c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _”Beware, your sins will find you out,”was a warning repeated by my youth minister to his flock of rowdy teenagers in the hope of scaring us into good behavior.

As a firm believer in an omnipotent God, he only hinted at how God might catch us in our iniquities.

But not even he would have imagined that someone might get caught nearly 200 years later by a new technology and a revived interest in the personal lives of presidents.

Poor Thomas Jefferson.

We have to assume he’s faced his maker and dealt with the divine implications of his earthly transgressions. But the lurid interest of the contemporary public isn’t willing to let it go. And what makes this a story is not the historical implications but the current ones.

The American public seems fascinated with sinners _ especially famous ones. And we seem especially interested in finding out everything we can about the sin itself.

This reminds me of the man who once came to our church when I was a child to tell us of how he had been saved from a life of sin. He spoke of gambling and making a fortune, of dating models and famous women, of living a life of luxury in Las Vegas. Then he repented and became an evangelist.

I don’t think I was the only person in the audience who thought his life of sin sounded a whole lot more interesting than his current gig. And it also occurred to me that deciding to become a Christian as a child might not be the best idea. After all, I hadn’t had much experience with sin and might be a better Christian if I first dabbled a little in this exciting other life before”settling down”and becoming boring.

Obviously, I had missed the point. But that’s easy to do when sin is made into something it’s not and sinners are seen as people who need to be judged and punished by their earthly comrades.

Bad people sin. So do good people. People who believe in God sin. People who don’t believe in God sin. The fact is, we are all sinners but only some of us get caught.

And one of the mistakes of the church is elevating the”getting caught”part to a higher level than it should occupy. Because according to the Bible, a sin still counts whether anyone knows about it or not.

Sin, according to the Bible, separates us from God. To those who really understand the meaning of it, that is a scary proposition. But it seems that many people _ like my youth minister _ think it is their job to make sin more immediately frightening.

So they tell stories like the oft-repeated one of my youth about the man who skipped church on a beautiful summer morning to go water skiing and then drowned. Or the couple who failed to tithe money to the church and went bankrupt.

Perhaps these were true stories, perhaps they were allegory. The fact is, they didn’t do much to help my image of God or understanding of sin. Could I really put my trust in a God so petty that he would zap a water-skier for skipping church?

I happen to think God is a whole lot bigger than that, so big in fact, that we can’t even imagine how our sin must affect him or hurt us. Getting caught is the least of our worries. What has happened to Thomas Jefferson could happen to any of us. Who knows what the technology of the future might offer to uncover our deepest, darkest secrets?

But what difference does it really make?

Sin is a problem between us and God. Sure, sin usually affects others, but sin is sin because of our relationship to God. If you don’t believe in God you probably don’t believe in sin. You just think people act mean or selfish.

But if you do believe in God, then it’s worth believing in a God big enough to make sin more than an occasion for a divine swat.

My current minister is a man who believes in a God that big. Recently he had to preach his annual sermon on giving and he started it out this way:”God doesn’t need your money.” I was thinking how great it was to have a minister like him, when he gave us the punch line:”God wants your life.” Instead of dumping my wallet he had asked me to turn myself inside out. It would have been much easier to think of God holding out his palm than holding out open arms.

It is also easier to think of God with his hand held up ready to strike. But I think that is a very human view of God. I think God has his arms stretched out whether we are sinning or not, it’s just that when we sin we have a hard time moving in for a divine hug.

I hope Thomas Jefferson got his divine hug and made peace with God. Now I think the rest of us should leave him alone.

As for the rest of us sinners, it seems to me that it is time for us all to spend a little more time listening to God than looking at each other.

END RNS