"Sin... is contrary to our fair nature. For as verily as sin is unclean, so verily is it unnatural."
Julian of Norwich (Ch. 63)
Our nature is good, fair and beautiful. Deep down we want to do good, be loving, and care about others. And we respond to goodness, love and care in positive ways, for love draws out our good nature to express itself in love. Sin is absolutely the opposite of our good, God-made, in-God's-image, nature. We are naturally good and clean and sin is unnatural and abnormal to us. The normal and natural way for us to be is to be good, kind, loving, and peaceful. So to sin is to go against who we really are and to act in an unnatural or foreign manner.
So why do we seem to fall into sin so easily? There are so many possible answers to that question, including reasons like confusion, weakness, blindness, fear, trauma, delusion, desire, influences, lack, pain, entrapment, alienation, legalism, and lies. But one thing to know is that the reason we can fall into sin is NOT because we are naturally bad or evil. God created us in His image and that image is still within us. God called humanity "very good" and that is still true of us as God's creation. Our basic makeup has not changed. What changed was our perception of ourselves, especially before God. Perhaps some of the biggest errors in our perception of ourselves have been to see ourselves as unloved or unlovable, defective or inferior, separated or alone, bad or evil. If we think we are defective, lacking, alone, and unloved, this causes pain and we may then be vulnerable to suggestions that are unhealthy as ways to alleviate that pain. But Christ has come to show us that we are lovable, worthy, not alone, and good. He has come to call us back to the truth of our being as "very good" and beloved by God. God has never stopped seeing who we really are under the layers of wrong ideas and confused actions.God has not known us as bad or defective or unlovely, because that is not a true picture of our being. God only knows what really is, what is actually true, and so He has only known us for who we really are - lovely, good, whole and true children of God. Christ is the progenitor of the human race, for we were all created by and through Him. So Christ comes to show us not only the face of God His Father, as the face of pure uncreated love, but also the face of humans His siblings, as the face of pure created love.
Can we dare to see the beauty that Christ has in ourselves also? Can we dare to believe that because the root, Christ, is good, the branches growing out of Him, all of us, are good as well? Can we dare to believe that as He is, so are we? Can we dare to believe that as the Father loves Christ, with the same intensity the Father also loves us? Can we dare to hold our heads high because Christ isn't ashamed to call us His family? We are worthy, beautiful, lovable, good children of God. God made us that way. That has never changed! No matter how confused we have gotten and how many wrong things we have done, sin is unnatural to us. It is only natural to us to love, to trust our Father, to be good.
"As he is, so are we in this world."
1 John 4:17 (KJV)
"God made men and women true and upright."
Ecclesiastes 7:29 (MSG)
A Prayer: I dare to call myself lovely and loving, because You, Love, made me like Yourself!