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“We’re all sinners.” People who’ve spent any time in Christian contexts will have heard this phrase. But what does mean, exactly? And how is it used? Why does it sometimes feel like an affirmation of radical acceptance, while others it feels judgmental and profoundly negative? Dan explores this topics in this week’s episodes, and uncovers some surprising complexity to the phrase in the process. Check it out!
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Welcome, and as everybody knows, I am Dan Miller, I am Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College, and you are joining me for It's in the Code.
I A series that is part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
As always, I want to thank all of you for listening.
As always, I want to invite your thoughts, reflections, feedback, comments to me, Daniel Miller Swage, DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
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So let's dive in to a topic today that's really interesting.
All the topics that people float my way are interesting, but this one was interesting for me, I think, in some personally surprising ways in that, as I was reflecting on the theme, I don't know, I had some insights.
I think they're insights.
You might disagree, in which case I welcome hearing about your disagreements.
But some sort of opinions I came to, insights that I had that I think I didn't realize that I had, that I'd never thought about before.
So, what I want to look at today is the phrase, we're all sinners.
And a lot of people have reached out about this one.
We're all sinners.
And if you hear that, you might also, you know, hear pinging in your head the phrase, love the sinner, hate the sin.
And I think there's some overlap between these, the way that they're used, I think that they're Can be some similar effects, but I also think that they're different in a number of ways, so I think it's worth giving some thought to this.
And as I say, the more I've thought about it, the more I think that this phrase in particular is really complicated and difficult in a way that I hadn't considered before and that I suspect maybe others haven't considered.
And, as always, what we're interested in is not just what the phrase means—we'll start with that, you know, the basic meaning of it—but what it does and how it's used, right?
That's our focus in this series, is what we're calling the codes, right, or operations of sort of decoding elements of high-control religion, in particular high-control Christianity, is how these kinds of phrases or slogans or practices or whatever are used, right, and the effects that they have.
So let's start with the phrase itself, the real basics.
What does it mean?
And the notion we're all sinners—I mean, on the most basic level, it just encapsulates a central Christian teaching, right, which is that everyone sins.
And if that's a word that you're not familiar with or a word that seems weird or kind of feels strange or maybe uncomfortable, it's just basically the notion that everyone transgresses divine commands, that everyone has strayed, so to speak, from God's intended paths.
And when Christians say that human beings are fallen, this is another sort of piece of what we could call a theological anthropology, right?
A Christian account of the, you know, the human condition, I guess we could call it.
When they say that they're fallen, this is what they mean, is that they have fallen away from God's desires.
They have sinned.
That's what this means.
And according to mainstream Christian teaching, all humans are sinful and fallen.
This is a universal condition, which means that all humans are in need of God's forgiveness for this.
And when Christians talk about being quote-unquote saved, that's what they're talking about, is being saved from, delivered from, this fallen state.
Okay?
Now that's a really basic thumbnail sketch, and understanding exactly what any of those concepts mean or how they operate can vary radically within different Christian traditions.
Okay?
But that's the basic idea.
And left by itself doesn't really tell us that much, and it's clear that that's not what we're after, right?
I don't get emails from people if it's like, oh, a Christian said that they believe all people are sinful and fallen.
It would be like, well, yeah, no kidding.
That's kind of what it means to be a Christian for lots of people.
Instead, what everybody who contacts me about this recognizes, what so many of you listening will recognize if you've heard this phrase, if you've encountered it, if you've experienced it in practice, is that it isn't intended to simply teach some, you know, central piece of Christian doctrine.
Instead, when we hear this, we hear it, we experience it, we encounter it in different contexts, and those contexts provoke really, really different reactions.
And this is true for me as well.
I have encountered and used this phrase in my time as an evangelical, used it in lots of different contexts in different ways, right?
And so, I hear from some people who experience it as a pleasant surprise.
And the reason that maybe they hear that is that they are encountering a Christian individual or a Christian church or a Christian tradition that is accepting them without judgment, and maybe that's something they haven't experienced before or certainly haven't experienced in a religious context.
And so when somebody says, hey, you know what?
We're all sinners.
We're not here to, like, prioritize some over others.
For them, it's this radically affirmative kind of statement, right?
But others have described times, and I've been on the receiving end of this as well, when they have heard this phrase as a prelude to judgment and to hypocrisy.
