Let go of the chains

How many times have you gone to confession and found yourself confessing the same sins?

I know that there have been many points in my own life where I felt stuck within the confines of the mistakes I make over and over again. 

Will I ever reach a point when I won’t feel so trapped?

Will I ever be free?

If I am truly meant for freedom, why do I find myself bound by the same chains of sin that have plagued me for years? 

Haven’t I prayed enough? Haven’t I begged God to take this thorn away from me? Yet, I still stumble. I continue to get caught up within the lie that I am only my failures.  Looking to Mary and the Saints can feel at times more like a taunt than an inspiration as the paintings and statues seem to depict those totally conformed to the heart of God rather than what I see whenever I look in the mirror - someone who struggles - someone who often fails - someone on the brink of giving up hope that life can be any different than the vicious cycle of confessing the same sins over and over again, wondering how soon I’ll have to be back for the same reasons.  

Living within this cycle can be exhausting to the point that despair starts to creep into our worldview, covering up any sense of hope we may have had with the dreadful question, “how long until I mess up again?”

If any of this sounds familiar to you, I suppose I’m not all that surprised.  Not only have I been in this place, but I have also spoken with so many people who have echoed similar thoughts.  What I would like to challenge, though, is treating this framework as simply a given.  By this, I mean that if we want to live as we were made to be, it’s worth questioning if the narrative of “sin, confess, repeat” tells the whole story.  

How can we start to see our lives through the lens of hope rather than despair?

How can the stories of our lives be immersed in the bigger story of God’s love and not reduced to a story of shame, rejection, and mistakes?

Let’s approach this in three ways:

You were made to live in the truth

You were made to live in freedom

You have the power to choose the good

First, it is essential to recognize that, if we want to see beyond our mistakes, it is important to examine the lies, but also recognize the truth of what and who we are meant to be.

The devil is a liar.  He wants to do everything in his power to lead you into a place where you will be more susceptible to buy into a fantasy world that does nothing but corrupt our hearts.  These lies lead us to a distorted sense of self that fluctuates between overinflated self-importance and utter self-contempt.  We see this played out as we desperately try to maintain relevance in the eyes of others, comparing and contrasting ourselves, feeding the beast of pride with unwarranted praise or toxic criticisms.  

This isn’t how we are meant to live… we are meant to exist in truth.  We can only find and live in this truth when we come to terms with our baptismal identities as beloved sons and daughters of God the Father.  This is reality.  This is where the lies of the devil are confronted with the power of God’s love.  If we want to move away from habitual sins, we have to start with our foundational identity; otherwise, the devil will continually find new ways to lead us down that same path to perdition.  

When we root ourselves in our baptismal identity, it gives us a solid footing to not only recognize the lies of the devil, but also the language to speak truth into the void left by the lies of sin. 

Living in the truth of whose we are (children of God the Father) is a good first step, but we also need to know where we are meant to be going, that is, toward freedom.  

In his 2005 homily from the feast of the Immaculate Conception, Pope Benedict said:

The human being does not trust God. Tempted by the serpent, he harbours the suspicion that in the end, God takes something away from his life, that God is a rival who curtails our freedom and that we will be fully human only when we have cast him aside; in brief, that only in this way can we fully achieve our freedom.

The human being lives in the suspicion that God's love creates a dependence and that he must rid himself of this dependency if he is to be fully himself. Man does not want to receive his existence and the fullness of his life from God.

He himself wants to obtain from the tree of knowledge the power to shape the world, to make himself a god, raising himself to God's level, and to overcome death and darkness with his own efforts. He does not want to rely on love that to him seems untrustworthy; he relies solely on his own knowledge since it confers power upon him. Rather than on love, he sets his sights on power, with which he desires to take his own life autonomously in hand. And in doing so, he trusts in deceit rather than in truth and thereby sinks with his life into emptiness, into death.

When our first parents were created, they lived in such a way that recognized that their existence and the satisfaction of their being would be found only in God.  We see this in the fact that they were naked and unashamed.  This posture of absolute vulnerability demonstrates that the man and the woman completely trusted their creator and saw Him as the source of all good things.  Yet, the temptation from the serpent proved too much and the disposition of receptivity soon turned to distrust, leaving Adam and Eve in a place where they thought that they had to provide for themselves, care for themselves, and rid themselves of anything that seemed like “dependency” on the One who made them.  

Benedict continues:

Love is not dependence but a gift that makes us live. The freedom of a human being is the freedom of a limited being, and therefore is itself limited. We can possess it only as a shared freedom, in the communion of freedom:  only if we live in the right way, with one another and for one another, can freedom develop.

