Tristitia is the Latin name for a sin, or a negative spiritual state, that is the subject of some degree of controversy. Usually, of course, sins are not very controversial — you won’t find many people defending theft, for example, or singing lauds to the glories of unadulterated envy. Murder is universally deplored, and adultery — if glanced at somewhat admiringly by the vanguard of degeneracy in our contemporary culture — retains its pejorative shading in most circles.
But tristitia is different. It’s the sin of despair, of surrender, of giving up in one’s spiritual life to the point of complete and utter resignation. When you come to a stop in your Christian life and sit down and say “That’s it; no more; I can’t go on; I’ve tried but it’s no use; I’m not playing this game any more; I’m done, regardless of what comes next” — at that point you are the victim of this psycho-spiritual sin, and unless repentance finds its way into your heart you are (apparently) lost.
And I say “apparently lost” because this is where the controversy enters in. If you believe as I do that perseverance unto the last of life is the hallmark of a genuinely saved individual, then it seems to me that you must agree that not finishing the course — not continuing until the race is over — constitutes ultimate failure. Paul, to name just one New Testament writer, makes it very clear that one simply has to finish the race – persevere to the end in the Christian life — in order to win the laurels of Heaven and the praises of the Lord. We are not allowed the luxury of collapsing at the side of the racetrack, giving up the game, surrendering the fight and then claiming the golden crown of the victor. No. We demonstrate by completing the struggle that our conversion was true and genuine. Abandoning the field reveals that we were never fully or honestly justified in the eyes of the Godhead. Battling on in the power of the Holy Spirit to the very end shows that we were the Good Shepherd’s all along.
So the controversy is this: can a person who claims to be a Christian fall among the thorns, which is to say: among the cares of this world, and (as Jesus says in the parable of the sower) become “unfruitful”, and still inherit the Kingdom of Heaven? Some believers say Yes. And one can imagine a situation in which a born again Christian falls victim to a severe case of depression or mental illness — a psychological disease that render the person absolutely despondent and afflicted with tristitia for the rest of his or her life. It is just as possible for a believer to suffer a lifelong mental illness as it is for him to suffer a lifelong physical one. And that mental affliction might, theoretically, subject him to a despair he would not otherwise succumb to if he were in his right mind. Hence the possibility of a case of tristitia leading not to damnation but to glorification (because Christ will understand the man’s or the woman’s “true”, underlying, undamaged, state of mind.
Yet the sin of despair remains a threat to you and me, if we are sojourners between this old Earth and the New Jerusalem. It is a consummation devoutly to be undesired. If we die in sound mind and unsound body, we will have no excuse to give the Great Judge for having laid aside our Faith, or for having raised the white flag before the battle was brought to a conclusion. To those who demur against the thought of Christians losing their salvation simply because they release their hold on Jesus, I say: failure in that regard is not an option.
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