Or, as always with so many of the topics we talk about in this series, I will hear from people and they will say, I hear this phrase and it really, really rubs me the wrong way.
It really just gets my hackles up, it makes me angry, and I can't even exactly tell you why.
And the reason is because I think the surface meaning, again, is straightforward enough, but there's something else going on there, and it's something unpleasant, and it's something visceral, and something that we don't like.
And I talk to and hear from lots of people with that experience as well.
And what it highlights, of course, is that the same phrase can be used in really different ways, in different contexts, and to express different attitudes.
Okay?
So it can be I really want to push this.
I'm not trying to be negative about religion all the time.
I'm not making big blanket statements that all religion everywhere does the same things, or that all forms of Christianity are the same things.
It can be, and often is, sincerely, an affirmation of radical acceptance.
And it carries the idea that because none of us are who God most desires us to be, there's no place for affirming one kind of person above another.
God redeems and accepts all people regardless of their particular flavor of fallenness, we might say.
Okay?
So it can be a radical affirmation.
It can also operate, though, in a very different way.
And I want to think about this by thinking about what I think is the secular analog for this, the sort of non-Christian way of kind of capturing some of the same meaning and some of the same dynamics.
And I think everybody will be familiar with this.
I think you'll be able to bring a person to mind, maybe, who says this.
It's the person who says, well, you know, I'm not saying I'm perfect, but... And then they go on to make a statement about somebody else who's clearly, like, worse than them, right?
So they preface some strong judgment or condemnation with the phrase, well, I'm not saying I'm perfect, but... and so forth.
And this is the use of the phrase that I think people take to be hypocritical.
I think when the phrase hits them the wrong way or is painful or provokes this kind of visceral negative reaction, it's because they're experiencing this kind of use.
It's basically somebody who says something like, well, I know we're all sinners, but... and then they go on to pass judgment about some individual or group Who is a worse sinner than them who is clearly, you know, we may all be sinners, but they're really bad.
And, you know, and it's used as a license for judgment.
Okay.
And so if we sort of pry that apart, what it means is that in this usage, What you're confronted with is the seeming recognition that we're all the same in some way.
We are all sinners, right?
But that affirmation of sameness or equivalence is somehow put forward as a way to then go on and say that actually we're not, in fact, all the same.
Some are worse sinners than others.
And here's where I think the context matters.
Here's the dynamic that I think is present when people have the negative reaction to that, is that this use is particularly painful if we or those we care about are the people on the receiving end of that but statement.
Yeah, I know we're all sinners, but you're really bad.
People you care about are really bad.
Causes that you're committed to are really bad, and so forth.
That's when it gets, I think, highly personal and hurts in that way.
So when we hear this phrase uttered as a kind of judgment, when we perceive it as a judgment, when we feel it as a judgment, I think it's because it's a judgment against us and those we love, okay?
So the uses of this phrase, and I think the intentions behind those usages, they can hit us in a lot of different ways.
And that's what I mean when I say it depends on context, is the uses and the intentions behind that.
That's part of the context of this.
Which explains some of the different effects the phrase can have on us, and I hear about this a lot, and it's why sometimes you get two people that are talking, and one person will share the story about how, you know, the first time they heard somebody say that we're all sinners, and it was liberating for them, and it was so powerful for them, and it was fully accepting of them, and so on, and somebody else will say, I heard that phrase all the time growing up, and it does nothing but bring up negative emotions and feelings for me.
Again, my clients working through religious trauma, this is something I hear from them a lot.
Okay?
So all of that, I think, is kind of straightforward.
I think all of that's similar to dynamics we see with a lot of phrases.
But here's where I started reflecting on this.
As I was getting ready for the show, as I was writing down my notes, as I'm thinking through things, as I'm sort of letting it simmer on the back burner, I think the phrase is still more complicated than that analysis suggests.
Because it would be easy to say, well, I don't like it because it's used to mask hypocrisy.
Yep, there we go.
We're done.
We can wipe our hands clean.
That was me wiping my hands clean, like the sound effects.
We can wipe our hands clean, and we can say, yep, done with that.
Good.
This is a bunch of hypocrites, right?
Here's the difficulty for me.
And the more I think about it, and the more I think about this, the more this has kind of crystallized for me.
And I'm going to look at the secular analog to make this point, because I really do think that there's a secular analog to this.
