Chapter 8

Sin Shock

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It’s so hard to be like Jesus,” my friend Andrea told me one Sunday at church. We were sitting on the front row (because I’m a good pastor’s wife, and that’s where I sit—obviously!) chatting about some hard things from her previous week. She was clearly frustrated with certain people, and their sins, and their actions, because each of these sins and actions were affecting her and her family. She laid it all out there, lamenting how hard it can be to treat people the way Jesus did. I nodded along, but I haven’t gotten that phrase out of my head.

“It’s so hard to be like Jesus.”

Isn’t that the truth? It’s so hard to be like Jesus, and yet the Scripture says to “be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:1–2). So being like Jesus is what we’re explicitly told to do, and yet it’s so challenging to actually do this—to walk with the love that Jesus showed, to give ourselves up for people the way Jesus did.

Jesus encountered people all of the time who were struggling with sin, and in all His encounters with them, He was never once shocked by their sin. He was disheartened by their sin; He was broken for their sin; He would eventually be condemned for their sin. But what we never see Jesus say to someone is this:

“How could you?”

“I’m so ashamed of you.”

“Who do you think you are?”

No, and the reason we don’t see Jesus react this way is because He knows something about people. We are sinful people. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). Every single one of us. Jesus never encountered anyone who hadn’t sinned, and yet He loved them in the midst of their sin. This is why it’s hard to be like Jesus. He loved no matter what. He continued to pursue. No matter what. He stepped into messy situations. No matter what.

Now, before you get upset with me, let me clarify something again, in case you were sort of skimming over the last couple of paragraphs. Yes, Jesus is offended by sin, because all sin is against Him. Yes, Jesus is appalled at sin, because all sin is against Him. Yes, Jesus is outraged over sin, because all sin is against Him. But in all my years of reading about Jesus, I’ve yet to find a time when He is shocked by sin. Taken aback by sin. Flabbergasted by sin. There’s no “Really? Again?” or “You seriously need to get your act together.”

Never.

But can I just go out on a limb here, and say that we struggle to be like Jesus? Being like Jesus is hard on many levels, of course. (Understatement of the year, I know!) But this “not being shocked by sin” is one area we really struggle with. We are often shocked at people’s sin when it’s revealed to us or when they confess it to us. We think . . .

“I would never do that!”

“I thought you were better than that!”

I call this SIN SHOCK. And it’s a problem in our lives and in our churches. I believe it’s one of the major hindrances to women becoming free from their guilt and shame. You won’t find this term in the dictionary, although after a quick Internet search, I did find a Japanese movie called Sin, Shock (weird, right?!). Still, I’d like to think I made it up. Even if I didn’t, it’s my book and I can say whatever I want. Moving on.

Sin shock occurs when someone confesses their sin, or their sin is brought to the light, and people around them are shocked by what they’re seeing and hearing. I get it. We all do this, sometimes without even knowing it. We take on the posture of someone who could never do such a thing as the person who’s confessing to us has done. We push people away with our words and/or body language. Whether we intend to or not, we create a space where confession is not wanted or welcomed. But I want us to think about what this does to the culture we’re trying to develop in our churches and other relationships.

I have a dear friend who’s struggled with worry and anxiety throughout much of her life, which have led to many crippling bouts with depression. Sometimes the weight of it has confined her to bed for days, fighting stomach pains and so much more that’s been brought on by this condition. I’ll never forget one day when we were talking about this, and I asked if she’d ever talked to anyone at her church about her struggles . . . because maybe if her community knew about it, I figured, they could help walk beside her through this battle.

What she said next has never left my brain, and it’s the essence of what sin shock does to a community. She told me she wasn’t ready to tell anyone about it because her husband was going through the process of becoming a deacon, and she wasn’t sure how they would feel about her (and him) if they knew about her struggles. The reason she hadn’t told anyone was because of what they would think of her, because of what she either rightly or wrongly perceived as their potential sin shock.

I have cried so many tears over this epidemic in our church culture. I have cried tears over my own struggle with this. I have cried tears over women choking down their battles with sin, living all alone with them, out of fear for what the rest of us would think. Let me tell you right now . . .

This MUST change.

We need to be creating a culture in our churches where people feel the freedom to confess their sins BECAUSE WE HAVE JESUS. We need to be creating a culture where people are expected to come regularly to each other in repentance BECAUSE WE HAVE JESUS. We need to be creating a culture where people can talk about their struggles BECAUSE WE HAVE JESUS.

God’s Word is clear that “none is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). Paul himself confessed, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Rom. 7:18–19). And yet, in almost the next breath, he tells us, “There is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1).

What if we truly just admitted that we all sin, we all mess up, we all let others down, and we’ll all keep on doing it until the day we die. Why? Because we are sinners. We are human. We are fallen people in desperate need of a Savior. It’s who we are.

