happiness

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Talking about Sin Comfortably

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”- Romans 3:23

The meaning of the New Testament word for sin is missing the mark or target.

All of us aim for something in this life. Aristotle summed up his works on ethics with the thought that we all aim at happiness. There is a general consensus that this is true. However, we know that the world is full of unhappy people. We are not successful in getting what we want. It doesn’t matter who they are and what they have and who they know. The world is quite an unhappy place. The problem is that we don’t know what exactly constitutes happiness. We look to the wrong things to make us happy. We have a deficient idea what brings happiness to our lives. This deficiency in itself is not sin. Our sin lies in not recognizing that we have a deficiency. Sin blinds us from realizing that we are aiming at the wrong things for happiness. This failure to acknowledge our deficiency is an obstacle to happiness.

If we want to help someone to be happy, we cannot avoid talking about sin. However, it is a personal conversation just as the pursuit of happiness is a personal quest. Before out talk about sin can occur, there must be an intimate relationship. We can only talk about sin with those whom we love.

Igor, who is 21 years, is an orphan and has been in the streets since he was a young child. He can read and write because he was forced to go to school in the long periods he spent in the juvenile detention center. He got into a life of crime because he thought money would help him achieve happiness. Instead it just brought more problems and suffering. Now, he is not sure what is going to bring him happiness. He is not motivated to make a change in his life. He is not sure if it is worth the effort to try because there is no guarantee that he is going to succeed.

Igor is not waiting for government help. He does not want handouts. He does not even think that things are going to get better for him. He wants to know if there is a reason for him to hope for happiness in this life. I think that it is impossible to answer any of his questions without a meaningful conversation about sin. However, we cannot talk to Igor comfortably about sin if we do not genuinely care for his well-being.

So, what gives us the authority to speak about sin? This is an important question we ask ourselves constantly. Before we have this conversation with him, we need to know for ourselves whether we are aiming at the right target. Jesus warned us,

“Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”-Matthew 7:5

Perhaps we feel uncomfortable talking about sin because it requires constant self-examination. We cannot talk about sin in terms of us and them. We need to talk about sin including ourselves in the mix. Sin is very much part of our lives. We have a deficient idea of happiness as well and we in ourselves cannot claim to know where to aim.

Talking about sin makes us aware that we need to help finding the target. Who can help us find this target? Who can point to us the path of Happiness? The best we can do is to point to the person of Jesus Christ. Many do not think that Jesus has something to offer. However, for those who realize that our vision of happiness is deficient, Jesus can open our eyes to see a new reality in the Cross. This is our hope for Igor, but first we need to talk to him about sin.

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The Poor are Not Necessarily the Needy

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”- Matthew 5:3

The more we work with the homeless and the poor, the more we realize that being poor is not synonymous with being needy. I think the verse above sums up what I mean by needy perfectly; it is to be poor in spirit. Many of the poor are not necessarily poor in spirit: they are just poor in resources. Christian Ministry is not about ensuring that the poor have resources to become wealthy; it is about discovering the path of true happiness.

It is obvious that we live in a materialistic world. There might be cultures that are less materialistic than others, but eventually the internet will convince them of the vast array of material possessions they need to have before they die. People want or desire to accumulate wealth for one reason. They think that wealth can give them more control of the outcome of their personal happiness. It is really about control. We love to be in control and consequently we love the thing that gives us control.

The love of money has become the goal of society. The rich and middle class send their children to expensive private schools and colleges to obtain successful careers enabling them to become materially wealthy. The poor try to use their limited resources to acquire material possessions but this only drives them to debt and greater poverty. Some of the poor use the negative resources available to them such as violence and criminality to achieve this aim. This is not to say that the rich are not criminals. They just have more resources to exhaust before reaching this point, unlike the poor.

The children and teens living in the streets are no different from the teenagers from the middle class society. They want money to buy the latest iPhone. They want to have tablets and dress in the latest styles. They might be poor but they want control. They want to have the control to determine their happiness and they believe that money and material possessions give them this control. As long as they desire this control over their happiness, they will never be poor in spirit. They will just be poor in resources. Giving them resources at this point is not the same as pointing the way to happiness. It is just helping them to become miserable rich teenagers.