I don't think that that use that strikes us is so hypocritical.
The difficulty is, I don't actually think it's wrong.
That is, I don't think that it's incorrect.
And I'll go even further.
I think it's a sentiment that we all share, and I'll say for myself, I know that I share it, but I think we all share this sentiment, at least if we're being honest with ourselves.
This notion that, you know, well, maybe I'm not perfect, but I'm better than that person or group or whatever, right?
And if you're sitting there and being like, Dan, you lost me.
I don't get it.
I can't believe you're saying this, right?
Let me explain where I'm going.
Let me explain why I think this, okay?
I think that, again, if we're honest and we can find the narcissists of the world, the Donald Trumps of the world, who I think can't recognize this, but I think most people can recognize that, yeah, we're not perfect.
And when I say not perfect, I mean that in a, you know, let's just call it a moral sense, an ethical sense.
We all recognize that we do immoral things, or at the very least unkind things from time to time.
And by immoral, I don't have to mean terrible things, I just mean things that aren't right.
We've all had to take back something we said or did that hurt someone else.
We've all had to make amends.
We've all had to ask for somebody's forgiveness, right?
And every time we do that, I think we know and acknowledge, tacitly at least, that we're not perfect, okay?
But I think we also recognize that some actions or practices, that even some beliefs, are worse than others.
That they are not all created equal.
And here's an extreme illustration, okay?
It's intentionally extreme to make the point.
Let's say I'm driving.
And somebody cuts me off, and I can be an aggressive driver, I admit this fully, freely, and I can get pretty frustrated when people do stupid things on the highway.
And so let's say somebody cuts me off, and let's imagine I'm muttering under my breath, and I'm saying some really bad things, right?
Things I wouldn't want the person to actually hear me say, things I might not say if my kids were sitting in the car.
Tell a story about having a two-year-old in the backseat, repeating profanity that they heard me say when I was driving and trying to get that out of their head before we got home and I got in trouble?
That's not right.
I think most of us would say, you know, if I was the kind of person I really want to be, I wouldn't be muttering awful things about people in traffic.
I wouldn't say things about people maybe when they're not around that I'm not willing to say if they are around and so forth.
Okay.
But I think we would all agree that somebody who, say, physically or sexually assaults other people has done something worse.
Maybe both of those things are not right or, if you don't like the language of right and wrong, they're not morally praiseworthy, let's say, but they're not equal.
I think most of us would agree with this.
So, here's the trick.
I don't think it's straightforwardly hypocritical when we pass judgments on others even while recognizing that nobody's perfect.
And for those of you who don't like the language of passing judgment on others, I hear you, I hear from you when I get the emails that say, God, Dan, I can't believe that you're busy talking about right and wrong, and that's what's wrong with America today, and the culture wars, and you should avoid that language.
And yeah, I hear it, but we all pass judgment all the time.
And if you don't think that we do, I will just direct you to, first of all, the intuition in what I just said.
If somebody said, There was a hidden tape recorder in that car, and I heard you muttering curses to the person in front of you.
You deserve the same penalty.
You should have the same outcomes, the same effects on your life as if you physically or sexually assault someone.
I don't think any of us would agree with that.
Folks, that's a judgment.
Right?
When we protest social injustice, we are passing judgment on particular practices, and I would argue on those who affirm those practices.
Legal judgments.
I know there's not a straight line from morality to legality, all kinds of problems with the legal system and so forth, but I think the legal system, the reason why it has a bunch of different—it doesn't just find you guilty or innocent, period.
It's guilty of particular crimes with lots of different kinds of penalties and degrees of penalties and so forth.
Why?
Because it recognizes that not all actions are created equal.
If you choose to boycott a company or protest or call for a company or institution to divest from particular things, you are passing judgments.
You're making moral judgments.
Right?
When you decide whom you'll spend time with and why and whom you won't, we are passing judgments.
Okay?
So I don't think that it's straightforwardly hypocritical, because I think it's something we all do, unless we're going to say, well, everybody's a hypocrite.
Fine.
In which case, we've just evacuated the language of hypocrisy of all meaning.
Okay?
So my point is, as I reflect on this, I'm like, well, yeah, we say I'm not perfect, or we're all sinners, and then we go on to pass judgments, but I actually think that that's something we all do.
I think it's an inevitable and necessary part of living together as human beings.
