atheism for lent, day 32 (belated): covid update, sin, and grace

Well, this post was supposed to be for several days ago. But first I had laptop problems, then I was busy, and then I felt like crap. Turns out I was running a low fever most of the weekend, and it’s persisting as of today. I’m starting to get concerned about my covid recovery.

This past week, I’ve had a fluttering sound/feeling in my right ear, which the internet tells me is called “pulsatile tinnitus.” It’s not the first time I’ve experienced this; it’s happened as far back as I can remember — but only a couple times per year, and always very temporarily. As in, it only ever last a few minutes. But this, now, is almost constant. My doctor says to cut out caffeine, get more sleep, and try to relax. The first is easily doable, the second is always a challenge, and the third is nearly impossible because this constant noise/sensation in my ear is sending my anxiety through the roof with what-ifs. What if it never goes away? What if I have to live with this for the rest of my life? It makes concentration almost impossible and is already interfering with my reading and my writing. What if this makes it impossible for me to write for the rest of my life? I’ll lose my mind. What if this is my first symptom of long covid?

The only thing that helps is sticking an earbud in my right ear, plugging the ear canal. But that also gets tiring after a few hours. Did you know ears can get tired? *sigh* Doc says to give it a couple of weeks and then check back with her if it hasn’t quit. Hopefully, I won’t have spiraled into a quivering, anxious mess by then.

Enough about my health weirdnesses. On to this past Saturday’s Day 32 of Atheism for Lent 2023. I don’t know if I’m functioning well enough to comprehend Paul Tillich, but I’ll do what I can.

Paul Tillich was a Germerican, born in Germany and spending the second half of his life in the United States. He was a chaplain in WWI and came home from war completely traumatized. His academic career began in the mid-1920s, and he eventually became one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. Interestingly enough, he lived in an open marriage with his second wife, Hannah Werner-Gottschow Tillich (d. 1988), from 1924 until his death in 1965.

Tillich’s sermons captured the essence of his work, and his “You Are Accepted” provides our Day 32 reflection. Here, Tillich emphasizes the words “sin” and “grace.” Sin, he says should never be used in the plural: it is not our “sins” that are the problem of our lives, but our sin. He doesn’t mean a singular or a series of immoral acts, and he doesn’t distinguish between “the sinners” and “the righteous.” (Making that distinction is arrogant, he says.)

Sin, to Tillich, is separation, an aspect of the experience of every human. “To be in the state of sin is to be in the state of separation.” There are three aspects of this separation (state of sin): (1) separation of individuals from each other, (2) separation of an individual from self, and (3) our collective separation from the Ground of Being. “This three-fold separation constitutes the state of everything that exists…it is the fate of every life.” Of all animals, we humans are the only ones that not only experience our separation but are also conscious of it, think on it, and know why we suffer: we know that we are estranged from this Something To Which We Really Belong, and that this estrangement is the state of our entire existence, not just a one-time event (like a flash of lightning). Furthermore, this separation is an experience we “actively participate in,” and because we are aware of our participation, we feel guilt.

This fated separation and the guilt we feel over it constitute sin. — and it shapes every instant of our existence. It’s the air we move through: “before sin is an act, it is a state.”

BUT: so is grace.

Grace, says Tillich, is the “unity of life” (emphasis added). We can’t have a true perception of sin unless we have experienced grace; we can’t have a true perception of grace until we’ve experienced sin, the separation of life. As he rejected the definition of “sin” as an immoral action, so Tillich rejects the classic definition of “grace.” We’re not dealing with the concept of undeserved forgiveness here, or with a “magic power” that gives us hope, or with any singular benevolent action. Grace, to Tillich, reaches far deeper. Grace is the acceptance of the rejected. Grace is the reunion of life with life, even the triumphant reunion of the self with itself. Where we were separated from our selves, from others, from the Ground of Being, now, through grace, we are reunited.

What’s important, though, is not the words “sin” and “grace.” What’s important is our core response to them. Tillich cautions us not to be distracted by the estrangement between nations; it’s just a louder, more obvious example of the estrangement from others and self that’s going on inside of each of us. We can’t perceive and experience grace in our core selves unless we are honest with ourselves about our estrangement toward others, even our cruelty toward others or at least our willingness to be cruel. We treat others with contempt because we treat ourselves wit contempt. We struggle with loving others because we don’t love ourselves.

Tillich finds his thought reflected in the words of Paul, a follower of Jesus of Nazareth:

“Without the help of modern psychology, Paul expressed the fact in his famous words, ‘For I do not do the good I desire, but rather the evil that I do not desire.’ And then he continued in words that might well be the motto of all depth psychology: ‘Now if I should do what I do not wish to do, it is not I that do it, but rather sin which dwells within me.’ The apostle sensed a split between his conscious will and his real will, between himself and something strange within and alien to him. He was estranged from himself; and that estrangement he called ‘sin.'”

–Paul Tillich,
“You Are Accepted”

This split between conscious will (what we think we want to do) and real will (what we actually want to do) is the estrangement Tillich calls “sin” — and he also counts despair part of our inner estrangement, as manifesting in cynicism, emptiness, doubt, and feelings of meaninglessness. Grace is the answer to it all, grace Paul describes as “abounding.” In the moment of Saul’s/Paul’s greatest estrangement from himself, from others, and from the Ground of Being, Saul/Paul received the greatest, most transformative acceptance of his life. Finding himself accepted, he could then be reunited with himself and with others.

It’s worth noting what Tillich says this grace is/was not:

• not a sudden belief in God, Jesus, or the Bible as truth
• not progress in moral development
• not progress in overcoming certain faults
• not progress in relationships.

These aspects might accompany our receiving of grace, but they are not grace themselves. We are easily capable of achieving moral development or belief in God without opening ourselves to grace — but if we go this route, we are doing so from a state of separation, and all we accomplish in the long run is deepening the separation…deepening the sin.

Remember: sin, here is not a moral failing. It is the separation from self, others, and Ground of Being, the separation permeating all existence. It will also permeate any newfound “beliefs” if we acquire them without grace: without the triumphant reunion of inner life.

Grace, says Tillich,

“…strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!’ If that happens to us, we experience grace…. And nothing is demanded of this experience, no religious or moral or intellectual presupposition, nothing but acceptance.”

Well, I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything half as relatable.

I can say that I have experienced moments of this grace Tillich describes. It doesn’t last, and I’m not sure what he would say about that. I feel as though grace abounds in me briefly, then gets submerged again in the sin, the separation from all else. The doubt, the emptiness, the feelings of meaninglessness. The lack of hope. I’m there right now as I struggle with my health, as I watch my kid struggle with hers, as I watch my husband stress about how we can’t get ahead of the mounting medical bills. I need grace, I need that reunion of life within me and around me. And I don’t know how to access it.

I can pay intellectual assent to this grace, but I can’t hold it in my core.