
and loved him.” He then challenges him to move beyond the letter of the law
to fulfill their spirit—by selling his positions to give to the poor (Mk 10.17–22).
To another inquirer, Jesus asks, “What is written in the law? How do you
read it?” By acknowledging the existence of multiple readings, he allows the
man to tell him what he has learned, so that he can tailor his answer to the
man’s understanding. The man has learned the heart and spirit of the
Decalogue: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all
your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your
neighbor as yourself.” So Jesus tells him, “You have answered right; do this,
and you will live” (Lk 10.26–28). The man needs no further instruction.
Part of what we learn from these two encounters is that the Old Testament
commandments are limited. As signposts, they are a good place to start, but
they need to reflect a whole way of life. Their goal is to bring us into a genuine
relationship of love with God, and with fellow human beings so that the rest of
our lives falls into place. Conversely, you can spend your life avoiding murder,
lying, and adultery and still be selfish and uncharitable: a bitter, heartless
legalist. If we are righteous without love, as St Paul reminds us, we gain
nothing (1 Cor 13.1–3). But if love is truly the measure of your life, then
committing murder, lying, covetousness, adultery become unthinkable. You
don’t even have to forbid them by name.

The Mark
What we learn from the Gospels’ descriptions of Christ—and then from St
Paul, and the Church Fathers and Mothers—is not only that “Thou shalt not”
becomes “You ought to.” The commandments become something that people
have to discern for themselves and live into, on the basis of something bigger.
The root principle is, “Love God and love one another, including your enemies.”
With those, the rest will fall into place. You could say that there is barely even
a need to explicitly prohibit specific misdeeds such as murder (or even anger),
fornication (or lust), lying (or stretching the truth), because none of them
satisfies the criterion of love.
Let’s return to our task of identifying the “mark” that we “miss” when we
sin. We now know we should be thinking not about wrongdoing and darkness
but about doing good and focusing on the light. It is good when we act
lovingly toward one another, and give of ourselves to each other. It is good to
feed the hungry; clothe people wearing rags; visit hospital patients, elderly
neighbors, and prisoners. It is good to love and pray for those who love you
and even for those who harm you. These are natural repercussions of love.
Reflect on such things. As St Paul writes:
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is
gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things. (Phil 4.8)
All of these aspects of the light—purity, justice, honor, grace,
praiseworthiness—come down to one icon, the face of Jesus Christ. The perfect
representation of the target we are missing when we sin is Christ on the cross,
the blameless one who voluntarily gives himself up to death out of love for
humanity. He is the icon of divine life, as well as the icon of genuine human
life. He is “the mark.”
* * *
It can be liberating to understand sin and righteousness in this way. God
shows us an icon to try to emulate. Our task is to try to avoid the behaviors
and dispositions that make us less-resemble that icon. This places considerable
responsibility on each Christian. But until we are ready for this ethic of
liberation, we still require pastorally applied rules, canons, and other
guideposts. The three classical “types” of ethical thinking—the proscriptive
(“Thou shalt not”), the prescriptive (“You ought to”), and the teleological
(“here-is-the-mark-to-aim-for”)—all are brought together under the rubric of
Christ’s love. His love is liberating, but the bar is very high: it is Christ on the
cross. His is standard we fail to meet. Therefore the Bible reminds us that no
one is sinless, no, not one (Eccl 7.20; Rom 3.10; 1 Jn 1.8), except for Christ
himself (Heb 4.15).