And what if we truly believed that those around us will let us down, goof up, make bad choices, and struggle through life until the day they die too, because they’re all sinners, same as us. They are human. They are fallen people in desperate need of a Savior. It’s who they are.

If we are to imitate Jesus, one thing we must begin to do is allow people to confess and repent in a safe place, because Jesus constantly provided a safe place for sinners to be transformed. We must be churches, and groups, and friends, and women who say to one another that we value confession and repentance over secrets and perceived perfection, because there’s no need for pretending to be people we’re not.

John 8 tells about an encounter between Jesus and a sinful woman, where He saves her life both physically and spiritually. This story is one of my favorites in the Bible, because I can relate to this woman on so many levels. I have felt what she must have been feeling in that moment. And if you’ve never read this story for yourself, or if you haven’t in a while, I encourage you to drag out your Bible, dust it off, and prepare to fall in love with Jesus again in the eighth chapter of John.

Jesus was teaching people early in the morning at the temple, when the scribes and Pharisees (enforcers of the religious law, basically) busted up His teaching and demanded something of Him. They were trying their best to catch Him doing something wrong so that they could convict Him of a crime, expose Him as a lawbreaker of the Old Testament so they could convince everyone He wasn’t who He said He was.

These men presented Jesus with a test case—a woman who’d been caught in the act of adultery, having sex with a man who was not her husband—and made her “stand in the center,” humiliated, embarrassed, ashamed, mortified, disgraced—all the feelings of someone whose junk is thrust out into the open for everyone to see.

“In the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women,” the men said to Jesus. “So what do you say?” The Bible just comes out and reveals their motivation: “This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him” (John 8:5–6).

But you know what? Jesus flipped their whole worlds upside down. (This is one of the many reasons I love Jesus so much.) He was so calm. He never looked at this woman in disgust. He never wondered how she could possibly do such a thing. He never condemned her, not once. He simply said to the people demanding justice at her expense that, yes, justice could be done . . . but only if they, too, had no sin within themselves. “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7).

This only left one person capable of starting the rock throwing that would punish this woman with death for her sin. The sinless Jesus had every right to stone her. Every right. Yet He knew something this woman didn’t know, and that the Pharisees didn’t know—the fact that her sin would be paid for, but not on this day. And not by this woman. It would be paid in God’s good time by Jesus Himself.

So don’t think for a minute, with Jesus knowing what human sin would ultimately cost Him, that He didn’t view sin as ugly and awful and horrific. He hated it then, and He hates it now. But shocked by it? Did Jesus appear shocked by her sin? No, after all the other men had walked away, when it was just Jesus and this woman . . .

Okay, can you even imagine what this must have been like? Let’s try for a second. Put yourself in her position. You’ve just been caught in the worst sin you can imagine committing. What sin would that be for you? Maybe you’ve already committed it, and no one knows about it. It’s your little secret. Covering this sin has become your main agenda each day. You work on keeping it hidden all the time, creating ever more elaborate disguises to shield it from public view. But now your ugly sin—this ugly sin—is out in the open, and people are demanding your life in payment for what you’ve done. Imagine that you are alone, vulnerable, exposed, humiliated, standing in front of the Savior of the world. Standing before your Jesus. Totally ratted out.

Now. Expecting to see some holy shock?

“Jesus stood up” (because He’d been stooped down writing stuff on the dusty ground with His finger), “and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’”—to which she said, “No one, Lord” (John 8:10–11). What’s going to happen next? The gravity of her situation rests in His hands.

But, oh, my sweet Jesus. I love Him so much. He showed so much love, grace, and freedom to this woman. He didn’t negate her sin; in fact, He told her, “Neither do I condemn you;” . . . but not before saying to her, “Go, and from now on sin no more” (John 8:11). He did not condemn her for her sin. He would be condemned for her sin. Justice would indeed be done for her sin, but not at the hands of her accusers. Jesus Himself would justify it. Our Savior. Our Redeemer.

And this is how we’re to treat our friends, our sisters in Christ. We can’t condemn them because we, too, are like the Pharisees. We are full of sin ourselves. But we can love them well, we can bring truth to their lives, we can show them the words of God, and we can point them to Jesus. We can hate their sin, we can encourage confession and repentance, and then we can step into the battle with them.

My friend who struggles with depression—who was worried that if she confessed it to people in her church, they’d think less of her and look down on her husband—is a picture of what should never happen in the church of Jesus Christ. And yet, don’t we know, it happens ALL THE TIME. Most of the women seated around you on Sundays, most likely including the woman who’s sitting there looking lovely and smiling to people across the room, are afraid that if others knew their struggles, they’d be disqualified from doing the work of God.

