FAITH, SIN, REDEMPTION, ATONEMENT

Any Confirmation class will have to deal with four theological terms: faith, sin, redemption and atonement, what they mean and how they affect me and my life. Although those words can be abstract in their definition, they have to be made alive if they are to have any real meaning at all. Definitions are definitions and no more and the words they describe aren’t fully described: like faith, sin, redemption and atonement.

To wit: Faith: unquestioning religious belief. Sin: deliberately breaking of a divine or moral law. Redemption: being delivered from sin and damnation. Atonement: making amends. Since those are very simple definitions right out of the Oxford Desk Dictionary, one has to take them with a slight grain of salt. They define but do not delineate, which is what we are to be about as Christians.

If we are to take each as defined, then no one of us is a person of complete faith. We all have our doubts simply because faith is not knowledge. Faith seeks to understand what it does not know and may never know. It allows for questions, demands questions. We believe in God, believe there is a God, but have a million questions about God and to God and are okay with that, and, thankfully, so is God. We are questioning believers.

We are also all sinners. We deliberately do what we know we should not do, what is selfish and sinful; and we deliberately do not do what we know we should do, what is loving and caring. No sin is accidental. Every sin is done with the knowledge that what we are doing or should be doing is wrong. When we sin, we are not being faithful to what we believe and in Whom we believe.

And yet because we believe God loves us totally, God forgives us. God saves us not only from eternal damnation (hell) but from a living hell. We know from experience that our sins eventually come back to haunt us and put us through our own form of hell from which there is no escape, much as we thought there might be when we first sinned. The saving grace is God’s gracious forgiveness.

What is left for us is to try as best we can to make amends for what we have done or left undone. We cannot undo what we did or do what we should have done, but we can and should ask for forgiveness. When we have actually done that, the experience was hell. Asking for forgiveness when we have deliberately hurt another, especially one we truly love, is one of the hardest things we ever have to do.

What we learn in Confirmation class is living out our faith is not easy. That is why our church community is so important in our life of faith. We cannot and do not live this life alone. We need the love and support of one another to remain faithful, sin less, endure the pain our sins have caused to the ones we hurt and to ourselves, and have the grace and strength to ask for forgiveness when necessary. May we always do so.