Make yourself responsible for all the sins of men

“There is only one salvation for you: take yourself up, and make yourself responsible for all the sins of men. For indeed it is so, my friend, and the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it is really so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all. Whereas by shifting your own laziness and powerlessness onto others, you will end by sharing in Satan’s pride and murmuring against God.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Lest you think that Dostoevsky is claiming that each and everyone of us needs to have a Messiah complex, that is not what he is saying. Just like yesterday’s post, he is writing about a recognition that we all need to have. Oddly enough, it would be one that would be shared by various psychologists, and by people involved in what is colloquially called “brainwashing.” That realization is that given the right conditions, anyone of us could probably commit almost any sin of which you can conceive. But, even more than that, he is saying what Our Lord was trying to teach us when he said in the Sermon on the Mount that to even think improperly on a woman is to already have committed adultery with her.

It is hard for us to admit what is in each and everyone of us. When the New Testament Scriptures say that sin is a problem in our lives, it uses the singular “sin” rather than the plural because really, there is only one sin. All other sins are but examples, are but ways in which we express that we have sin in our lives. This is the reason why Saint James can say that, “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one, he is guilty of all.” All too often we try to make that into a judicial statement. But that is bad for two reasons. One reason is that other Scriptures do point out that not all sins are equal. That is why for certain sins, Our Lord says that it would be better to hang a millstone around our neck rather than to commit that sin. But, the other reason is that that type of argumentation can affect us in our secular culture and give us a tendency to all too easily brand even the most minor of criminals as though they were the worst of criminals, and to have inappropriate attitudes towards the punishment and treatment of criminals.

No, rather Saint James is really not making a juridical statement. Rather, he is saying that to be guilty of even one sin is to show that our root we have the corruption present that could make it possible for us to commit any sin, given the right circumstances. Thus, potentially we are guilty of every sin, and can be said to therefore be guilty of every sin. Again, he says this not as a juridical statement but as a metaphysical statement.

There was a Roman Catholic writer of the 1800’s who quite well understood this. G.K Chesterton wrote a fictional series of detective novels whose hero was Father Brown. Let me quote a rather long passage from one of the books. But, if you read this passage and understand it, you will certainly understand the quote with which I began this post.

“The secret is,” he said; and then stopped as if unable to go on. Then he began again and said:

“You see, it was I who killed all those people.”

“What?” repeated the other, in a small voice out of a vast silence.

“You see, I had murdered them all myself,” explained Father Brown patiently. “So, of course, I knew how it was done.”

Grandison Chace had risen to his great height like a man lifted to the ceiling by a sort of slow explosion. Staring down at the other he repeated his incredulous question.

“I had planned out each of the crimes very carefully,” went on Father Brown, “I had thought out exactly how a thing like that could be done, and in what style or state of mind a man could really do it. And when I was quite sure that I felt exactly like the murderer myself, of course I knew who he was.”

Chace gradually released a sort of broken sigh.

“You frightened me all right,” he said. “For the minute I really did think you meant you were the murderer. Just for the minute I kind of saw it splashed over all the papers in the States: “Saintly Sleuth Exposed as Killer: Hundred Crimes of Father Brown.’ Why, of course, if it’s just a figure of speech and means you tried to reconstruct the psychology—”

Father Brown rapped sharply on the stove with the short pipe he was about to fill; one or his very rare spasms of annoyance contracted his face.

“No, no, no,” he said, almost angrily; “I don’t mean just a figure of speech. This is what comes of trying to talk about deep things. . . . What’s the good of words . . .? If you try to talk about a truth that’s merely moral, people always think it’s merely metaphorical. A real live man with two legs once said to me: ‘I only believe in the Holy Ghost in a spiritual sense.’ Naturally, I said: ‘In what other sense could you believe it?’ And then he thought I meant he needn’t believe in anything except evolution, or ethical fellowship, or some bilge. . . . I mean that I really did see myself, and my real self, committing the murders. I didn’t actually kill the men by material means; but that’s not the point. Any brick or bit of machinery might have killed them by material means. I mean that I thought and thought about how a man might come to be like that, until I realized that I really was like that, in everything except actual final consent to the action.

It is only when you realize that every sin in the world is to be found in you that you then have a true understanding of yourself. But, as with Father Brown and Dostoevsky, when you take that true understanding, that every sin in the world is present in you, and let it drive you to prayer, not just for yourself, but for the whole world, that you can resist Satan successfully and continually.