Sin as a Condition
As we have seen, sin is both an inner disposition (like anger or lust), and an
action (like violence or adultery). But throughout the Bible and the life of the
Church, sin is also presented as both a condition, as well as a kind of force.
The condition of sin can be compared to sickness. Sickness itself resembles
“missing the mark.” We know what health looks like, and sickness is a
distortion of it. Understanding our transgression in terms of sickness
underscores the importance of identifying it, diagnosing it, and taking steps to
heal it. Christ is often described as the great physician, with the Church as his
hospital. In the Gospels, Christ often acts literally as a physician, healing the
paralyzed, the blind, the lame, and the insane. His ministrations have two
features. One, he engages in dialogue with these invalids. He asks what they
want. Two, he heals their ailment, and with this he also forgives their sins.
Spiritual and physical sickness are bound up with each other, and so are
spiritual and physical healing.
Keep in mind that the patient did not necessarily fall ill because he or she
sinned (see Jn 9.2–3). Even though physical ailments can stem from vices
(alcohol can cause cirrhosis) or from unresolved guilt (stress can exacerbate
heart disease), the relationship between the two falls into a larger context. Sin,
sickness, and death are all connected. Human sin, as a totality, leads to human
sickness and eventually death. Mortality creates a fixed limit to of our lives, so
that our gains in wealth and power are a zero-sum game, which means that
mortality itself also causes us to sin. It is a vicious cycle, and the way to break
it begins with identifying the problem.
The condition of sin can also be compared to enslavement (Jn 8.34). In this
view, we are effectively bound to patterns of behavior and cycles of obsessive
thinking. We are in thrall to our desires for power and gratification. We find
ourselves mired in situations where no solution avoids hurting someone. We
are subjugated by our rationalizing processes. Moving away from sin moves us
toward freedom, which is why the ideas of “freedom” and “liberation” appear
so often throughout this book.
Sin as a Force
Sin is also a kind of force or power. Think about the story of Adam and Eve in
Paradise, as told in Genesis 2–3. At the time of their “fall,” Adam and Eve
aren’t perfected, fully realized human beings. If they had been, they wouldn’t
have listened to a talking snake promising them reward for disobedience. But
beyond that, we have to ask ourselves what that serpent was doing there.
True, a hint of darkness had entered the story earlier when God instructs them
about “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” (What’s this “evil” in
Paradise?) In Genesis 3.1, the serpent is described as more “subtle” (sometimes
translated instead as “wise,” “clever,” or “crafty”) than the other beasts. His
entire purpose appears focused on persuading Eve and Adam to oppose God
and then to make things worse by justifying themselves before him.
From the start, we humans have had to reckon with malign influences.
Being naked and unashamed in a state of innocence did not safeguard us from
danger. If anything, such a state makes you more susceptible. Any parent who
has watched his or her innocent children begin to negotiate the world,
encounter strangers, or explore the Internet, is aware of this fact. So the book
of Genesis, which had detailed the “very good” state of the world and its
human inhabitants, then begins to narrate a series of declines. From the fall, it
moves on to the exile from Paradise, the murder of Abel, the culture of
depravity that inspires the flood (and the consequent “reboot” of human and
animal life), the Tower of Babel (even after that reboot, people go wrong). The
decline takes a turn only with the call of Abraham, which indicates God’s
promise to redeem us. The rest of the Old Testament is a series of narratives
about God’s faithful love of his chosen people—who constantly fall away and
have to be called back.
Genesis shows, then, that from the beginning there has been a pull towards
wrongdoing. Later scriptures and other writings identify that “pull” with the
Devil and his demons. But once humanity is under way, it itself becomes a (or
the ) major vehicle in propagating of that evil. The spiritual forces of
immorality, the fear of death, and the sins of others make it virtually
impossible for anyone not to go astray. “Sins” are individual actions, but “sin”
is a force, a sway, an influence, a power. We ignore it at our peril.
We experience that force as temptations to lie, to do violence, or to lust. In
disturbing or terrifying mental images or memories. As addictions to chemical
substances, to sex, to money, to power, to abusing others. In the legacy of our
family lineages and—sometimes in our national identities (slavery and genocide
in the Americas, apartheid in South Africa, the Nazi Holocaust in Germany).
Sin forms a virtually irresistible force in our lives, simultaneously primordial
(stemming from our very beginnings), generational (across familial and
national lineage), and personal (acted on by me myself). 1
All this sets us a theological problem. The “force” of sin is so great that we
can hardly be said to be making free choices. We won’t retreat from the idea
that humanity is essentially good. But are we really perfected free agents who
make thoughtful decisions with the benefit of a clear moral compass? That’s
not what the facts on the ground indicate. We are born in the state of beautiful
innocence and are immediately subject to mixed influences. (Even in the womb
we might receive toxic substances that sully our image-bearing beauty.) To
some extent, it doesn’t matter whether we are born into an idyllic commune,
an urban street devastated by drug sales and gunfire, a family that is
Christian, Muslim, or atheist. Or rather, of course it matters, but in any case
the existentially compromised state of society will act somehow on both our
outer and inner lives. Our God-given freedom of choice is deeply affected by
our socioeconomic status and the complex of influences and necessities around
us.
The environment in which we live comprises our external influences. There
are also internal influences, often called “passions.” Wise persons across the
generations, and across religious and philosophical traditions have identified
two basic passions: zeal and desire. These are essentially neutral. They can be
beneficial, in the form of the zeal for truth, justice, goodness, and the love of
God and the other. They are also potentially bad, in the form of uncontrolled
anger and objectifying lust, and all that stems from that. We do well to
mediate on their effect on our lives. For who among us is immune to the draw
of sexual gratification, the lure of money, and the compulsion to personal
power and pride? This complex of attractions, inextricably linked with the
knowledge and fear of our mortality, constitutes a more or less governing
influence on us. Our surrender to that influence is a sign of the brokenness and
tragedy of our world. As a result, among us beautiful and good human beings,
all created by God in his own image, there is, as we and the Bible have been
saying, no one who lives and does not sin.
But—crucially—that doesn’t mean that we are sin. Nor that “to live means to
sin.” Nor that there is no step that we can take without transgressing. Nor that
the true reality of human nature is wicked. What it does mean is that the
humanity we experience in this world is inevitably distorted. Humanity,
collectively, falls short of itself. It misses the mark. But that is not the end of
the story. The beginning of healing, from our side, rests with our recognizing
the fall of humanity and our own personal role in that fall. It is our recognition
of ourselves as sinners, in need of healing. This opens the door to the saving
love of God.

