Wounds and Sins (Letters to My Sons)
My sons,
The names we give things matter.
The Egyptians told the story of Isis, who after the sun god Ra was bitten by a snake managed to learn his true name and thus gain power over him. When Polyphemus tries to trap Odysseus, it is by trying to learn his name, and as long as Odysseus maintains the moniker “Nobody,” he is beyond vengeance. Even in Scripture there is an echo of this idea. When the Lord blesses Jacob, it is through renaming him Israel, “he who wrestles with God,” (Genesis 32:22-32) The third commandment tells us we are not to use God’s name for vanity. (Exodus 20:7) Abraham and Paul and Peter are all names given later in life, as a result of God’s working.
I’m not suggesting all such myths are true, but what they gesture at—and the reason Scripture reflects these themes—is that our words are powerful things. The stories we tell and the labels we give hold enormous strength over us. They shape how we experience the world, and in turn give that world the ability to shape us.
In the world where you are growing, one particular place I see this reality is the names we give the darkness that exists in our hearts. There is one way of talking about this darkness that uses the language of sin, albiet often with a modern shape. “I am wicked, evil, a sinner.” There is another way, dominant recently, of leaning on the language of wounding and brokenness. “I am hurting. I have been wronged.” Each way of talking becomes its own language, and each language turns into a worldview.
When our naming convention centers on wounding, we view our stories in terms of how we have been hurt and are hurting. There are ways this is good. It can lead to self-reflection and self-understanding. When done well, it can be an important tool for healing. It moves us from the surface level of wrong actions to examining our souls.
However, it can also have dangerous effects. Injury removes moral agency. If my leg is broken, it isn’t my fault that I limp. If my eyes have been gouged out, it isn’t my fault that I stumble around and break things. If my heart is wounded, it is easy to conclude it isn’t my fault that I drink too much or am cruel to people or live a selfish, self-protecting life. Focusing on our hurt can lead us to tell stories of victimhood that excuse the ways we become perpetrators. Our injuries are not always our fault, but when they become our identity we can use them as a mantle of faultlessness to cover the times we hurt others.
In the modern way people talk about sin there is a similar set of benefits and problems. Naming things as sin (as many modern Christians define it) restores our agency. It rightly tells us that we are guilty when we cause harm, and it calls us to not make peace with or excuses for the darkness. We must go to war against it, putting it to death.
Yet exclusively using the language of sin can also lead to problems. It can presume too much on our agency. The struggle against sin is reduced to the maxim to “just stop it!” More deeply, it can lead to the neglect of our motivations. While sin is always irrational, we always do it for reasons. There are longings and hurts that drive us, and we won’t experience much victory until we come to understand them.
Now, as I’ve hinted, the biggest reason for these shortfalls is that Scripture, while it mainly uses the language of sin, actually includes within it things we think of as brokenness. The biblical idea that we are fallen “in Adam” reminds us that we have the deepest sort of parent-wound that lies behind our wrong desires. (Romans 5:12-21) The language of the Bible often blurs the lines, seeing our transgressions, iniquities, sorrows and infirmities as different links of the same chain. (i.e. Isaiah 53:4-5)
We are responsible for our sins, but they don’t only exist at the level of our choices. Our desires, our thoughts, and our inclinations are sinful. And a large part of that sin is a result of the damage done by the sin of others. We need to name the darkness as both things, not one or the other. We are sinners, but that includes the fact that we are hurt and broken people.
I realize that might seem detached from your lives right now, on the cusp between boyhood and manhood. But I want you to name these realities because I think men in our world go wrong by not having the language for one or the other parts of themselves.
You are wounded. Your lives have wounded you. People have and will wound you. I’m sure there are wounds you have from me, even as I’ve tried to love you, because I am a wounded man as well. Letting our wounds be seen feels vulnerable and shameful. It is terrifying. We want to be strong, not show our weakness! It feels like baring our throat when wolves are around.
Yet denying our hurts is a failure of true manhood. Boys on the playground pretend to be invincible. They strut about in shows of strength and lie when they stumble or their are tears in their eyes. Men, though, live in truth, including the truth about themselves. They have the courage to admit their hurts and the wisdom to recognize that they need help to find healing. The bravest sort of men are not those who seem strong but those strong enough to openly show their weakness.
You are also sinful. There are times you do evil things and make wicked decisions and cause harm. You do those things, and you are responsible for them. Boys make excuses, often using the language of wounding (“He hit me first!”) Men take ownership for what they have done and walk in repentance. The most malformed images of masculinity are childish for this reason. They are rooted on the idea that someone else’s issues (society, women, beta males, their parents’ failures) is an alchemist’s stone of hurt that transmutes their wickedness into virtue.
Naming these realities is excruciating. We want to live in illusions, we want to be whole people, and we want things to not be our fault. Which is why, ultimately, the way to move towards this sort of manhood is through the true man, Christ Jesus. You need the security provided by the new identity we have in Him. Jesus offers to trade the identities we create for ourselves, the identities we ultimately inherit from Adam, for a new name: His. We receive His righteousness. We are accepted by His worthiness. We are kept by His power and sealing by the Holy Spirit.
Letting Jesus define us allows us to be honest about our hurts. He is our strength, and so the fact that we aren’t strong enough is okay. It is, in fact, essential. He is our healing, offering true hope that if we truly reveal where we have been cut open, he will work to begin to close the wounds. And He is our comfort, holding us in His arms as we together weep for the wrongs that have been done to us.
Being defined by Jesus also lets us look at our sin head on. Jesus doesn’t make excuses for our sin. His compassion doesn’t minimize it. He tells us that we are in fact wicked people that have done terrible things. Death should be our sentence. But then he tells us, “That isn’t what is true of you in me. I suffered for all of that guilt, in ways you never could. I will give you a place of privilege and love not because you aren’t terrible but because I am righteous and that is the robe and ring the Father puts on you as you belong to me.” The more fully we see our sin, the more fully we see the love and grace of God.
In Jesus we can find the freedom to name our wounds and our sins, recognizing that they are often one and the same. In Jesus we can find freedom from the power of both of them, resurrection life transforming the roots of the dead trees of our lives.
I see your hurts. I see your sins. I love you, always.
Your Earthly Father