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?-Matthew 16:26

The point where the poor become poor in spirit or needy is when they decide to pursue different goals than the rest of society. This is where the gospel comes in. The gospel gives us two options in regards of the pursuit of money.

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”-Matthew 6:24

Mammon is our way of controlling our perceived happiness and the gospel says that we have to give up this pursuit and see the true path to Happiness. We tell teenagers who are in prison or dealing drugs in the streets to give up their source of income and settle for the evangelical happiness. For most of them, this means embracing a life of poverty without any resources for materialistic living. In this society, the kind of jobs available to them will be low paying jobs. They can educate themselves but most of them won’t have the time or money to do this. They will most likely never own a house or a car. They will struggle to pay rent every month. They will be truly needy as they will have to give up the pursuit of wealth as their goal. Before they can make this bold step towards becoming poor in spirit they need to be sure that material wealth does not contribute to their happiness. They have to see that those who preach the gospel are practicing what they preach. This is not just us, but everyone who preaches the gospel. We need to learn to be needy as well. We need to make sure that we don’t accumulate wealth to gain control of something is beyond our control. We need to realize that only those who give up their control to seek happiness will find it in the One who possesses it.

 

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Deliver Us from False Optimism

And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.-John 8:32

Over the past few months, we have been visiting a family that is living in a tiny abandoned house in a city outside of São Paulo. We met this family through one of the sons who lived in the streets. Presently he is incarcerated for dealing drugs. Unfortunately his two older brothers are also in detention centers for the same crime. We are working with this family to help them stop the cycle. However, we can see why the three older boys left this household. It was due to their living conditions. The streets were better than living in their house and yet this is all they have. They do not have a functioning sewage and consequently there are puddles of sewage water in the house. The walls of the rooms are moldy.  Besides this, there is hardly any privacy for the family members. This house is not fit for living but they do not have much of a choice. There are still three children ages 7 to 11 that are in danger of following the older siblings’ example. This is why we are working with this family. We want to stop these young ones from running away to the streets and embracing a life of crime and addiction.

One day the father of the household informed us that he had a leaky roof which was causing the house to flood even more. We asked him what he needed to fix the leak and he told us that fifty prefabricated roofing sheets should do the job. We got the money together and bought the sheets. When the day came for us to help him install the sheets, we saw the real problem for the leak. There were hardly any tiles on the roof. The materials we had were insufficient. We were shocked and a little discouraged. However, the father was optimistic. He was confident that what we had was sufficient to stop the leak. He was insistent that it would work but he was wrong. No amount of enthusiasm and optimism was going to change this fact. Some people would mistake this optimism as faith. However, Faith has nothing to do with false optimism. Having said this, none of us had the heart to take this false optimism away from him. It is this false optimism that sustains him. It gives him hope each morning to get out of bed. This man works hard but he does not earn enough to rent a house and feed his family. He can only do one or the other. He chooses to be optimistic because it is the only way he is able to put on a smile and face harsh reality. However, it would be foolish of us to confuse the smile for evidence of happiness.

Why is the Truth important? Why not just let the poor man continue in his false optimism? The poor man wants to be happy. He is seeking happiness like anyone else. He deserves to be happy. This is why the Truth need to be spoken.

True Happiness comes from knowing the Truth. The first step is perhaps to confront this false optimism. Falsity cannot be the foundation of any happiness. It can only lead to illusion and complete breakdown of the human spirit. Our motivation to work with this family is Love. It is not Love that comes from our own sense of morality but it is fruit of our own personal quest to know the Truth. Truth helped us understand the meaning of Love. Therefore, we cannot love someone honestly if we are going to abandon them to the destructive consequences of false optimism.

We don’t have the monopoly of the Truth. We need to seek Truth together with this man. His false optimism has made us question our own notions of happiness. It made us question whether we are putting all our eggs in the wrong basket, a basket that does not exist. It makes us wonder whether we are not succumbing to false optimism. We need to challenge ourselves with the Truth. We don’t go to this family thinking we know everything. We only know that our happiness lies in the Truth and we need to have courage to tear down the walls of false optimism to seek it. Love is the key that helps unlock the Truth. When we allow Love to bring us to places and people to serve, we find ourselves walking closer to the Truth. It frees us from the shackles of false optimism.

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