Notes
1Sin: Primordial, Generational, and Personal is the title of a memorable series of talks by Fr Thomas
Hopko, available on CD (Yonkers: SVS Press, 2008).
 Selected Prayers

The Church’s prayer tradition stems from Old-Testament psalms and

canticles, as well as material composed throughout the Christian period
to the present day. It perpetually balances giving God glory and thanks,
begging God’s protection and help, and confessing ourselves as sinners
needing God’s mercy. The prayers included here are a small selection
chosen for their relevance to the themes in this book.

Canon of Repentance to Our Lord Jesus Christ

A “canon” is a hymn divided into nine odes, or canticles. Each canticle has
an inner structure that encompasses introductory hymns, verses, and
refrains. Canons may be recited in community or as personal prayer. The
precise origin of this Canon of Repentance is unknown, but it pulls no
punches about the depth and severity of our sins. In praying it, we throw
ourselves on God’s mercy. We also ask for the guidance of Mary the
Theotokos (“birthgiver of God” in Greek). The Canon of repentance
focuses on bringing us to awareness of our sins, compunction for them,
and repentance. “Repentance” (metanoia —Greek for “change of mind”)
means the shift in our inner orientation, a God-ward refocus of our lives.
This entire hymn is often used privately as we prepare for Holy
Communion, the partaking of the Lord’s Supper. Whether in liturgical or
private use, this Canon is typically prayed as presented here, with
introductory prayers, Psalm 51, and the Nicene Creed.
If you are so inclined, I highly recommend seeking out the Canon as it
was set to music, sublimely, by Arvo Pärt in his 1997 composition Kanon
Pokajanen .