But if I was sitting across the table from you right now, I would hold your hands, look into your eyes, and beg you to be a person who never makes another woman feel that way. Be a person your friends know is safe. Be a person who values people and their lives and their journeys. Be a person who, when presented with sin, takes people to the Redeemer who died for that sin and who’s even now in the business of redeeming us all from our sin. Be a friend who points people to Jesus for confession and forgiveness.

I admit, in the past, I was shocked by people’s sins every single time. I would hear a story about a person failing miserably who claimed to love God, and I was unbelievably shocked at how they could possibly have done something like that. But the longer I live and the more often I see people failing, the more I realize I’m one step away from failure as well. One step away.

That’s why this fight is more important to me now than ever. It’s not that I’ve grown cynical and hardened to human failing. I’ve just seen too many women hurting, and seen what Jesus can do when we actually begin to imitate His heart. My own sin will always look better or worse depending on the day, but some things must always be kept unchanged in our eyes: the holiness of God and the depravity of man. These are unchangeable realities, yet by God’s grace and by the blood of Jesus, they can become the ingredients for total freedom without condemnation.

All of us are the woman caught in sin.

And all of us want to be treated the way Jesus treated her.

I remember when I first shared online the story of my pregnancies from college. My first pregnancy was difficult (because no one signs up to be a teenage mom), but my second was even more difficult because no one wants to be a follower of Jesus whose sin is so out there in the open for everyone to see. I was doing my best to follow Him when I got pregnant that second time, but my flesh won the battle. My heart knew what was right, but my flesh wanted its own way. I knew I had changed, that I indeed loved Jesus dearly, that I truly desired to do the things He had asked me to do. But then all of a sudden, I’d messed up again. My sin struggle was back. I was looking for love and acceptance in the same place I’d been doing it for so many years. And what I’d found again was guilt, shame, fear, and a desperation to keep my sin unknown.

Almost no time after I’d posted this story, women began emailing me left and right, telling me their own stories too—their sin struggles, their shame, their silent secrets. Time and again in what they wrote to me, I began noticing this same phrase appearing somewhere in almost each message: “And no one knows.” All these stories—laced with so much shame, guilt, pain, sorrow, anguish, poor choices, consequences, all of it—and yet each seemed to carry a consistent thread. These women had been carrying that story around for years, all alone.

No one knows. Certain sins come with their own calling card, one that advertises what we’re struggling with, no way to hide it. But in most cases, women walk around with struggles that no one can see, and that they’re too afraid to tell us about. One of the people who contacted me was a woman from my own church who told me she’d had an abortion in college, and no one knew. She was married now, a momma to three, and still holding on to a buried memory that no one knew about. In spite of her knowing she was forgiven, she was living with a secret that caused her to feel unknown by her friends and family. Meanwhile, Satan continued to bring it back up, causing her to feel shame and guilt over and over again, while all along Jesus was there with her, forgiving her, offering her complete freedom from this pain.

But where were the other women in her life? Where were the people in her church and community who could hear her story, learn of her past, and not register such shock at what she was saying? Did she not know any women like that?

I guess I’ve learned from being around the ladies at the jail for so many years that there’s not much that can shock me anymore. Prostitution, drug rings, sex trafficking, alleged murder. Maybe part of our problem is that we’ve kept ourselves too sheltered within our own little cosmetic worlds, where tragedy is not being able to find a close parking place when it’s raining, or running low on hand sanitizer during flu season. But when we make it hard for people to confess their sins and ask for help—whether believers (who we shouldn’t expect to be any more perfect than we are) or unbelievers (who we shouldn’t expect to act like Christ-followers anyway)—we are setting them up for disaster. We are creating a culture that says to people, “It’s better for you to lug this guilt and shame around with you than to confess it, bring it out into the light, and let Jesus deal with it. Maybe it’s better that we never know.”

And I say that’s what should shock us.

One of the subsets of sin shock that’s probably worth addressing on its own is when the sin in question is not just that of a friend or acquaintance or maybe someone we don’t even personally know, but rather is a sin that involves you or impacts you directly. The times when it’s hardest for us not to be shocked by someone’s sin is when the fallout is going to be played out right in front of our face. Am I right?

Imagine with me the wife who’s hearing her husband confess his pornography addiction for the umpteenth time. She will struggle with not being shocked by this sin, since it’s affecting and hurting her at such close range, creating tremors throughout her marriage, her whole identity, her entire life.

Then there’s the daughter who hears that her father has left her mom for another woman. This girl will struggle to not be shocked by her daddy’s sin, more than the friends and neighbors who hear about it later, because it affects her and hurts her so dearly.

Then there’s the student who hears a teacher she greatly admires admit to a failing that removes him from the classroom. Or the congregation that witnesses the confession of their pastor, setting up months and years of unnecessary upheaval and turnover. These confessions hurt to hear—more than most—because they affect us where we live. They’re much more difficult to process.

