When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. He said, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself.

– Matthew 27:3-5

I recently watched the Frontline documentary, “Weinstein,” about famed filmmaker Harvey Weinstein’s decades-long resistance to allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault. While the documentary as a whole was painfully revealing, exposing as it did the willingness of most of us to put aside what we know is right when we feel enough fear for ourselves and our futures, there was one scene that was particularly striking. In it, model Zoe Brock described her experience of being lured into Weinstein’s hotel room under false pretenses only to have him strip and attempt to assault her. She managed to lock herself in the bathroom, where she shouted at him through the door to get dressed. When she came out, Weinstein was sitting on the bed, clothed and crying. His words to her pierced my heart : “You don’t like me because I’m fat.”

When we hear that “Jesus saves us from sin,” it’s easy to picture a moralizing God who is always ready to catch us in wrongdoing and always eager to punish us for it. This image of God as a judge and disciplinarian is scripturally supported, and the view of sin as wrongdoing is not incorrect. But sin isn’t just the way we do evil. It’s also the pathology that twists and perverts our spirits, deforming the nobility that is our birthright. Sin prevents us from trusting in God’s love and power and instead makes our friends and neighbors a blood sacrifice to the false god of our woundedness.

“You don’t like me because I’m fat.” These are devastating words, coming as they do from a famous, powerful and critically acclaimed filmmaker, a man at the peak of his craft. These words paint a portrait of a man so consumed by insecurity that no amount of accomplishment could soothe his fears. And to be clear, there is no sin in anxiety, and there is none in uncertainty. But when instead of leaning on the promises of God to calm our doubts, we turn our insecurities outward and manipulate or bully others in order to bolster our fragile egos or soothe our clanging anxiety, we have crossed a line that is both deadly serious and tragically human. And all the compassion that we may – and should! – feel for someone in that position does not erase that person’s wickedness and depravity.

And sadly, as much as we may wish to believe otherwise, the Harvey Weinsteins of the world have no monopoly on wickedness. Any of us can become a predator or manipulator when we see something important to us put at risk, whether it is our financial security, reputation or self-image – unless, that is, we make a choice to trust in God rather than in our own fears. Absent such a commitment, the only thing that separates any of us from a Harvey Weinstein is that he had the power and influence avoid the repercussions of his actions longer than most.

That choice – to trust, really trust, in God – is hard to make, and I believe that it is only through the grace and power of the Spirit of Christ that we can consistently make it. Sometimes that means taking lumps rather than lying our way to safety. Sometimes trusting God means deciding for the good of someone else to do things that we would rather not do and to refrain from activities we desperately want to engage in. Sometimes it means climbing on the cross with Jesus. It’s not easy, and it sure isn’t fun, but it’s the only way to cure the cancer of sin.