You Are Not a Worm

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John's Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today's edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith.

Last week, I talked about the two ditches on either side of the spiritual path: thinking we are better than we are, and thinking we are worse than we are. This week, I want to stay in that second ditch a little longer, because I think a lot of us were taught we have to live there.

When I was growing up, we sang an old hymn by Isaac Watts: “Alas! and did my Savior bleed, and did my Sovereign die? Would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?” And, of course, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”

Now, as a priest, I hear a message in those words about who you are. A worm. A wretch. And I think that message is damaging to the core. It has been used to shame LGBTQ people simply for being who God created them to be. But honestly, words like that create shame in almost anyone who hears them. That’s a myth that needs to be broken.

When I was in seminary, I was surprised to learn there are actually two very distinct ways to view humanity in the Christian tradition.

The first is the one many of us absorbed in American Protestantism, shaped especially by John Calvin and the Reformed tradition. You may have heard of TULIP, the acronym for the five points of Calvinism. The T stands for “total depravity.” To be fair, theologians mean that sin has touched every part of us, not that we are as evil as we could possibly be. But in the pews, it often lands as something much simpler: at your core, you are rotten, and grace is God choosing to save a worm.

The second way is older, and it’s held by most Christians throughout history and around the world today. Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists, and many others begin somewhere else. They begin in Genesis, where God makes humanity in God’s own image, then looks at all of creation and calls it “very good.” Sin is real, and it is serious. It wounds us, distorts us, and separates us from God and one another. But it does not erase the image of God in us. As Saint Irenaeus put it back in the second century, the glory of God is a human being fully alive.

Salvation isn’t God rescuing garbage–and I’m so sorry people have perhaps told you at times that you are garbage. Because you’re not. Salvation is God healing a beloved creation and restoring it to who and what it was always meant to be.

You can see this in my own church’s catechism, found in the Book of Common Prayer. Its very first question is about us: “What are we by nature?” And the answer is not “worms” or “wretches.” The answer is, “We are part of God’s creation, made in the image of God.” Only after that does the catechism talk about how we misuse our freedom and make wrong choices. Goodness comes first. Sin comes second. And that order matters.

It matters because what you believe about your deepest self shapes how you live. If you think you’re a worm, you’ll hide, just like we talked about last week. But if you know you are made in God’s image, you can look honestly at your sin without being crushed by it. Repentance becomes simply turning back toward who you really are.

So if you were raised on those hymns, or on that one perspective on what humanity is (which is actually a minority perspective in Christianity) hear this: you are not a worm. You are a beloved child of God, and the goodness God placed in you runs deeper than anything you have done or left undone.

Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember: protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.