Several years ago, someone very close to me opened up about their infidelity. This wasn’t just a random person, but someone I love dearly. And when the phone call came, I broke. I reacted out of disbelief. In fact, my exact words went something like: “How could you do this to your family? How could you do this to all of us? You know how bad this hurts, because your dad did the same thing to you. Don’t you remember the pain you went through?”

See, when it’s something up close, when the proximity to our heart is so point-blank, it’s hard to view sin the way God views sin. We are humans. With emotions. We hurt. We get mad. Then sad. And there’s nothing unusual about this. I’m not out of reality enough to suggest that you could just stoically stand there and not be crushed by what you’re hearing and discovering. There’s not much of a way around that.

In fact, sin is worth being angry about. Sin should disgust us, should repulse us, should bring up emotions in us that produce anger. Anger toward sin is righteous. God is repulsed by our sin every single day—angry at where it comes from, angry at what it does to us, angry at its offense to His absolute holiness. But God is never repulsed by us or overwhelmed at how to do anything about it.

So while I compassionately understand how certain sins, in certain situations, committed by certain people in certain levels of intimate relationship with us can incite an unsurprising rush of outrage, grief, and apoplectic shock, the truth remains (and God, in His grace, can bring us to see this) it is still a sin that Jesus died for. And if we persist in being shocked by it, all our “How could you?” and “I would never” statements will only succeed at building thicker, higher walls between ourselves and those we love, and will make the other person’s ability to seek and receive God’s forgiveness that much more slow and painful. For all of us.

Ugh, it hurts all over again when I think back to that phone call where I went so ballistic in response to that person’s sin. We recently had a conversation, and for the eight millionth time I apologized for my reaction. They’ve totally forgiven me. We actually moved forward pretty quickly after that initial phone call. I’ve repented of my anger toward them, and have continued to love them and walk with them through their journey. But I’m still reminded of it often, the shock and devastation I displayed in that moment, wishing I had responded differently. Sin shock is in many ways no less damaging than the offending sin itself.

Who am I to think I have the right to hold that stone in my hand, ready to throw it, even when the target is no more than two feet away from my breaking heart? I still must drop my stone and admit I’m the same as them. Desperately in need of Jesus.

My friend wasn’t lying when she said, “It’s so hard to be like Jesus.” Everything about being like Jesus is difficult. But there’s hope. We don’t have to do this alone. I always say there are three things that will get me to the end of my life loving Jesus.

God’s Word + The Holy Spirit + Community = that’s how I’ll make it.

The great thing about God’s Word is how it truly lights our path. It provides the hope we so desire as we journey through life. When Jesus was preparing to die, He comforted His disciples (and us, as we read His words) by telling them He would be sending them a Helper.

“These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” (John 14:25–26)

This “Helper,” the Holy Spirit that God sent to us, is here to help us remember all that Jesus has said and done, to keep His Word speaking to us, reminding us of the truth it teaches. So while being like Jesus is hard, the Holy Spirit is inside to help us, even to help us do hard things.

When we allow ourselves to be a safe place for women to confess their struggles, we are imitating Jesus. And when we find ourselves struggling to be that place for women, we have the Holy Spirit inside us to remind us of all the things Jesus taught us. He reminds us how Jesus treated every sinner He came into contact with, all who realized they were sinners. He loved them, He forgave them, and He commanded them not to sin anymore. God’s Word and His Spirit can keep us grounded in that.

Then, community. It’s a catchy word in the Christian world, but it’s a vital thing that in my life will get me to the end with Jesus. Not only does God’s Word remind me of all that Jesus did for me and all the ways God loves me, but my community reminds me of those things as well.

I have a group of girlfriends I like to call my “fight club.” These girls know almost everything about me, and in spite of all they know about me, they continue to push me toward Jesus. They continue to listen to my struggles, and they continue to be a safe place for me to confess my sin. (Do you have a “fight club” like I do? If not, no worries, but it’s time now to go and find one.) As they listen to me fight through some of the same old sins of pride, greed, power, and control, they aren’t shocked by my sin, but they tell me to fight my sin. They don’t think less of me as a Christ-follower, but they push me not to give in to these pleasures of the world, and to continue bringing my struggles to the light, because in the light is where freedom is found.

I’ve learned over the years that when we become people who encourage confession and repentance, when we make spaces for these things to happen in safe environments, freedom is the result. There is freedom in confession. There is freedom in repentance. There is freedom in knowing that your struggle, your sin, your pain, your shame, your guilt is all welcomed at the table. They are welcomed because of what Jesus, our great High Priest, did for us on the cross.

I’m declaring an end to sin shock . . . because there’s no end of possibilities once we’re free of it.