Tired of Being a Sinner? Why Not Try Self-Mastery?
I study a lot of preachers — both inside and outside the New Thought Christian tradition. One of the preachers I recently studied mocked what he termed “the New Age movement” in his sermon. Specifically, he spoke against the movement’s insistence that “you are a god.” His point: you are a sinner and there is no escaping that designation.
Today’s blog post are for those people who have tired of being a sinner. There is an alternative, which we will consider against the backdrop of the 5th chapter in Butterworth’s Discover the Power Within You.
There Is More to Christianity Than Sin and Evil
Although you may not be able to tell by listening to the world’s most prominent pastors, there is more to being a Christian than being a sinner. Unfortunately, for a majority of believers, we were taught that “man is a sinner, the same yesterday, today, and forever; and that all we have to look forward to is becoming a good sinner” (Butterworth).
Have you considered that the dogmatic beliefs presented as unquestionable doctrine were not received through divine revelation? The things we take as “Christian doctrine” — original sin, the trinity, virgin birth, immaculate conception, Jesus’ divinity — were once heavily debated topics that a very small group of men voted upon to decide what would be considered “biblical.”
The Proof of Our Sinful Nature Makes No Sense
For many traditional Christian theologians, the proof of our sinful nature comes from Psalm 51 when David says, “I was shaped in iniquity…conceived in sin…” Who hasn’t heard this verse presented as proof that people are, first and foremost, sinners?
Did you know that David made this statement in response to feeling guilty about his behavior toward Bathsheba’s husband. He’d just been called out by Nathan, the prophet and this psalm was written.
“We would not hold up David’s act of stealing another man’s wife as law for all men for all time…And yet we take his emotionally-prompted words of remorse and despair and give them a central place in our theology” (Butterworth).
Taking David’s response to his wrongdoing as our guide to how we should feel about ourselves at a fundamental level makes even less sense when you compare Psalm 51 to Psalm 8:
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou are mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou has made him but little lower than God, and crownest him with glory and honor, Thou makest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet…
Which is it? Sinner? Or made a little lower than God and crowned with glory and honor?
Christ Is not a Person but a Principle
We have been so conditioned by the way that Jesus is spoken of that we think of Christ as Jesus’ last name. To be clear: “Christ is not a person, but a principle. Christ is a level of the particularization of God into man, the focal point through which all the attributes of God are projected into livingness” (Butterworth).
That’s a fancy way to say that the Christ is your potential. It is the what of you that never changes. Though you have worn many hats and played many roles in your life, your potential remains untouched and unchanged at the center of your being.
All that you have been and all that you can become rests on your ability to tap your Christ potential — aka your divine nature — within.
“Every man is a spiritual being. Every man is innately good. Every man is a potential Christ. But only a few know this, and an even fewer number succeed in expressing any marked degree of the perfection of the Christ indwelling” (Butterworth).
Change How You See Yourself
I considered the pastor’s words: “You’re not a god. You can’t solve your own problems.” And, he’s right. When we look at ourselves from the viewpoint of the human, we come up with a table of limitations. You cannot help but see all of your flaws and foibles when you consider yourself from the standpoint of “flesh-and-blood.”
But when we accept Jesus’ challenge to consider ourselves from the viewpoint of our divinity, we cannot help but conclude with him that “all things are possible.”
See yourself in terms of what you can be and you will change what you can become.
You Are in the Process of Becoming
The challenge with calling yourself — or anyone else — a sinner is that it ignores the fact that we each are in the process of becoming.
“What is an acorn? It is an oak tree in the making? What is an egg? It is the first stage of a performance that will lead to a bird” (Butterworth). And, so it is with you. You are in the making, the process of becoming.
Right now, you may be living through a very limited experience. From a human standpoint, “you may be terribly sick, discouraged, insufficient. But this is only one glimpse of the eternal performance of the soul on its journey to mastery.”
God will turn you into whatever you call yourself. Dare to use your words about yourself to speak truth to limitation. Affirm confidently: “I am a spiritual being. I am whole and free. I am confident and capable. I am the master of my life.”
You Can Put Down the Title of Sinner at Any Time
“Regardless of the sinfulness of man, the depravity, the sickness, the weakness, the despair, he can ‘come to himself’ at any time and find healing, because man is a spiritual being. There is no unforgivable sin, there is no incorrigible criminal, there is no incurable condition” (Butterworth).
The aspect of yourself that you acknowledge is the one that you will express.
Just as an athlete aspiring to great heights must wake up each day and reach for the ideal in her mind of what can be, we, too, must wake up each day and reach for the spiritual ideal in our minds.
What a sad commentary on life it would be to believe that the most we could ever be is a good sinner? “No matter where you are or what you may be, no matter how much you have lost or how little you have gained, no matter how far you may think yourself to be from the heights you have set for yourself or feel that God has set for you, the power to become is your divine inheritance. You can overcome, you can succeed, you can be healed — if you believe in your divinity, bless it, act as if it were the real and true of you and keep on in the effort to ‘open out a way whence the imprisoned splendor may escape’” (Butterworth).
My Call to Action
It’s time to make a choice.
As you move along the spiritual path, you will run into many teachers who will suggest that your divine nature is a figment of your imagination. They may say to you directly, “You are not a god.”
In those moments, you must remember that God will turn you into whatever you claim yourself to be. Dare to claim your divine nature. Dare to throw away the title “sinner” and pick up the title “master.” Both options are available to you, just as they were available to Jesus.
What will you choose?
