The Nature of Sin: What Makes Your Prayer Life Powerful?
I’ve started working on some theory for an upcoming new modality, and it’s got me thinking about how to define sin. See, sin can be categorized in different ways depending on the level you’re dealing with. On the level of literal actions and behavior, you might break it down into things like lying, murder, adultery, gossip, etc. This is pretty much how we have to define things for the purpose of societal justice, because it is concrete and (at least theoretically) provable. But what about a higher level?
1 John 2 breaks sin down into three broad categories: lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life. More simply, these could be understood as loosely approximating to hedonism, materialism, and narcissism, respectively. Notice that all of these are a matter of intention, not action. A lie, for example, might serve any of those three intentions depending on the circumstances and the reason for it. So in considering this higher level, the lower one becomes less reliable and less important.
How do we reconcile this? Well, I think we can say with some certainty that the intentions of the heart are the more fundamental, important level based on scripture, which tells us that God judges the heart, and to guard your heart above all else, for from it flow all the issues of life. Now, on the one hand, this is limiting in that we can’t judge other people’s hearts. However, these are powerful things to recognize in your own heart.
Two-thousand years ago, Jesus was berating the pharisees for emphasizing extreme attentiveness to ritual, human doctrine, and the letter of the law, while disregarding the surrender of our heart’s intention that is the true hallmark of relationship with God. Unfortunately, this is a very natural trap for humans to fall into. We’re used to thinking in terms of literal behavior, action and reaction. While even our justice system acknowledges that intentions do matter, we are accustomed to thinking that actions matter most. But what do we find to be true on the most personal psychological level?
Many of you know that I believe the subconscious mind is the same thing that scripture calls the “heart.” Of course, it is common knowledge now that the unconscious mind is a million times more powerful than the conscious mind. This is one of the main reasons why the methods used by most of the self-help industry have such a high failure rate—they rely on the willpower as a limited conscious resource to oppose unconscious habits. This is doable for a while, but sooner or later it runs out, and then old habits take over.
I have heard the concept of sin described in a fascinating way, as “distorted identity.” This interpretation helps many of our pieces to align with my understanding of both scripture and psychology. Not our true identity, but sin living in us as a part of our unconscious identity from which all the issues of life flow.
Really, the whole point of talk therapy is to try and repair distorted identity through conscious discussion. It’s no secret that I’m rather critical of talk therapy. I left it behind many years ago when I realized that most of the job is teaching people to cope, as opposed to actually curing them. But isn’t it only natural that we should lean this way? After all, coping is ultimately a question of action and behavior. A cure would often have to go deeper, to the level of the unconscious intention of the heart.
There’s a wonderful book by Andrew Newberg M.D., called How God Changes Your Brain. The author is a neuroscientist, and the book details an experimental study which sought to discover the most healthy things in the world for the human brain. I want to stress that this was a secular study that did not start out with religion in mind. But what they found was that prayer is by far the healthiest practice for the brain. Exercise is a distant second. To me, today, this is not surprising in the least, because prayer is fundamentally an act of submitting the intention of the heart, in a way that appears to have the power to repair its distortions.
But not simply by asking of our own desire. The first problem with that is, of course, that we frequently don’t much desire to put our sins behind us, particularly not while we’re in the midst of them. In this case, the most important part of the Lord’s prayer to remember is probably, “Your will be done.” In earnest prayer, everything should be held in an open hand. Every part of our identity should be brought into alignment with Him, or if it cannot be, then offered up.
Have a blessed, wonderful day!
Dr. Alex Loyd
