We're All Responsible

I was recently part of a discussion group in which we dialogued about the nature of sin and responsibility, and the conclusion we eventially came to was this: We're all responsible for each others' sins.

It was an alarming conclusion that we came to that night as we gathered around to discuss Dostoevsky's work, The Brothers Karamazov. It seems, on the surface, to be a rather outrageous statement; are we to be held responsible for the wrongdoings of the people around us? I have to admit, I was about ready to shut out the rest of the conversation and keep to myself until we moved on. Fortunately, I engaged the topic.

What's at the heart of the word "responsible"? Response. In being responsible, we're called to respond to the sins of one another.

That can be taken extremely legalistically, and we can easily "point out the specks in the eyes" of everyone else. The problem is that the American church has approached the problem of sin in a very juridical way - we've broken the law, and now we need to be justified. See, the rest of Christendom (a fancy name for the Church), sees sin as a sort of disease, or a brokenness that we suffer, and thus they see the redemptive work of God as more of a healing process than as some divine legal acquittal that we experience through the substitution of Christ. So if we begin to see sin as a state of brokenness, rather than focusing on merely the act of wrongdoing, the way we interact with each other changes drastically.

In saying that we are responsible for each others' sins, we are called to respond [in love] to the brokenness of those around us.

Love Wins.