On Daring to Be a Sinner
No one ever says I want to be a sinner when I grow up...
As a child of the 80’s, I remember vividly the wash of commercials we were confronted with to address the drug problem in America during the initial days of our “War on Drugs.” There were eggs being fried, boxes of marijuana found under beds, surgeons performing the wrong surgery because they were high… the list is endless. Some of the most prominent commercials I can remember were a series of commercials showing drug abusers in various stages of addiction, in which a child voiceover proclaiming their desire to be an astronaut or ballerina, or some other uniquely American token of success, followed by an adult voice saying “no one ever said I want to be a junkie when I grow up.”
There it was… the generals in America’s war on drugs had pulled out everyone’s biggest fear to use on them… abject failure. No one ever decides to become a failure, they decide to do great things. The planned destination at the end of our pathway in life is glorious, and all too often, we miss the mark wildly and are left with regrets, anxiety, and feelings of worthlessness. And thus, encapsulated in 15 seconds of TV time between the end of GI Joe and the beginning of Transformers every afternoon, I was reminded that falling into drug addiction was yet another way to miss my glorious future I had planned for myself of becoming President of the United States of America.
Fast forward about 35 years. I’m 44 now, and no, I will never be President of the United States of America, and may consider myself lucky to be president of the local gardening club. However, life hasn’t turned out so bad. I’m a software engineer, make a fairly lucrative wage, and I get to spend every day with the people I love (my family) doing the work I love. But I have to admit, I’m still driven by the same fear that those commercials between my beloved after school cartoons were designed to take advantage of.
Failure. Pure, abject, utter failure. I’m driven to overwork at times to make up for the fact that I’m not a schooled software engineer (I pass myself off as a shade tree developer). Imposter Syndrome isn’t just a thing, it’s my bread and butter. I’m driven to perform in my daily life with God, because I don’t want to be a failure. Jesus died for me, the least I can do is not sin, right? Imposter Syndrome in the church makes me try to speak the Christian speak more than I should. “How are you this Sunday, Don?” “I’m so blessed! God is great!” And I walk away, not wanting to talk about my struggles with faithfulness in the mind, with drugs and drug addiction. Because after all, no one ever said “I want to be a junkie when I grow up.” Just the same, no one ever says “I want to be a sinner when I grow up.”
So it was striking, as I was reading Desiring God by John Piper, to see a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the essence of which was that with God we can “dare to be sinners.” I thought to myself, no one “dares to be a sinner.” They dare to do great things, to do mighty works, to go overseas and risk death as a missionary, or stand for truth to the world as a pastor. They become elected leaders or found companies on their “daring.” No one ever sits at home looking at things they shouldn’t look at, taking things they shouldn’t take, performing acts and deeds that they would never do if they realized fully the idea of the presence of God, because they are in fact, daring. No, daringness is not meant for failure, it is meant to be the bedrock on which success is made, on which we forge ahead bravely into uncharted waters toward certain doom, only to lay hold of the great and glorious prize that awaits us.
No one “dares to be sinner.”
Funny thing is, as I thought more about it, they don’t have to “dare to be a sinner.” They already are, as surely as they breathe, as surely as they live, with every fiber of our being, we are sinners. We are destitute. Jeremiah 17:9 says
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
Shouldn’t that be enough to help us realize that we just simply have a depraved heart? Isaiah 64:6 says
We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
Shouldn’t that be enough to convict us that we all are sinners? Paul spends three chapters of Romans explaining our poor situation, and yet… we dare not be sinners. Not because we aren’t sinners, because we ARE, but because letting others see our sin makes us less than others. And in our culture, our winner take all culture, the consequences of sin are no longer just death and separation from God… no no, we will also be “less than.” The junkie. The loser. The unfaithful dog. The liar. What if we are even worse? What if we are the murderer? The thief? All of these labels, all of these sins, these things that make us fall short of God’s glory, that define us as having succumbed to that which was already in us naturally already… they are too much for us. So we dare not give them to the light, where they would be exposed, and we would be exposed, and then everyone would see, including God, what a failure we are.
I can tell you from my own personal experience the hell this creates. When I was in the middle of a terrifying drug problem, I couldn’t stop myself, but couldn’t function without finding the cure for a perennial itch. I looked at others who had fallen prey to drugs, and prided myself that I must be fine, since not even my family knew what I was into. My wife and children were blissfully unaware that I was doing drugs, as I had always been funny and silly in the home. I was just… more funny. More silly. But inside, I was withering, because I couldn’t take these things to God, or anyone else. I couldn’t talk to my wife about my mental faithlessness, my lack of mental fidelity, my heatseeking eyes that couldn’t simply say no to sinful thoughts that led to sinful actions.
I couldn’t tell… ANYONE.
All this time, God was waiting for me to confess. He was waiting for me to ask for His help, and finally, while cleaning my garage (such a perfect metaphor really, in retrospect) I cried out that I couldn’t hold up the charade anymore. In deep, mournful sobs, I had to confess that I couldn’t keep going like this, but I didn’t know how to stop. I needed help. I couldn’t even begin to ask Him for the strength to stop, I just asked Him to help me stop.
In short, I asked Him, “Lord, help me, please help me, dare to BE a sinner.”
I already WAS a sinner, which was the funny part. I just needed help BEING one. Being a sinner in the manner which Bonhoeffer describes is not simply daring to be lawless and immoral. We do that naturally, and indeed, that is usually the more comfortable position for many hearts. What Bonhoeffer means is daring to take the covers off, to pull back the tarp on the ugly crevices in our life, to let God be God in our lives, to allow others to see that we are but complete and utter failures. And I can tell you, in that respect, daring to be a sinner has been one of the hardest, yet most rewarding things I have ever done. Within a few days of God reaching into my life, He met me at points I never knew He would, thinking that it was our job to come to Him clean. No, it’s our job to come to Him just as filthy as we are, and let Him do what He does best; He washes us white as snow, and trades our filth for His sinless perfection. But that free gift comes at the cost of acknowledging the sacrifice of the Giver, the work of the Healer, and that it is not from us. The reward at the end, though, is FAR greater than anything I have ever experienced. His love and forgiveness seem small until we dare to be a sinner. They then transition into being the very air we need, the very food for our bodies that we need; they sustain us when we are worn out and tired, when we would prefer to slip back into our natural creature comforts.
Dare to be a sinner. It’s more rewarding than just being an astronaut, or ballerina, more powerful than being the President of the United States of America. It is basking in the very light of God, exchanging your sinfulness for His righteousness, and the freedom that comes with it surpasses the value of gold and diamonds. Dear friend, please dare to be a sinner. I assure you, there is no Imposter Syndrome with being a sinner, just the freedom of knowing your debts are paid.