{"id":1164,"date":"2005-03-24T10:06:47","date_gmt":"2005-03-24T14:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2005\/03\/24\/ooh-this-is-good-for-the-end-of-hol"},"modified":"2005-03-24T10:06:47","modified_gmt":"2005-03-24T14:06:47","slug":"ooh-this-is-good-for-the-end-of-holy-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2005\/03\/24\/ooh-this-is-good-for-the-end-of-holy-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Ooh, this is good for the end of Holy Week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a966'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>From Frederick Buechner&#8217;s <i>Wishful Thinking:&nbsp; A Seeker&#x2019;s ABC:<\/i><b><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"><\/span><br \/>\n<\/b><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><b>Sin<\/b> <\/p>\n<p>The power of sin is centrifugal.&nbsp; When at<br \/>\nwork in a human life, it tends to push everything out toward the periphery.&nbsp;<br \/>\nBits and pieces go flying off until only the core is left.&nbsp; Eventually bits and<br \/>\npieces of the core itself go flying off until in the end nothing at all is left.<br \/>\n&#x201C;The wages of sin is death&#x201D; is Saint Paul&#x2019;s way of saying the same thing. <\/p>\n<p>Other people and (if you happen to believe in him) God or<br \/>\n(if you happen not to) the World, Society, Nature&#8211; whatever you call the<br \/>\ngreater whole of which you&#x2019;re part&#8211; sin is whatever you do, or fail to do, that<br \/>\npushes them away, that widens the gap between you and them and also the gaps<br \/>\nwithin your self. <\/p>\n<p>For example, the sin of the Pharisee is<br \/>\nnot just (a) his holier-than-thou attitude which pushes other people away, but<br \/>\n(b) his secret suspicion that his own holiness is deficient too, which pushes<br \/>\npart of himself away, and (c) his possibly not-so-subconscious feeling that<br \/>\nanybody who expects him to be all that holy must be a cosmic SOB, which pushes<br \/>\nGuess Who away. <\/p>\n<p>Sex is sinful to the degree that, instead<br \/>\nof drawing you closer to other human beings in their humanness, it unites bodies<br \/>\nbut leaves the lives inside them hungrier and more alone than before. <\/p>\n<p>Religion and unreligion are both sinful to the degree<br \/>\nthat they widen the gap between you and the people who don&#x2019;t share your views. <\/p>\n<p>The word <i>charity<\/i> illustrates the insidiousness of<br \/>\nsin.&nbsp; From meaning <i>a free and loving gift<\/i> it has come to mean <i>a<br \/>\ndemeaning handout<\/i>. <\/p>\n<p>&#x201C;Original Sin&#x201D; means we all<br \/>\noriginate out of a sinful world which taints us from the word go.&nbsp; We all tend<br \/>\nto make ourselves the center of the universe, pushing away centrifugally from<br \/>\nthat center everything that seems to impede its free-wheeling.&nbsp; More even than<br \/>\nhunger, poverty, or disease, it is what Jesus said he came to save the world<br \/>\nfrom. \n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Frederick Buechner&#8217;s Wishful Thinking:&nbsp; A Seeker&#x2019;s ABC: Sin The power of sin is centrifugal.&nbsp; When at work in a human life, it tends to push everything out toward the periphery.&nbsp; Bits and pieces go flying off until only the core is left.&nbsp; Eventually bits and pieces of the core itself go flying off until [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rayleejun"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-iM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}