Sinful Pasts

In an AA meeting everyone is sitting in a circle and you go around the room, each person speaking their peace.  It should generally be "on topic", but in reality, it's often just whatever they feel they need to say.

That can be a variety of things, but one of those things that comes up now and then is "Sinful pasts". This is where someone will relate how bad he was before he stopped drinking and/or drugging.  And sometimes, in context, it's appropriate that he gives such a brief description before moving on to the recovery part.

However, sometimes, there seems to be a bit of what I think of as "Bad-ass Bragging".  Where someone really wants you to know and believe that "back in the day" he was a real "bad ass" and that his sins were bigger than yours.

In some cases, this seems plausible.  Some tatted up biker dude lookin' like he did a stretch or three.  In other cases, you're looking at some CPA or MBA looking small guy and he's going on about some gang he allegedly ran with "back in the day".  And it seems a bit implausible.

Back when I was bangin' with the Wild Hogs, well, I killed
people.  When they gave me crap.  Can I say "crap"?

Worse, sometimes after one gives his story of bad-assery, then the next guy feels the need to "one up" that.  And then the next guy has to top that.  Etc.  I remember once a guy was talking about how he had robbed a liquor store.  Then the next guy robbed a bank.  The guy after him robbed "many" banks and stores.

I wanted to jump up and say, "Let's end this meeting fast, the next guy is about to confess to murder!"

This isn't exclusively an AA phenomena.  I was at a Baptist church get together one time and they were in a circle going around confessing how much better their lives were now with Christ.  But it had sadly turned into a bit of bragging on who had been the biggest sinner.

One woman confessed to one instance of pre-marital sex.  The next to a variety of fornication in general.  The next woman then wanted to allude to a variety of sexual vices under the general umbrella of fornication. Then came the woman who was going to top them all, she "confessed" that besides all that every other girl had confessed to, she had "done it" for drugs.

I was kind of fascinated by these cosmopolitan tales from these mousy looking drabs, and was waiting to hear from the next woman that she was in reality the Whore of Babylon, but no, the girl who had confessed to prostitution won the prize that day, no one cared to top that!

The point of all that though is that sinful pasts are supposed to be just that - past.  When you are washed in the Blood of the Lamb, when you've been baptized, then that's it for those sins, they're done, they're over, and they're forgiven.  There's no need to dwell on them any more, and certainly no need to "brag" about them.

Possibly - possibly in some rare case - it may be appropriate to reference some specific in the context of giving counsel to another.  And certainly I'm not saying that you should pretend to have never sinned, a general acknowledgment of that past is fine.

For myself, I generally allude to my past "active alcoholism and addiction".  But I don't give richly detailed examples and blow by blow stories of drunken debaucheries and ribald revelries.  Because I'm not bragging on them, nor are they brag worthy.

I wasn't a bad ass back then, I was a dumb ass.

My sins, like that of most everyone, were not exciting or glamorous or thrilling but small and cheap and pathetic.  Hurtful and dumb and tawdry.  And I won't go back and try to "re-brand" myself as some kind of cool kid who is only boring since he got Jesus.  I was an idiot back then.  And to the extent I'm not now, it's due to Christ.

That doesn't make me boring, either.  It makes me living a good and active and sober life for which I am blessed.  A life not lacking in excitement, but rather in the idiotic Jerry Springer type drama of my dumb - not cool - past.

People who have come out of such darkness forget sometimes that baptism is a re-birth.  You are "born again".  And no one can speak ill of you for the past sins that you already asked forgiveness for.  And that's refreshing and a real life saver.  But then having been blessed in not having those sins tied around your neck dragging you down for the rest of your life on Earth, you should not then start bringing back up select ones for some bizarre purpose of negative self-aggrandizement.

We are none of us really to think about pre-baptism sins, but to the extent we do, the emotion to be felt is "shame" at having done them and "gratitude" that Christ forgave them!

We're also expecting the mercy of not having those brought up by others.  It's a mercy we all need, for who could endure having to re-account and re-repent each day for the sins of an ignorant past?  And since our brothers and sisters in Christ do us this favor in not bringing up our past for ill, then we don't get to bring up our past for "good".

Gossiping about a Sister's pre-baptism past says so much
more about the gossipers than her.

Sinful past?  Well, all have sinned and fell short of the glory of God, as Romans 3:23 tells us, so "sinful past" is really a redundancy.  We can just say past.

As in dead past.  As in past and over.