For the next few weeks, as we look at some of the sins, the vices, the church has long identified as entrapping us, we're going to be asking ourselves: If we want to be fully alive, how should we live? What patterns of thought and rhythms of desire have we fallen into that are thwarting the good life? How do we move away from them into new practices and virtues that lead to a new way of life?
Before we begin looking at those individual vices, we need to consider the broader topic of sin, or as Elizabeth Oldfield refers to it in the first chapter of her book, the human propensity to mess things up. Sin, as I understand it, is about relationship. Jesus told us that the greatest commandments are to love God with our whole beings and to love our neighbors as ourselves. If we want to be truly, fully alive, we must be connected – to God, to creation, to others, to our true selves. Sin is everything that works against that connection.
