When I was growing up, there were various “themes” we could adopt in our religious/spiritual/church life. From time to time someone would get dramatically converted…perhaps even tearfully trekking down a sawdust trail to accomplish this…and then he would repent of his heinous crimes and misdemeanors, the horrible offenses against god and mankind, and then be gloriously saved. And for sometime thereafter he was feted in the community, holding an honored position as someone who had come in from the “miry pits of sin” and found grace. He was a champion of sorts, an illustration of how the grace of God could intervene and save anyone from the horrors of sin.

But sometimes this man would have a hard time giving up this lofty position. He would make it a regular refrain in his testimony, not letting anyone forget that he had been “the chiefest of sinners” before he found God. So we heard endlessly of his sinful excesses, often with profuse tears and lamentations, and this was usually very rewarding to the crowd. It was even cathartic. But then I suspect that I was not the only one who began to get a bit tired of it after a few years and privately wished we could merely “change the channel.” But this person would not let it go as it had become an essential part of his identity, a suit of clothes that he now proudly wore daily. “I was the chiefest of sinners,” could have been the name of his book. Actually, this well-intentioned, though spiritually immature man, had merely let his ego co-opt his new-found faith and had turned that faith into a plat form for the display of what the Apostle Paul called “the flesh.” Yes, even our attestation of our sinfulness can be a subtle form of egotism under the guise of humility.

This man at some point merely needed to let it go. Yes, he had been a sinner…and was still so, as is the case with us all…but “that was then, this is now.” And all of us have been, and are, “the chiefest of sinners” in some sense even if we have never given full expression to our dark side. Yes, we need to be present of this dark side, acknowledge it, but do not need to make the mistake of obsessing with it; for when we obsess with it, we merely give it life. The Pauline “flesh” will go to great ends to perpetuate itself and “spiritual” culture affords it ample opportunity.