You cannot see what you really are—“the light of the world” (Matthew 5.14)—because your awareness is clouded and blocked by sin. Sin’s become such a hackneyed and loaded term that it’s almost worthless. Sin’s not doing this or that, thinking such and so. What some call sin is the sour fruit of sin, not sin itself. Sin’s deeper. It’s original—that is, it sits at the center and origin of your life, like something foul dumped at the mouth of the pristine mountain spring that is your truest self, made by God.

Sin is falsehood. It’s separation from the truth of the splendor of who you are in Christ. It’s the fall from the truth that you are, at heart, one with Christ. Sin splits you apart from Christ and who you really are. It creates a self that St. Paul called “the flesh”—that sinful self is at war with the beauty and goodness of who you are made to be. That self, fallen from its original splendor, contracts and shrinks into itself. Then in order to protect itself, it conjures up an illusion and does everything in its power to keep that illusion intact. The falsehood sin wants you to believe is that you are here, God is over there, and there’s a vast chasm between the two.

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