* * *
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Glory to You, our God, glory to You.
O Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth, Who art everywhere present and
fillest all things, Treasury of good things and Giver of Life, come and dwell in
us, and cleanse us of all impurity, and save our souls, O Good One.
Trisagion
Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.
Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.
Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, Now and ever,
and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
O Most Holy Trinity, have mercy on us. O Lord, cleanse us from our sins; O
Master, pardon our iniquities; O Holy One, visit and heal our infirmities, for
Your name’s sake.
Lord, have mercy. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, Now and ever,
and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Our Father, Who art in the heavens, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom
come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily
bread. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Lord, have mercy. (Twelve times)
O Come, let us worship God, our King. (Bow)
O Come, let us worship and fall down before Christ, our King and God. (Bow)
O Come, let us worship and fall down before Christ himself, our King and God.
(Bow)
Psalm 51
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your
abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my
iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my
sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is
evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless
when you pass judgement. Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother
conceived me. You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me
wisdom in my secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash
me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the
bones that you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out
all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right
spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take
your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain
in me a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners
will return to you. Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, O God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance. O Lord, open my lips, and
my mouth will declare your praise. For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I
were to give a burnt-offering, you would not be pleased. The sacrifice
acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you
will not despise. Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; rebuild the walls of
Jerusalem, then you will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt-offerings and
whole burnt-offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.
The Symbol of Faith
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of
all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
the Only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages; Light of Light; true
God of true God; begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father, by
Whom all things were made; Who for us and for our salvation, came down
from the heavens, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,
and became human; And was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and
suffered, and was buried; And arose again on the third day according to the
Scriptures; And ascended into the heavens, and sits at the right hand of the
Father; And shall come again, with glory, to judge both the living and the dead;
Whose kingdom shall have no end. And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver
of Life; Who proceeds from the Father; Who with the Father and the Son
together is worshipped and glorified; Who spoke by the prophets. I believe in
One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. I confess one baptism for the
remission of sins. I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the age
to come. Amen.
The Canon of Repentance
Ode I
Heirmos: When Israel walked on foot in the deep as on dry land, on seeing their
pursuer Pharaoh drowned, they cried: Let us sing to God a song of victory.
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.
Now I, a burdened sinner, have approached You, my Lord and God. But I dare
not raise my eyes to heaven. I only pray, saying: Give me understanding, O
Lord, that I may weep bitterly over my deeds.
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.
O woe is me, a sinner! Wretched am I above all people. There is no repentance
in me. Give me, O Lord, tears, that I may weep bitterly over my deeds.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
Foolish, wretched one, you are wasting your time in idleness! Think of your life
and turn to the Lord God, and weep bitterly over your deeds.
Now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Theotokion: Most pure Mother of God, look upon me, a sinner, and deliver me
from the snares of the devil, and guide me to the way of repentance, that I
may weep bitterly over my deeds.
Ode III
Heirmos: There is none holy as you, O Lord my God, Who hast exalted the horn
of your faithful, O Good One, and hast established us on the rock of your
confession.
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.
When the thrones are set at the dread judgement, then the deeds of all shall be
laid bare. There will be woe for sinners being sent to torment! And knowing
that, my soul, repent of thine evil deeds.
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.
The righteous will rejoice, but the sinners will weep. Then no one will be able
to help us, but our deeds will condemn us. Wherefore, before the end,
repent of your evil deeds.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
Woe is me, a great sinner, who have defiled myself by my deeds and thoughts.
Not a teardrop do I have, because of my hard-heartedness. But now, rise
from the earth, my soul, and repent of your evil deeds.
Now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Theotokion: Behold, your Son calls, O Lady, and directs us to what is good, yet
I, a sinner, always flee from the good. But you, O merciful one, have mercy
on me, that I may repent of mine evil deeds.
Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.
Sedalen: I think of the terrible day and weep over my evil deeds. How shall I
answer the Immortal King? With what boldness shall I, a prodigal, look at
the Judge? O Kindly Father, O Only-begotten Son, and Holy Spirit, have
mercy on me.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, Now and ever, and
unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Theotokion: Bound now with many fetters of sins, and inhibited by cruel
passions, I flee unto you, my salvation, and cry aloud: Help me, O Virgin,
Mother of God.
Ode IV
Heirmos: Christ is my power, my God and my Lord, the august Church sings in
godly fashion, and she cries out with a pure mind, keeping festival in the
Lord.
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.
Broad is the way here and convenient for indulging in pleasures, but how
bitter it will be on the last day when the soul is separated from the body!
Beware of these things, for the sake of the kingdom of God.
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.
Why do you wrong the poor? Why do you withhold the wage of the hired
servant? Why do you not love your brother? Why do you pursue lust and
pride? Therefore, abandon these things, my soul, and repent for the sake of
the kingdom of God.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
O mindless one! How long will you busy yourself like a bee, collecting your
wealth? For it will perish like dust and ashes soon. But seek rather the
