Pastor Note #137: Other People’s Sins & Reading the Bible

When reading the Bible, do you ever find yourself convicted about some sin in your life?  Do you find that the Bible sometimes points out something about the way you’re living that just isn’t right with God?  That’s uncomfortable, isn’t it?  Let me suggest a surefire way to keep that from happening.  Try to always focus your attention on OPS.  What’s OPS?  I’m glad you ask.  OPS stands for Other People’s Sins.  Be sure to keep track of how bad other people are, and when you read the Bible, be alert for any verses or passages that you can use to prove just how bad those other people are.  If you do that, it will go a long way toward making your own Bible reading less personally convicting.

I recently came across a passage in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians that illustrates that point, Ephesians 5:3.  Here’s my translation of the verse: “But neither unclean sexual immorality of any sort nor an insatiable desire for wealth and possessions should be named among you, as is proper for God’s holy people.”

Those who like their material comforts, those who believe that getting more money and material possession is a sign of God’s approval, those who believe that the only real financial sin is holding up a convenience store or mugging someone (like them) in the street, such folks will read Ephesians 5:3 like this: “But . . . unclean sexual immorality of any sort . . . should [not] be named among you, as is proper for God’s holy people.”  Such folks will be almost blind to anything in the Bible that challenges American consumerism and the pursuit of wealth and material comfort.

Instead, they will be prone to declare that the primary besetting sin of American society is its hyper-sexualization.  These will typically be people who manage to live a life of public sexual continence, that is, those who either do not struggle with sexual sin or who manage to keep their own sexual sins out of sight.  They will often be people who are living in denial about their own sexual sin.

This kind of approach to a verse such as Ephesians 5:3 is the besetting sin of the Christian tribe to which I more or less belong by virtue of my Christian upbringing and my theological convictions.  Evangelicals, especially those of a politically conservative leaning, have tended to be blind to the existence of economic sin.  But here Paul lays equal weight to his condemnation of sexual and economic sin.  Armed robbery and embezzlement are not the only ways that money and possessions can lead us astray.  The word that Paul uses in this passage [pleonezia] is, I believe, rightly translated the way I’ve done: “an insatiable desire for wealth and possessions.”  In his concern about the dangers posed by wealth and possessions, Paul is clearly echoing the teachings of Jesus (see such passages as Matthew 6:24; 19:23-24)

Can anyone really deny that this is a besetting sin American culture, every bit as much as hyper-sexualization?  Yet, my fellow Evangelical believers persist in reading verses like Ephesians 5:3 like this: “But . . . unclean sexual immorality of any sort . . . should [not] be named among you, as is proper for God’s holy people.”  Focus all attention on sexual sin, and turn a myopic eye toward any sort of economic sin.

The advertising that fills our television screens and our social media feeds constantly tells us that we don’t have enough yet, that we need more than we have right now.  It feeds our insatiable desire for more stuff.  So, we run up our credit card debt in order to get more and more stuff that we want but don’t really need.  We take on larger and larger mortgages in order to own “middle-class” houses that are twice as large as the middle-class houses of our parents and grandparents.  We take on larger and larger car loans in order to own larger and fancier cars than we could possibly really need but that we want very much.  These are the idols of the American Dream.

We allow ourselves to be persuaded by the advertisers, and when we do, we give in to pleonezia, an insatiable desire for wealth and possessions.  And in order to avoid being discomforted by a verses like Ephesians 5:3 or Matthew 6:24, we have to focus on OPS, Other People’s Sins.

The insatiable desire for wealth and possessions not only causes us to spend more than we can afford, but it also makes us much less generous.  If we want to get more stuff for ourselves, we can’t afford to give very much of our money away.  If we give money away to help the needs of the poor, then we won’t have as much to spend on ourselves.  So, we have to watch out for passages like Matthew 19:21 and James 2:15-16 and 1 John 3:17.  Again, OPS can help with that.

Now, let me just say, that it is possible to read Ephesians 5:3 this way: “But . . . an insatiable desire for wealth and possessions should [not] be named among you, as is proper for God’s holy people.”  There are portions of the Christian community in America who do not see sexual sin as something the Bible is much concern about.  Just as there are some Christians who think that the only real economic sin is armed robbery, so there are some Christians who think that the only real sexual sin is non-consensual sex.  Yes, I suppose those are both exaggerations, but I exaggerate for emphasis’s sake.

Different “tribes” within the larger Christian community will use OPS differently in order to avoid being convicted of their own particular besetting sins.  I choose here not to go into so much depth about those who minimize the dangers of the hyper-sexualization of American culture because they are not my “tribe” of the Christian community, and so to call them out is to risk engaging in my own OPS infraction.

If you feel pinched because I’ve called out economic sin more than sexual sin, take that as a warning that you are trying to avoid looking at your economic sins.  The idea of using OPS (Other People’s Sins) as a way of dodging our own need for repentance actually comes from Jesus.  Maybe you’ve already recognized that.  I leave you with his words:

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.  [Matthew 7:3-5 (NIV)]

© Gary A. Chorpenning 2024

Photos by GAC