.

Consider this for a moment.

It is widely thought that we sin because we are “only human”. But evidence doesn’t really support this.

Three points to ponder:

Firstly the opening chapter of Genesis clearly explains that God’s creation of humans was the ultimate in divine creativity because we humans are created “in the image of God” and therefore without sin.

Yes it wasn’t too long before the first humans became dissatisfied with the beauty, potential and freedom of the human condition and sought to be other than who we were by divine design.

This was their sin – not being satisfied with being perfectly human.

Second point of evidence. Because God created humans without sin, when we sin we are therefore being less than human.

Third point: While we might read these facts in catechisms and books of theology, we can also experience our personal and communal sin as a failure or a lack. The sadness we feel and often name as lack of integrity, failure of authenticity, not acting as my true self… you will think of other words and phrases for this sadness which is a personal evidence that we are not living in harmony with our deepest, our best, our truest selves.

In other words when we sin we can sense that we are not living the full potential of full humanity.

So when we sin we are being less than human, and while the best books (e.g. spirituality, psychology) explain this, when we are healthy we have our own interior sense that we are opting for less happiness than we are offered.

We call this interior sense, conscience.

We might think of the Transfiguration of the Lord as an out-of-this-world moment for Peter, James and John, when they tasted experienced divinity but had to go back down the hill to their routine, mundane, suffering human lives.

But it might be more helpful to realise that in the experience of the Transfiguration the three disciples were experiencing a fulness of their humanity. Yes it is true that after the mountain-top experience they had to descend from the high ground, but they could see that in this divine gaze they had become more fully human, more authentic, more integrated, more themselves.

So while faith presented simply as religious practice seems to call us away from ourselves to a better time, as our faith matures we will experience intimacy with Jesus as a coming home to ourselves.

 

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Upcoming Cafe Gatherings:

Send a name, date, place and time and I’ll share your invitation. Just initiate a gathering, send me the info, and turn up to meet with anyone else who wants to take an hour to chat about their experience of God.

Thursday 5 March 2026 10.30am
The Cafe at Harrison’s Pekapeka Rd Waikanae
Catherine