kingdom of God.
Now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Theotokion: O Lady Theotokos, have mercy on me, a sinner, and strengthen and
keep me in virtue, lest sudden death snatch me away unprepared. Lead me,
O Virgin, to the kingdom of God.
Ode V
Heirmos: With Your divine light, O Good One, illumine the souls of them that
rise early to pray to You with love, I pray, that they may know You, O Word
of God, as the true God, Who recalls us from the darkness of sin.
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.
Remember, wretched one, how you are enslaved to lies, calumnies, theft,
infirmities, wild beasts, on account of sins. O my sinful soul, is this what
you have desired?
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.
My members tremble, for with all of them I have done wrong: with my eyes in
looking, with my ears in hearing, with my tongue in speaking evil, and by
surrendering the whole of myself to Gehenna. O my sinful soul, is this what
you have desired?
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
You received the prodigal and the thief who repented, O Saviour, and I alone
have succumbed to sinful sloth and have become enslaved to evil deeds. O
my sinful soul, is this what you have desired?
Now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Theotokion: Wonderful and speedy helper of all, help me, O Mother of God,
unworthy as I am, for my sinful soul hath desired this.
Ode VI
Heirmos: Beholding the sea of life surging with the tempest of temptations, I
run to Your calm heaven and cry unto You: Raise up my life from
corruption, O Greatly-merciful One.
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.
I have lived my life wantonly on earth and have delivered my soul to darkness.
But now I implore You, O merciful Lord, free me from this work of the
enemy and give me the knowledge to do Your will.
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.
Who does such things as I do? For like a swine lying in the mud, so do I serve
sin. But pull me out of this vileness, O Lord, and give me the heart to do
your commandments.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
Rise, wretched one, to God and, remembering your sins, fall down before your
Creator, weeping and groaning, for He is merciful and will grant you to
know His will.
Now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Theotokion: O virgin Mother of God, protect me from evil visible and invisible,
O immaculate one, and accept my prayers and convey them to your Son,
that He may grant me the mind to do His will.
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.
Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, Now and ever, and
unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Kontakion
O my soul, why do you become rich in sins? Why do you do the will of the
devil? On what do you set your hope? Cease from these things and turn to
God with weeping, and cry out: O Kind-hearted Lord, have mercy on me, a
sinner.
Ikos
Think, my soul, of the bitter hour of death and the judgement day of your God
and Creator. For terrible angels will seize you, my soul, and will lead you into
the eternal fire. And so, before your death, repent and cry: O Lord, have mercy
on me, a sinner.
Ode VII
Heirmos: An Angel made the furnace sprinkle dew on the righteous youths. But
the command of God consumed the Chaldeans and prevailed upon the
tyrant to cry: Blessed are you, O God of our fathers.
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.
Put not your hope, my soul, in corruptible wealth, and for what is unjustly
collected. For you do not know to whom you will leave it all. But cry: “O
Christ our God, have mercy on me, who am unworthy.”
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.
Trust not, my soul, in health of body and quickly-passing beauty. For you see
that the strong and the young die. But cry aloud: “O Christ our God, have
mercy on me, who am unworthy.”
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
Remember, my soul, eternal life and the heavenly kingdom prepared for the
saints, and the outer darkness and the wrath of God for the evil, and cry: O
Christ, our God, have mercy on me, who am unworthy.
Now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Theotokion: Fall down, my soul, before the Mother of God, and pray to her; for
she is the quick helper of those that repent. She entreats the Son, Christ
God, and has mercy on me, who am unworthy.
Ode VIII
Heirmos: From the flame you sprinkled dew upon the Saints, and burned the
sacrifice of a righteous man which was sprinkled with water. For you alone,
O Christ, do all as You will. We exalt You unto all ages.
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.
How shall I not weep when I think of death? For I have seen my brother in his
coffin, without glory or comeliness. What then am I to expect? And what do
I hope for? Only grant me, O Lord, repentance before the end.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
I believe that you will come to judge the living and the dead, and that all will
stand in order, old and young, lords and princes, priests and virgins. Where
shall I find myself? Therefore, I cry: grant me, O Lord, repentance before the
end.
Now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Theotokion: O most pure Theotokos, accept mine unworthy prayer and preserve
me from sudden death; and grant me repentance before the end.
Ode IX
Heirmos: It is not possible for men to see God, on Whom the ranks of angels
dare not gaze; but through you, O all-pure one, the Word Incarnate
appeared to us, whom magnifying, with the heavenly hosts we call you
blessed.
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.
I now flee unto you, O Angels, Archangels, and all the heavenly hosts who
stand at the throne of God: pray to your Creator that He may save my soul
from eternal torment.
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.
Now I turn to you with tears, holy patriarchs, kings and prophets, apostles and
holy hierarchs, and all the elect of Christ: Help me at the judgment, that He
may save my soul from the power of the enemy.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
Now I lift my hands to you, holy martyrs, hermits, virgins, righteous ones and
all the saints, who pray to the Lord for the whole world, that He may have
mercy on me at the hour of my death.
Now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Theotokion: O Mother of God, help me who have strong hope in you; implore
your Son that He may place me on His right hand, unworthy as I am, when
 He sits to judge the living and the dead. Amen.
Prayer after the Canon
O Master Christ God, Who has healed my passions through Your Passion, and
has cured my wounds through Your wounds, grant me, who have sinned
greatly against You, tears of compunction. Transform my body with the
fragrance of Your live-giving Body, and sweeten my soul with Your precious
Blood from the bitterness with which the foe has fed me. Lift up my downcast
mind to You, and take it out of the abyss of perdition, for I have no repentance,
have no compunction, I have no consoling tears, which uplift children to their
heritage. My mind has been darkened through earthly passions, I cannot look
up to You in pain. I cannot warm myself with tears of love for You. But, O
Sovereign Lord Jesus Christ, Treasury of good things, give me thorough
repentance and a diligent heart to seek You; grant me Your grace, and renew in
me the likeness of your image. I have forsaken you—do not forsake me! Come
out to seek me; lead me up to your pasturage and number me among the sheep
of your chosen flock. Nourish me with them on the grass of your Holy
Mysteries, through the intercessions of your most pure Mother and all your
saints. Amen.

