In the wonderful world of facebook, I came across a meme attributed to Gianna Crow, a contemporary member of the Crow tribe, in which he says, "I was very young when someone called me a 'sinner'.  I got curious, because in our language we have no such word. So I decided to ask my grandfather about it. He said, 'There is no such thing.  Our concsiousness does not recognize this kind of word because it was made to manipulate and put guilt in our hearts.  There is no sin.  What we have is choices and sometimes we make mistakes.  Fear is what people use to take away your freedom, do not allow anybody to do this again, grandson'."

This quote was posted by an old college friend who I remember as quite intelligent, compassionate, articulate and a deep thinker.  This quote is the kind of statement that many post-modern Americans will jump on as support for the current trendy belief that there are no moral absolutes, and that wise, ancient cultures knew this way before the rest of us.  The problem is, like most meme-quotes it's a naive oversimplification at best, and dangerously wrong at worst.  

The first problem with this quote is,  it's inaccurate.  In the Crow language,"depending on the context, you could use words like "wíh-sáa-xe" (meaning "bad person"), "báa-xe" (meaning "evil one"), or "wíh-báa-xe" (meaning "bad evil one") to convey the concept of a malicious person or wrongdoer."  According to "Crow Dictionary on Line" (monitored by the Crow Language Consortium) the direct translation for 'sinner' into Crow is "akbaaxawíihile".  Was old grandpa ignorant of his tribal language's vocabulary or intentionally decieving his grandkid? Or maybe the  whole conversation was fabricated or misunderstood by Gianna Crow.  Regardless, Crow does have words for 'sinner'.

While I do not claim any more insight into Crow culture than any other east coast white guy, I did spend a week plus on the Crow reservation a few years back and came back east with a few observations.  Interestingly, from what my family and I saw, evangelical Christianity is thriving on the rez (albeit a very politically left-wing version of it. That's fine by me.)  The churches we visited were full of young families, the worship was beautiful and energetic, and the preaching was solid.  One of my favorite memories of our time there was passing a billboard on the side of I-90 that announces "Jesus is Lord on the Crow Reservation".  At first I thought it was on a church's property, but we learned that this was on reservation land at the approval of the Crow tribal counsel!  It was there because the people wanted it there.  And where Jesus is Lord, sin must first be acknowledged.

This is not to portray the reservation as some Christian utopia.  There was 50% unemployment at the time of our visit.  Homelessness and addiction were very significant problems. But, as a people group, they esteemed faith in Jesus higher than almost anyplace we've seen within the United States.  And faith in Jesus starts with the recognition of sin as a personal reality.

What I find most concerning about Grandpa Crow's quote, though, is when he says, " What we have is choices and sometimes we make mistakes. "  I'll admit this is often pretty accurate. Perhaps a teenager juggling in his father's kitchen puts a hole in the dry wall, to offer an oddly specific example.  This could easily be understood as a poor choice leading to a mistake; one that I -uh, I mean this hypothetical teenaged juggler - could learn from and avoid repeating. 

But what about the things the Bible clearly calls sin?  Is murder merely a bad choice?  Is theft just a mistake?  What about the sinful heart attitudes that lead to these 'mistakes'?  Are materialism, arrogance, hatred, bigotry, and selfishness things we can merely dismiss with an 'oops, I'll try better'? And, if I may be so blunt, was the US government guilty of nothing more than poor judgement at Wounded Knee?  Would trying harder the next time really attone for the 'choice' to carry out the single worst mass murder in US history?

I love studying cultures, and if I had to do it again, I would like to study anthropology.  We fell in love with the Crow people during the short time we spent there, and would love to spend more time there and understand the tribal culture more deeply.  But, in the end, even if Grandpa Crow's statement was accurate regarding having no word for 'sinner', it does not hold up to the eternal truth of God and the understanding of human nature revealed to us through the Abrahamic faiths.  'All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." (Romns 3:23).

Ah, but the good news is this: "Jesus is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world." 1 John 2:2