We live in the right way if we live in accordance with the truth of our being, and that is, in accordance with God's will. For God's will is not a law for the human being imposed from the outside and that constrains him, but the intrinsic measure of his nature, a measure that is engraved within him and makes him the image of God, hence, a free creature.

If we live in opposition to love and against the truth - in opposition to God - then we destroy one another and destroy the world. Then we do not find life but act in the interests of death. All this is recounted with immortal images in the history of the original fall of man and the expulsion of man from the earthly Paradise.

The pontiff shows us that the relationship between God and our first parents was not rooted in dependence, but rather, in love.  God did not make Adam and Eve to live in a relationship where He gave them everything, but always at the risk that He could violently and maliciously take it away.  This is not love - this is abuse.  This kind of distorted relationship would show God to be some kind of narcissist that is only willing to “love” as long as Adam and Eve acted a certain way which, again, isn’t love - it’s a hostage situation.  

Of course, Adam and Eve only came to believe this distorted image of God after listening to the serpent.  The serpent speaks from experience - this is how he sees God and how he wants to be God.  

Far from an abusive relationship, we see that humanity was created in an environment of total and authentic freedom, that is, an environment rooted in love.  

We see that when people know that they are loved, the walls and shields around their hearts come down, joyful laughter erupts, and true freedom can be enjoyed.  I always think a perfect image of living in freedom happens during wedding receptions where young children run on to the dance floor with complete abandon, moving and dancing in any way they can - completely free from the shame or insecurities that try to dictate our every action as we grow older.  

We can explore if our lives are directed to live in freedom by asking:

In what ways am I suspicious of God?

Do I believe that His love for me is a free gift or only meant to foster dependence on Him?

How have I tried to “cast off” God - that is, in what ways have I tried to replace God with myself, someone else, or something else?

How have I sought false ideas of freedom?

Is my image of God formed by His own self-revelation or by the lies of the devil?

In what ways do I measure myself against anything other than the will of God?

Finally, as we look to challenge the narrative of sin that tries to dictate our futures, we not only have to look at whose we are and where we are going, but also what we have the capacity to do.

We were made in the image and likeness of our God, ultimately giving us the beautiful gift of both an intellect and will.  Sadly, our current culture seems to want to do everything in its power to obscure and hide this great gift.  How does it do this? By leading us to believe that life simply happens to us.  Rather than taking responsibility for our actions and seeing how what we say and do has real effects on our lives and the lives of those around us,  our culture tries to disconnect our actions from their consequences.  Our sense of moral culpability becomes dulled when we come to believe that life is just a series of events that we experience.  We lose sight of our own capacity (by God’s grace) to move in one direction or another.  

I think that we can take on this same attitude when speaking about our sins as well.  We may say that we “fell into” this or that action, yet I think this language can inadvertently disconnect from our “offense against reason, truth, and right conscience”  (CCC 1849).  Sin is something that we choose, yet the devil wants us to believe that we can separate ourselves from that choice, massaging our consciences into believing that we are guilt-free, all the while the corrupting effects of our utterances, deeds, or desires against the eternal law continue to distort our minds and hearts to the point that we lose sight of a life lived in truth and freedom.  

If we forget whose we are, where we are meant to be heading, and what we have the power to do, it is no wonder that we feel imprisoned by our sins…and the devil will do everything he can to keep us trapped within this disorienting cycle of self-hatred.  

Perhaps one of the biggest ways that the devil keeps us in a place of confusion is by leading us to believe that when we do choose against love by sinning, it is only one thing, action, or moment that defines this choice.  In many cases, however, we have already said “yes” to many little temptations that culminate in a big “yes” to the sins we are most familiar with.  For example, if a dating couple has difficulties with chastity, they can come to believe that the only problem is a singular choice during one night.  What led to that choice? Typically, the devil has been hard at work getting both the man and woman to say “yes” to temptation in much more subtle ways, slowly chipping away at the boundaries for appropriate self-gift so that when that one night came, it was so much easier to say “yes” to something that the couple would immediately regret.  

By God’s grace, we do have power - we have the power to start saying “yes” to the good.  We have the power to die to self in saying “yes” in little ways each day so that the big yeses in our lives - the yes to live in truth, the yes to live in freedom, the yes to commitment, the yes to bearing responsibility - not only seem possible, but also necessary for a life worth living.

There is no reason to keep drowning beneath the waves of temptation, Christ is reaching out to you - have faith. Take his hand.