Evlogitaria: Requiem Hymns

These hymns are sung at funeral and memorial services. They focus less
on the dead person than on ourselves. They help us pray to be taught the
ways of God, so that we may be called back from our sin to our true,
image-bearing glory.

* * *
Blessed are You, O Lord, teach me Your statutes.
The choir of the saints have found the fountain of life and
the door of paradise.
May I also find the way through repentance.
I am a lost sheep: call me, O Savior, and save me.
Blessed are You, O Lord, teach me Your statutes.
For preaching the Lamb of God,
You holy martyrs were led as lambs to slaughter.
You have been received into unfading and everlasting life.
Now entreat the Lord to grant us forgiveness of sins.
Blessed are You, O Lord, teach me Your statutes.
“You that have walked the narrow way of grief:
You that have borne the cross as your yoke in life,
You that have followed Me by faith;
Draw near and receive the heavenly crowns I have prepared for you.”
Blessed are You, O Lord, teach me Your statutes.
I am the image of Your ineffable glory,
Though I bear the brands of transgressions:
Pity Your creature, O Master,
And purify me by Your loving-kindness;
Grant me the homeland of my heart’s desire,
Making me again a citizen of Paradise.
Blessed are You, O Lord, teach me Your statutes.
O You Who of old formed me from nothingness,
And honored me with Your image divine,
But by the transgression of Your commandment
You have returned me again unto the earth from which I was taken:
Restore me to that image, and to my former beauty.
Blessed are You, O Lord, teach me Your statutes.
Give rest, to the souls of Your servants, O God,
And establish them in Paradise.
Where the choirs of the saints, and of the just, O Lord,
Shine like the stars of heaven.
Give rest to Your servants who have fallen asleep,
Overlooking all their transgressions.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
Let us praise the three-fold Splendor of the one Godhead, crying:
Holy are You, O Father, Who without beginning,
Coeternal Son and divine Spirit!
Enlighten us who serve You in faith;
And deliver us from eternal fire.
Now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.
Rejoice O exalted Lady.
You gave birth to God in the flesh for the salvation of all.
Through you may we find Paradise,
O pure, most blessed Theotokos.
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, glory to You, O God.
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, glory to You, O God.
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, glory to You, O God.

