How to Be a Sinner isn’t advice on how to sin better. It’s a series of compassionate reflections on what it actually means to identify myself as a sinner, and to do so in a healthy way. Because how I identify myself is important, and the “sinner identity” can potentially be a problem: Is “wrong” at the core of my very being? What does it do to me, to be seen constantly as falling short? Isn’t there a good kind of self-love and self-care?
The claim of so much scripture and prayer is perhaps counter-intuitive: owning the “sinner identity” is a key component of a healthy life; it’s part of self-care; it’s part of my salvation. “How to be a sinner” aims to steer towards a healthy self-regard, and towards surrender to the endless love and mercy of God, who saves us precisely through and within our brokenness. “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
"Crisp, practical and searching, this excellent book combines a solid theological perspective fully informed by the depths of the Christian spiritual tradition with a vigorous and very contemporary insight into a culture that has largely forgotten what sin means. Treading the right line between melodramatic and guilt-inducing rhetoric and bland modern self-absolution, it offers an understanding of human sinfulness that is both demanding and hopeful, and helps us rediscover the tools of proper self-knowledge before God."
Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury
Be sure to visit howtobeasinner.com.
Order the book from svspress.com.