Icy-Heart Syndrome

Welcome to the first in a series of blog posts which I'll call "Taking Sin Seriously."

I have decided to do just that — take sin seriously as a topic for this blog which I mostly intend as a call to human solidarity — because one good definition for sin is whatever blocks person-to person unity or impedes it from happening.

Another definition for sin is what I call "icy-heart syndrome." When I sin — when I do what I shouldn't do or fail to do what I should do — it is always in some way connected to the fact that my heart has (yes, again!) turned cold as ice. That makes me see other people — people such as you — as utilitarian objects, not as persons. At that point I just can't help myself: I tend to use you and discard you as I see fit.

Of course, that is a metaphor, an analogy, a bit of poetic license. What's really going on when I sin is that my ego is taking control of my vision, yet again.

OK, OK, that's another (mixed) metaphor, another analogy, another schematization. "My ego"? "My vision"? What do I mean by those? How is it that the former takes control of the latter? And why is that bad?


Let me answer by extending the analogy. My ego is like the lens of a nearsighted eye. Using it and it alone, I see clearly only that which is right in front of my own nose: my individual gratifications and my seeming best interests. Everything else is out of focus, including your gratifications, your needs, and your interests.

In fact, your very face as another human person, just like me, is a bit of a blur to my ego-lensed nearsightedness. I can't really see you as you are. I see you as but an object to be used or discarded as I see fit.

Extending the analogy yet further, what I seek in terms of my relationship with God is, in fact, a contact lens that will make my distance vision what it ought to be: 20-20.

When that contact lens is right where it should be, I can see your face as God sees it. When that happens, I know you as a person and not as an object. My icy heart melts. My sinfulness is, for the moment, held at bay.


The trouble is, this contact lens slips. It slides off center from one moment to the next, and thereby places the axis of my vision back under the control of my nearsighted ego once again. I can no longer see your true face, and my heart turns back to ice toward you.

Plus, having 20-20 distance vision, even for one fleeting moment, is not really comfortable. For starters, with it I can see all the way to Darfur, to rape and genocide which I feel powerless to do anything about.

For another thing, when the lens is where it should be, I can for one brief, painful instant see myself clearly in the mirror, and I don't much like the vain, callous, no-count wretch I see there: the one who is in the very next heartbeat going to permit the contact lens to slip aside and who will at that moment feel nothing but relief.