So, here's why it's complicated, because then when the phrase feels so negative to us, I don't think it's just the fact of judgment that's really the issue.
It's not the fact that somebody is passing a judgment, because we all pass judgments.
This is something we all do.
Rather, I think the issue is where we draw the line of judgment.
Right?
Again, if we're honest, we all make moral judgments and evaluations all the time.
I think the issue is what we judge to be immoral or wrong or unkind or whatever, and why.
I'm not trying to teach an ethics class here, right?
I do that, but this is not the place.
I'm just trying to highlight that I think this is another universal feature of being the kinds of creatures that we are.
So the issue with the idea that we're all sinners isn't simply the fact of judgment versus acceptance.
I think it's about the measure we use to make those judgments, whom they're aimed at, And the effects of those judgments.
I think that is what complicates it.
That is what we find objectionable.
For those of us who have ever been on the receiving end of that phrase in a hurtful way, we felt pain from being, you know, from the statement, we're all sinners, but on and on and on.
I think it's because it was judgment aimed at us and those we love.
It's not the fact that a judgment was passed.
It's that it was passed on us.
It was passed on those we love.
It was painful because it involved and licensed a condemnation of things we don't condemn and things we might even value.
Things we might find morally praiseworthy are judged as being immoral or in a theological register as being sinful, as departing from God's design.
So examples of that might be people, or at least examples for me, and I think for many of you as well, people who provide reproductive care, or gender care for minors, or those who protest injustice, as I just mentioned, or members of the LGBTQ plus community, and on and on and on.
It is painful for us because not only are those people condemned, they are people we accept.
They are people we view as morally praiseworthy.
And I think it goes even further than that, because often those judgments of people we accept are coming from those that we would judge negatively.
Christian nationalists, racists, homophobes.
When one says, oh, I know we're all sinners, but...one is claiming moral superiority over somebody else.
They are saying, I have my failings, but I am better than person X, Y, or Z. I am morally superior.
In Christian terms, I am closer to what God wants.
than that person or group over there.
And that can be painful to hear when we're part of that person or group over there.
I think it's even worse when we would look at that person claiming the moral high ground and think exactly the opposite.
So, the language, we're all sinners, often operates as a social code valorizing what we judge negatively and judging negatively what we value and what we love.
And it's that reflection, it's that piece, that is where I find, have found, the idea that we're all sinners to be more complex in its uses and effects than I first realized.
And I want to thank the folks who reached out to me about doing this one because I really had not thought about it that way before.
But as I was thinking about it, I came to this realization, like, do I really think that that's wrong?
I mean, that's something I think we all do.
And kind of digging deeper, those are my thoughts.
I welcome your thoughts, your insights on this, right?
The last point I'll make, though, is I think that complexity is what makes the phrase so difficult to untangle and assess.
Because when I talk about needing to understand the context, all of that is part of the context.
All of that, what moral judgments are being made, how they're being made, where moral lines are being drawn, what is supposed to happen as a result of drawing those lines, and on and on and on.
Folks, we're just not in a position most of the time to sit around reflecting on all of that.
Instead, we are just caught in this maelstrom of context, and what we're left with is just the raw feeling that all of that provokes in us, the raw experience And it can be very, very difficult to untangle, and that is what I hear from so many people about this when they say, this phrase really hits me the wrong way.
I don't know exactly why.
Can't put my finger on it.
Hopefully, this helps.
Gotta wrap this up.
I want to thank you all again for listening.
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Until we get a chance to talk again, please be well.
We're coming into spring, I think most of us.
I'm looking out my window and some of us live in places where spring is pretty cloudy, but I know it could be a time of some sunny days and some good feelings, so please go out, enjoy that, and I look forward to talking to everybody again soon.
By now, a lot of you have heard me talk about becoming a Swag Premium member.
You're on the fence.
You're not sure you should do it.
You've been meaning to do it, but you haven't done it yet.
Now's the time.
Until Mother's Day, our yearly subscription is on sale for just $50.
That's right.
$50 for the entire year, you'll get access to our entire archive, including every episode if it's in the code.
You'll get our bonus episodes.
Every month, Dan and I sit down for two hours to talk, answer questions, and tell stories.
All of our bonus content on Mondays are surprise episodes, ad-free listening, and then you'll get to come hang out with us in the Discord server.