The Jesus Prayer

Now that we have reproduced hymns and prayers of various lengths, here
is a very short one—and probably one of the best known of all Orthodox
prayers. (Among other works, it plays vital roles not only in The Way of
the Pilgrim but also J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey .) Its simplicity and
brevity makes it supremely adaptable. You can repeat it however often
you like during time you’ve set aside for prayer and quiet. You can also
say it at random times throughout the day. It can be especially useful
while waiting—for a train, a doctor, a friend, or sleep—but can accompany
anything you are doing. It is an excellent substitute for inner chatter or
spiraling thoughts. Truly, it is the best place to park your mind. It adapts
to gratitude, fear, joy, sadness, regret, compunction, and directionlessness.
By orienting us to Jesus Christ, it stills and focuses the mind and the
body, bringing both into a godly peace.
Short as the Jesus prayer is, it sums up the basics about our life and
our salvation. It is both a confession of faith and a confession of sin. It
identifies Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the one praying as a sinner.
What links these two antitheses—God and sinner—is mercy.

* * *
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
Who Is This Book For?
Notes
1 Discovering Myself as “Sinner”
One Journey
Exposure
Other Ways In
Some Practical Suggestions
Notes
2 Like I Need This? The Sinner Identity and Its Gifts
1. Perception of Reality
2. Freedom
3. Assurance
4. Non-Judgment
5. Compassion
Notes
3 Am I Really the Worst?
The Door to Mercy
Notes
4 Reflections on the Self
Self-Knowledge
The Power of Naming
Identifying My Self—or Selves?
Epilogue
Notes
5 Self-Esteem, Self-Denial, Self-Love
Self-Acceptance
Self-Esteem
Self-Care6
A Right Configuration
Notes
6 The Sweetness of Compunction
Guilt and Shame
Doing vs. Being
Individual vs. Social
Practical Lessons
Compunction
Reality as Sweetness
Penitential Prayer as Sweetness
Bright Sadness
Notes
7 Mercy, Forgiveness, and Divine Judgment
Divine Justice
Identification and Confession
The State of Sinfulness
Asking for God’s Mercy
God’s Mercy and Mine
Summary
Epilogue
Notes
THEOLOGICAL APPENDICES
1 The Bible on Human Nature: Is It Human to Sin?
Genesis 1–3: The Nature of Good (But Fallen) Humanity
Further Reflections
1. The Psalms: The Experience of Being a Good-but-Fallen Person
2. “To Err Isn’t Human”
Epilogue
Notes
2 What Is Sin?
1) “All things are lawful . . .” (1 Cor 10.23a)
2) “. . . but not all things are helpful.” (1 Cor 10.23b)
3) “Thou shalt not . . .”
Identifying the Mark
Transforming the Commandments in Love
Teaching the Commandments with Love
The Mark
Sin as a Condition
Sin as a Force
Notes
Selected Prayers
Canon of Repentance to Our Lord Jesus Christ
Trisagion
Psalm 51
The Symbol of Faith
The Canon of Repentance
Ode I
Ode III
Ode IV
Ode V
Ode VI
Kontakion
Ikos
Ode VII
Ode VIII
Ode IX
Prayer after the Canon
Evlogitaria: Requiem Hymns
The Jesus Prayer

Guide