Symbols of Mercy

A bible school teacher strove to impress upon the youngsters in her class the wonders of God’s forgiveness of our sins. To that end she quoted the passage from Isaiah 38:17; “You have cast all my sins behind your back.”

But one perspicacious child challenged the teacher about this. “Even if my sins were put behind God’s back,” the little girl said, “he could still see them if he turned around.”

The clever teacher simply took a black marker and put a number of X’s on a sheet of paper. She explained that these marks represented the little girl’s sins. She then called a boy forward and taped the marked paper on his back. She asked the boy to turn around and look at the black marks on the paper. The other pupils laughed as they realized that, no matter which way the lad turned, the symbolic sins were always behind him and out of his sight! From that day, the profound truth of that passage from Isaiah resides in each of these children’s memories. Encouraged by her successful pedagogical tactic, the next day the teacher went on to demonstrate another scriptural passage about God’s merciful love. She made some ugly scrawls on the blackboard and told the youngsters that the scrawls represented the sins of one person’s soul. Then came her simple “magic.” Explaining that “this sinner decided to repent,” she erased every bit of every mark. Then she turned to the youngsters and asked “Where did the sins go? Did they go into the next room? Or out onto the playground? Or under my desk?”

To every question the kids screamed: “No!” They were forced to conclude that the sins went nowhere; they just disappeared. They no longer existed – anywhere. When one child exclaimed that they were “blotted out,” the teacher took her cue and tied in the previous day’s lesson with a quote from Psalm 51:9: Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.” With that she made it possible for her pupils to possess another gem from the treasure trove of God’s Word.

It’s not just children who wonder where sins go when remitted – which is like wondering what happens to forgotten memories. Many honest adults are unsure about this to. When I received that question recently in an E-mail, I couldn’t resist referring factiously to the man who stayed up all night wondering what happened to the sun after it sank below the horizon. It finally “dawned” on him!

The first European pilgrimage for which I served as chaplain started with a lengthy transatlantic voyage on an ocean liner. One day on the deck, braving a blustering ocean wind, I was chatting with one of the pilgrims when I noticed that she was wearing a costly gold amulet engraved with a pagan symbol. I told her that to wear it was a sin of superstition. More than that, it was an insult to the one true God, because she was giving acknowledgment to a false god.

The woman hadn’t realized the seriousness of the matter until I explained it to her. She ripped the amulet from her neck, along with its gold chain, and threw it overboard, watching it sink into utter oblivion.

Because of her ignorance she had no malice, and hence no sin, in this matter. However, she insisted that I give her confessional absolution on the spot for all the sins of her life – right there on the wave-lashed deck, in the midst of an ocean windstorm. She wanted that amulet to represent all the sins of her life as it sank irretrievably to the depths of the ocean floor.

I couldn’t resist mentioning the prophet Micah’s reference to sin-disposal in the ocean of God’s mercy: “You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19).

From now until the end of the world, no one will ever see that amulet, and no demon will ever be able to point to her sins that are symbolically submerged with it, forever out of sight.

Where do our sins go? As one hymn writer quaintly phrased it, “My sins are now in the sea of God’s forgetfulness.”

This excerpt is from the book The Awesome Mercy of God, by John H. Hampsch,C.M.F., originally published by Servant Books. It and other of Fr. Hampsch's books and audio/visual materials can be purchased from Claretian Teaching Ministry, 20610 Manhattan Pl, #120, Torrance, CA 90501-1863. Phone 1-310-782-6408.