Sin and the Breaking of Relationship

I have a feeling you are going to be reading a lot here about Love in the next little while. It may sound simple and boring but it has absolutely changed the way I think about EVERYTHING. It is like I have had one set of glasses on that colored everything in shades of gray but when these glasses of Love are worn, everything springs to color and life.

I hesitate to even begin to write about this because it feels like I have begun to understand something so very vast that it would be like saying I understand the ocean if my toes have gotten wet as I stand on the bubbly edge of a gentle wave lapping onto the sand.

Let me explain one train of thought as it relates to the concept of Sin.

I have always viewed sin as something that we do that falls short of a rule that God made. Sometimes this was an intentional act on our part, sometimes it was unintentional. Either way when we did this God was anywhere from mildly frustrated to totally consumed with rage toward us. Sin ultimately gave us the death penalty. Jesus had to die to allow God to even have contact with us. He had to kill his Son for our screw-up-ed-ness. No wonder he was pissed off.

But then I put on the glasses of Love and began to understand some things.

I believe the Father made us for relationship. I know relationship. I love it, value it and cherish it. Within this context, take for example that someone I love, someone I'm in close relationship with lies to me. True, there might be some anger, hurt, disappointment and such. But the greatest feeling is that something pure and right between us has been broken. A lie changes things. A lie breaks something. A lie becomes like a cancer - eating away at something that before, was whole.

Or take a situation where I get angry and I say a mean or degrading thing to someone I love. Inevitably something in our relationship gets broken. It is no longer the same and in some sense, can never be the same again even with an apology. The words are out there. They cannot be taken back.

If I understand sin between me and the Father (or another that I love) in this way it changes everything. Through the glasses of Love I start to see sin for what it really is and does. It breaks something valuable. It destroys relationship. It destroys oneness. It it heartbreaking. It devalues what we have together. This happens if it is between the Father and me or if it happens between my child and me or Husband and me.

Could it be that he sees sin like this? Could the act of Jesus coming to die for us be not one of a legal obligation that had to be fulfilled but of consuming love making a way for relationship to be restored? When he looks on our sin could he be looking on with compassion as the same way we would look upon a baby born to a mom on crack or a wasted life of drugs destroying a child's life and potential?

I have come to realize that if I can see sin through the eyes of love I have a small chance of understanding the Heart of the One that loves me and of actually being able to love someone else in the same way.